Random Rules

RANDOM RULES

A longtime mixtape maker and playlist fine-tuner, I cast aside any semblance of a plan in favor of making song decisions on the spot. Will Glen Gould playing Bach's "Goldberg Variations" sound good after psychedelic 1970s Zamrock? Only one way to find out!

Broadcasting live on Mondays at 6:00pm ET - WRFR-LP 93.3 in Rockland & 99.3 in Camden (Maine) - Streaming on WRFR.org

February 15 2021 - Chick Corea Tribute

I remember it like it was last night. Tenth grade. Super Bowl Sunday. Driving around town when Andy put on “Light as a Feather,” the Chick Corea and Return to Forever album from 1973, and played it loud. I just remember, feeling it more than thinking it: I’ve never heard music like this before. His electric piano shot bolts of lightning into me. I felt like I was bouncing down a road in the jungle in Brazil instead of the back seat of Andy’s truck as we drove through the dark wintery back roads of our town.

Lost another absolute legend last week. What Chick was able to communicate and share on the keys, especially the electric piano, was truly dazzling.

Highlights include:
Return to Forever, Jacob Miller, & Neko Case

February 8 2021 - Special Siblings Edition

The four of us have spent a lot of time listening to, arguing over, and loving music together over the years. Long car trips with one mix tape, “borrowing” each others’ coveted CDs, incredible concerts, and destroying the dance floor wherever we go...

A very special conversation with my three sisters, in which I pose questions about what we were listening to at different points in our lives and we hash it all out - lots of early 90s R&B, lots of goofin and laughin.

Highlights include:
En Vogue, Boyz II Men & Toots and the Maytalls

January 4 2021 - Year End Mix

Last week, I asked you what songs from 2020 got you through. Tonight I’m sharing mine! An abbreviated version of my annual mix I make for pals, this is music that calmed me down or got me jazzed or distracted me. Including a gem of a Guy Clark number from this perfect document of country music history...

Also: this is genius (and patron saint of Random Rules) David Berman’s birthday today and we will be bowing deeply.

Highlights include:
Catherine Howe, Andy Shauf, & Issam Hajali

December 28 2020 - Time Capsule!

What a friggin Mr. Toad’s wild ride this year has been. But I bet dollars to doughnuts that music helped you keep your shit together. Because that’s one of the things it does best. I dug in hard to the Dead shows I love, those magic live moments blasting some wonder and lightness into some grim days.

A 2020 musical time capsule for this end-of-year show: I play the songs that got YOU through it all - helped you, got you hyped, felt like a balm, songs that you kept coming back to. A playlist of our collective musical year in the weirdest year on record.

Highlights include:
Polo y Pan, Alton Ellis & Yukihiro Takahashi

May 4 2020 - with Jason Goodman

Jason has been a regular on Random Rules, but living in strange times presents some hiccups in recording with other people. As spring finally reared its head in Rockland, we safely set up shop in his backyard for this edition of the show. It was a gorgeous evening, the grill was going, the wine was flowing, and we went track for track from record collections. Just like at the station, but with plenty of fresh air...

Highlights include:
Nina Simone, Neil Young & Duke Ellington

April 6 2020 - with Richard Iammarino

I had my father-in-law Dick on the show this past December. He brought in some weirdo jazz and Bulgarian folk music and beautiful opera. I wanted to have him on again, of course, because his music tastes are wonderful. But he had been in Qatar for a month visiting my brother-in-law and his family who live in Doha and he went into full lockdown quarantine when he got back. I decided I can still have him on as a guest, just needed to give him a phone call...

Highlights include:
Carlo Buti, Talking Heads & Jedi Mind Tricks

January 6 2020 - with Brett Willard

This is the second time buddy Brett has been on the show and it's always a treat to play and talk music with him. As per Random Rules law, his tastes run vast and varied and we found some synchronicity in going track for track with our selections. Some fresh tunes for a new year ... dig that Black on White Affair version of "Auld Lang Syne" at the close of the show!

