• The Ledge #458: The Ledge Awards

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    A few weeks ago, I put together a countdown show of my 40 favorite albums of 2020. Now for this annual Ledge Awards I go through various other categories for the past year – Best Reissue, Best Live Album, Best Compilaton, Best Covers Album, Best New Artist, Best EP and Best Single. It’s a great roundup of a fantastic year of music.

    After listening, please go purchase those tracks you enjoy! These great artists deserve to be compensated for their hard work, and every purchase surely helps not only pay their bills but fund their next set of wonderful songs.

     

    Download MP3 here


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  • The Ledge #457: New Releases

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    It’s the first show of the new year, which means it’s the first new release episode of the year! Generally, there isn’t much for new material this time of year, but this year seems to be an exception. You’ll find plenty of great tunes in this super-sized episode, which ranges from punk to indie to garage to power pop to rockabilly to whatever other rock and roll genre you enjoy.

    After listening, please go purchase those tracks you enjoy! These great artists deserve to be compensated for their hard work, and every purchase surely helps not only pay their bills but fund their next set of wonderful songs.

     

    Download MP3 here


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  • The Ledge #456: Lockdown Christmas

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    Everybody’s favorite holiday tradition is back as once again The Ledge annual Christmas show brings you the best rockin’ holiday tunes in this supersized show! What’s great about this show is that it’s not a show relying on tunes from the past. The vast majority of the tracks aired in this episode are brand new releases, including many tracks from Big Stir Record’s The Yuletide Wave and Gutter Pop Record’s A Gutter Box Christmas Carol. There are also a ton of standalone releases by the likes of Nicole Atkins, Bleached, Nick Piunti & the Complicated Men, Sedan Delivery, and many more.

    I would also like to take this opportunity to thank everybody who listsens to this show week after week. My greatest wish is for all of you to have the greatest holiday season in history, and let’s make 2021 the year that causes us to forget about what happened this year.

    After listening, please go purchase those tracks you enjoy! These great artists deserve to be compensated for their hard work, and every purchase surely helps not only pay their bills but fund their next set of wonderful songs

     

    Download MP3 here


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  • The Ledge #455: Best Albums of 2020

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    So let’s get this out of the way. 2020 was a dumpster fire of a year. A worldwide pandemic shut everything down. A contentious Presidential election tore apart friends and families. Race and sexual identity issues became online litmus tests. Everybody was angry.

    Putting together this year’s list then became a tougher task than usual. The initial list for this task included almost 100 records, and the pairing down included cutting out quite a few artists that routinely end up in the upper portion in a typical year. Elvis Costello’s new album didn’t make the cut. Nor did the 2020 records by Bruce Springsteen, Steve Earle, or Chuck Prophet. Even the surprisingly great reunion records by Wire, Close Lobsters, and the Psychedelic Furs were reluctantly dismissed.

    This week’s episode of The Ledge is a reverse order, Casey Kasem-ish countdown show featuring a track from each of these albums. After listening, please go purchase those albums or tracks you enjoy! These great artists deserve to be compensated for their hard work, and every purchase surely helps not only pay their bills but fund their next set of wonderful songs.

     

    Download MP3 here


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  • The Ledge #454: New Releases

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    It’s the last new release show of 2020, and it may just be the best one of the year. There’s a ton of new music that’s come out the past few weeks, including a few great items discovered shortly before the show commenced. And how can we not be excited by the return of Minneapolis legend Curtiss A? Of course, there’s also the usual greatness from Rum Bar Records, Big Stir Records, and many other friends of the show.

    After listening, please go purchase those tracks you enjoy! These great artists deserve to be compensated for their hard work, and every purchase surely helps not only pay their bills but fund their next set of wonderful songs.

     

    Download MP3 here


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  • The Ledge #453: Under Consideration

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    This is the time of year where I’m going through my music library making notes on what albums should be considered for my year-end rankings. With the volume of great music released every year, however, there are records that I honestly sort of forget about.

    That’s the reason for tonight’s show. What is aired during these two hours are records that for whatever reason hasn’t received the proper amount of listens. For some of these records, it’s simply because they just came out. For many others, I have no excuses, and tonight is an opportunity to remind me of just why I was initially attracted to them.