Highlights include:
Johnny Ace, Sanford Clark & The Kumasi Trio

November 11 2019 - with Jason Goodman

Jason Goodman is a real good man. A renaissance man. Photographer, filmmaker, guitar maker, musician, and music lover. The guy is pure joy and it was a joy to finally get him on the show to listen to and talk about some of our favorites. Lots of stories, lots of laughs, lots of Woodford Reserve, lots of funky and beautiful tunes for a stormy Monday night.

Highlights include:
Eddie Palmieri, The Five Satins & Tom Waits

October 28 2019 - with Mary & Gary Sell

My folks are in town! They were planning on sitting quietly while I did the show as usual, but I had the idea to cherrypick their records from the 60s and 70s - which I inherited from them in middle school - and have them take turns choosing their beloved gems at random. Pop has a soft spot for novelty 45s and songs about fast cars, Ma likes girl groups and pretty folk-rock tunes. A winning combo!

Highlights include:
Nervous Norvus, The Supremes & Tom Rush

CITY LIMITS
(2013 - 2016)

A geographic, historical, and cultural exploration of our country's many musical trends. Each show was spent in one city, focusing on the music and stories that came out of that specific place, from the turn of the last century to now.

September 30 2015 - Townes Van Zandt & Blaze Foley

We’re headed back down to Texas and this will be a show about two friends, two drinking buddies, two singer-songwriters who lived hard, played beautiful music, and left a deep impression on all those who followed. I’m talking about Townes Van Zandt and Blaze Foley. They are both geniuses in their own right and it gives me great pleasure to dedicate an hour to each of them, both of their live albums played back to back.

Song highlights include:
Snowin' on Raton, Tecumseh Valley & Clay Pigeons

March 25 2015 - Athens, Georgia

Music journalist Richie Unterberger once described Athens as a "sleepy place, where it's difficult to imagine anyone working up a sweat, let alone playing rock music." However! They sure have. The contributions of Athens to the music world have earned it the nickname "the Liverpool of the South", and the city is known as one of the American birthplaces for both modern alternative rock and new wave music.

Highlights include:
Pylon, Neutral Milk Hotel & Drive-By Truckers

January 28 2015 - Missoula, Montana

This time we’re heading to Big Sky country, where a couple days after I graduated from college I drove through endless prairie and dark mountain passes, feeling the vastness of our country rolled out before me and the beauty of something I realized was indescribable.

In the first hour we’ll be listening to rare and forgotten recordings from garage and psychedelic rock bands from the 1960s, compliments of Lost Sounds Montana. And for the second hour, we’re going to hear some music coming out of Missoula right now, based on our buddy Fletcher’s recommendations, as well as some new songs from Fletch himself and his awesome project, Cavewoman!

Highlights include:
The Vulcans, Silkworm & The Best Westerns

May 28 2014 - Reno, Nevada

Writer, musician, and friend Douglas W. Milliken joins me in the studio to present our own take on the city of Reno, Nevada and its surrounding endless desert, where Doug’s new novel, "To Sleep as Animals" takes place and where the shambling characters in my songs figure out what to do next.

In addition to Doug’s select readings from his book and my dusty songs, we co-DJ a set of music that influences us creatively while also harkening back to the desert landscape of our individual works.

For more information about Doug's writing and other projects, visit douglaswmilliken.com

Highlights include:
Santo & Johnny, Tarnation & Nick Cave

February 27 2014 - Louisville, Kentucky

One would think Louisville might be behind the times, since Mark Twain famously said he'd wait out the end of the world in Kentucky, where it would happen 20 years later than everywhere else. Not so in The Gateway to the South!

It's one of the oldest cities west of the Appalachian Mountains, where the Kentucky Derby marks the start of the Triple Crown, and the Louisville Slugger baseball bat, as well as one of my most favorite musicians, Will Oldham - also known by his moniker Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - was born. It’s also where a third of all bourbon whiskey comes from. So, you know, thank god for Louisville.

Highlights include:
John Jacob Niles, Loretta Lynn & Slint

January 29 2014 - Providence, Rhode Island

Like Rome, Providence was claimed to be founded on seven hills. It's where Roger Williams believed God found a haven for he and his fellow settlers, where I often waited at a Peter Pan bus station and where - probably most importantly - David Byrne and the Talking Heads got their start.

We start with early 20th century composers, while also concentrating on the traditional music of Cape Verdean immigrants who settled in Providence in the 19th century and then move to the folk and soul that made the city a pop hot spot in the 60s and 70s and the art rock collectives that sprang up in the aughts.

Highlights include:
Freddie Scott, Tavares & Deer Tick

JuNE 26 2013 - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

We're headed to the City of Brotherly Love this time. Going to college in Baltimore, seeing music in Philly was just as common as staying put in town. And there was something of an adventure to it all, heading to a city I knew little about and trying to find tiny clubs and churches where hardcore bands and jazz outfits were playing. I drove around a lot, got lost, saw some amazing music and got to know an equally amazing city.

Highlights include:
Clara Ward, Jim Croce & the Roots

March 27 2013 - Indianapolis & Bloomington

Goin' to Indiana, y'all! This show is broken up like so: the first hour is spent on early Indianapolis music and a lot of great jazz. And in hour two, a look at some of the best rock bands coming out Bloomington since the mid-90s.

This includes a big focus on the music of Jason Molina who died recently and even though I didn't know him or see him live more than once, his songs are among my most favorite, speaking volumes about what it is to be alive and human, and the world will now be missing something very special without him in it.

Highlights include:
Cole Porter, Early Day Miners & Magnolia Electric Co.

March 13 2013 - Kansas City, Missouri

Albert Murray writes that “The special drive of Kansas City music is…a device for herding or even stampeding the blues away. The KC drummer not only maintains that ever steady yet always flexible transcontinental locomotive-like drive of the KC 4/4 time, he also behaves for all the world like a whip-cracking trail driver. And so do Kansas City brass ensembles on occasion also yap and snap precisely as if in pursuit of some invisible quarry, with the piano player siccing them on…”

This time, I forgo the usual chronological musical history in favor of spending the show on the evolution of jazz in Kansas City: from big band to shouting blues to bebop and fusion, I try to hit it all.

Highlights include:
Big Joe Turner, Lester Young & Mary Lou Williams

February 27 2013 - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

City of Bridges, Steel City, home to the Steelers, the banana split, Zippo lighter, the first U.S. commercial radio station, and more than 300,000 people. It's a place I've never stepped foot, which is why I let essayist Annie Dillard introduce Pittsburgh.

Highlights include:
Chuck Jackson, Fred Rogers & Wiz Khalifa

February 13 2013 - Boston, Massachusetts

Beantown, home to the Red Sox, the Big Dig, and four and a half million people. I lived there one summer during college and crashed the Boston Pops, went to hardcore shows in Allston, and got to hear Herbie Hancock in the rain at the Hatch Shell along the Charles River.

Highlights include:
The Modern Lovers, The Magnetic Fields & Mr. Lif

January 30 2013 - San Francisco, California

The garden of Eden, where the mountains meet the sea and the fog closes over everything, a city that has rattled above the San Andreas fault line and was all but demolished in the 1906 earthquake, where the music came to define not just the counter-culture of the 60s, but the city that birthed it and everything that it transformed into.

Highlights include:
Jesse Fuller, The Grateful Dead & The Dry Spells

January 23 2013 - Atlanta, Georgia

Hot 'Lanta, home to 430,000 people, Coca-Cola, Ted Turner, and approximately 55 streets named "Peachtree", Atlanta has always been a music hot spot, from early bluesmanship to the incredible amount of hip-hop and R&B of the last 25 years.

Highlights include:
"Blind" Willie McTell, Mastadon & Usher

January 16 2013 - Minneapolis & St. Paul, Minnesota

The Twin Cities, situated on either side of the mighty Mississippi River, is the birth place of Scotch tape. It's also home to some of the best music that our fair country has to offer.

Highlights include:
Wanda Davis, Lifter Puller & Brother Ali

January 9 2013 - Baltimore, Maryland

Baltimore was once a major manufacturing center, the site of the War of 1812, and where director John Waters set the standard for camp. It also is closest to my heart: it's where I went to college and also learned how much incredible music can be packed into Charm City.

Highlights include:
Eubie Blake, Philip Glass & Cass McCombs