    After listening, please go purchase those tracks you enjoy! These great artists deserve to be compensated for their hard work, and every purchase surely helps not only pay their bills but fund their next set of wonderful songs.

     

    Download MP3 here


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  • The Ledge #452: 1985

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    After last week’s wildly fun look back at 1990, it only made sense to do another similar-themed show. This time we go back to 1985, one of the most important years of my life. It’s the year I graduated from college. It’s the year that music pretty much became a full time way of life for me.

    It was also a year of some of my favorite records of all time, as shown by the three spotlight artists of the evening. The first is pretty obvious. The major label debut of The Replacements, “Tim”, came out in September of that year, and everybody knows my feelings over that record. Another artist saw their debut album rescued from the KAUR garbage bin. Camper Van Beethoven’s “Telephone Free Landslide Victory”, rescued from the dumpster by the late Don Holmstrom, became the late night party record for me and my drinking buddies. And Husker Du had not one but two classic records that year (“Flip Your Wig” and “New Day Rising”).

    But obviously that’s not all. New sounds were coming out of the UK thanks to the likes of The Jesus and Marychain. Jangle pop was alive and well in the U.S. with R.E.M. and a plethora of other artists. Even Sioux Falls had developed a bit of a scene with great records by No Direction and Ill Bill & The Spinal Chills. It’s a great two hours of memories!

    After listening, please go purchase those tracks you enjoy! These great artists deserve to be compensated for their hard work, and every purchase surely helps not only pay their bills but fund their next set of wonderful songs.

     

    Download MP3 here


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  • The Ledge #451: 1990

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    It may be a cliche, especially compared to the dumpster fire of this year, but it was definitely a simpler time for me in 1990. It was a year that I sort of became an adult. Sort of are the key words here. It was also a year of musical transition for me, as it was the year of the last Replacements album and the year of Uncle Tupelo’s debut album. For the next few years, “Americana” became my leading musical force. With a few exceptions, of course. (Both of these recors, The Replacements’ “All Shook Down” and Uncle Tupelo’s “No Depression”, get an extended look during tonight’s show.)

    This week’s show takes a look at much of what was in my gigantic portable CD carrier during that year. Yes, I had one of those 64 disc cases that went with me wherever I went. One has to be prepared, you know. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy this nostalgic look at my personal music taste from that era.

    After listening, please go purchase those tracks you enjoy! These great artists deserve to be compensated for their hard work, and every purchase surely helps not only pay their bills but fund their next set of wonderful songs.

     

    Download MP3 here


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  • The Ledge #450: New Releases

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    In all the years of doing this monthly new release show, this may be the most varied I’ve ever done. After initial sets of folk-ish, acoustic rock, this month’s supersized show gradually built up the intensity until a final set of veteran hardcore bands. In between was almost all genres of rock and roll, including indie, garage, post-punk, and so much more. It’s a great guide to new tunes!

    After listening, please go purchase those tracks you enjoy! These great artists deserve to be compensated for their hard work, and every purchase surely helps not only pay their bills but fund their next set of wonderful songs.

     

    Download MP3 here


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  • The Ledge #449: Halloween

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    The Halloween episode has been an important part of The Ledge calendar year for over a decade. Outside of maybe one or two years, there has always been a show during the week before the great holiday featuring fantastic Hallowen-themed punk, garage, indie, power pop, and almost every other rock and roll sub-genre.

    Why is this such a big show? It’s simple, and I’ve said it before. Halloween is a rock and roll holiday. The very themes of the big day have been a part of rock and roll since the early days. The sound of an electric guitar itself fits the day, as does the pounding, basic rhythms of the real rock and roll.

    It also helps that every year sees the release of a ton of tracks that can be shoehorned into the theme. In fact, the overwhelming majority of songs on this year’s edition were released in the last ten months, which obviously adds to the freshness of this show every single year!

    After listening, please go purchase those tracks you enjoy! These great artists deserve to be compensated for their hard work, and every purchase surely helps not only pay their bills but fund their next set of wonderful songs.

     

    Download MP3 here


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