Rock Garden Tour

This Week's Category: Compost & Communism

Another hard fought night in KAUR studios for the Rock Garden Tour. Our objective was clear, help people deal with the big winter blues by delivering a few helpful tips on composting. It was going along just fine until Oil Can brought up the cold war. Stay tuned for the podcast.

We brought a collection of sweet jams from the likes of Animal Collective, King Kahn, Breathe Owl Breathe and more. Check the set list and keep it rural.

Scott Walker - 30 Century Man

Bob Dylan - Song For Woody

King Kahn & BBQ Show - Animal Party

Superdrag - Sucked Out

Rock Garden Tour Family Band - Information County Highway

Xavier Rudd - Better People

Beausoleil - Bosco Stomp

Richard Buckner - Lucky

Human Television -Saw You Walking By

Rock Garden Tour Family Band - United Soviet Socialist Olive Trees

The Bottle Rockets - Get Down

Breathe Owl Breathe - Last Dance

Big Country (Live) - In The Big Country

Langhorne Slim - Tipping Point

Animal Collective - Brother Sport

The Rural Alberta Advantage - Dead Roads

Horse Feathers - Working Poor

We All Have Hooks For Hands - Oh I'd Expect

The Kinks - Village Green Preservation Society

Joanna Newsom - Peach, Plum, Pear

John Frusciante - This Cold

The Mountain Goats - Sept. 19! Love! Love!

Tonic - Flowerman

Monkey Sea! Monkey Hybrid!

 

Tonight on the Rock Garden Tour we discuss tips on how to beat the big midwinter blues. Sea monkeys always seem to bring a smile - but are they hybrids or heirlooms? We'll talk about this and more tonight from 8-10pm KAUR 89.1. Keep it rural.

Thanks to Kiel Magicmouse, RGT staff illustrator, for this most righteous blurble.

Bonafide Public Service Announcement By Oil Can (and Flowerman)

We've all heard the news - the planet is in strife. The wheels are off the wagon (Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine Show is one of our favorite free range rock & roll tracks of all time) and the boat (BOAT is also a band that we play from time to time) USS Earth is taking on water. We're choking on carbon emissions, chopping down forests and sticking it to our fragile ecosystems. The planet needs help, but what can one rock gardener (Garden Island Song by the Mountain Goats is so good I don't even want to talk about it) do? Here you go:

A well-planned residential landscape, incorporating trees (Treefinger by Radio Head is a choice track if you plan on doing some late winter pruning), can reduce the demand for artificial heating and cooling in a building. This reduces the rrequirement for energy derived from fossil fuels. In fact shading your windows with trees on the eastern, northern, and western aspects of your home can reduce household heating and cooling costs by up to 20%. This is significant, as up to 25% of a household's yearly energy consumption is attributed to artificial 'climate control'.

By utilizing gardens and landscapes to provide external shading, radiant heat from the sun won't bust into your home. This allows your home and mother earth (if you've ever listened to Earth To Buffalo by Ruben and the Jets you win a sweet virtual Kevin Kostner bobble head doll) to operate like Reggie Jackson (Coach always says there isn't enough mustard in the world for Jessie Jackson because he's one big hot dog, more or less) and the 77 Yankees - in a delicate balance of harmony (Beach Boys Good Vibrations is the only song on my top 10 list that will probably remain there until I die).

Why not consider planting a deciduous tree or seven in your landscape, and, while you're at it, remember there are some amazing deciduous fruit (I just added Peach, Plum, Pear by Joanna Newsome to tonight's playlist) trees! Reducing energy costs, absorbing greenhouse gases, all while growing healthy (I wonder if members of The Joggers are named after exercise), fresh produce?...Holy H! (Hell by the Roadside Graves is great free range rock & roll), now that's sustainable. (Keep it rural)

There's your public service announcement.

And now a word from our corporate sponsor.

Fresh Produce is a little advertising agency on the prairie (they hog up all the grant money). The podcast curator over there recently gave the Rock Garden Tour some air play (payola) during their latest Fresh Friday podcast. Follow this link warp and keep it rural.

http://www.pickfresh.com/files/pods/FF-36-Giant-Chia-Heads.mp3

Rock Garden Tour 11 Part 1: You want the squash? You can't handle the squash.

Decided to break this week's podcast into 2 parts. Part 1 covers everything from sea monkey identification to painted daisy contraversy. The only thing missing is the squash, and for good reason.

Download Rock garden tour 11 part 1

Keep it rural.

This Week's Category: Poor Man's Jay Trobec

A righteous side part and the Doppler Radar, that's what separated KELO TV's weather guru Jay Trobec from the likes of you and I, that is until about midway through RGT 11. During this week's broadcast Oil Can and Flowerman unearthed a method of forecasting that is almost as accurate as the Doppler radar, and the best part about the method? It depends on a garden variety crop. Would love to tell you more but I'd rather let you discover it when you listen to this week's podcast, coming soon. Anyway, it seems that now all Jay has on us is the hair. Keep it rural.

Here's the set list from Thursday night's show:

The Gerbils - Sunshine Soul

The Mountain Goats - Pigs That Ran Straight Away Into The Water And Their Great Triumph

Coconut Records - Summer

Rock Garden Tour Family Band - Information County Highway

The Gourds - Burn The Honeysuckle

Neutral Milk Hotel - Two Headed Boy

Blitzen Trapper - Wild Mountain Nation

Body Electric - Love Or Hate

A.C. Newman - Like A Hitman, Like A Dancer

Laura Cantrell - Churches Off The Interstate

Gogol Bordello - Wonderlust King

Good Old War - Coney Island

Chicha Libre - Primavera En La Selva

Hold Steady - Constructive Summer

The Seeds - Mr. Farmer

Chuck Prophet - Bob Wills Is Still The King

Dr. Dog - The Rabbit, The Bat & The Reindeer

Tallest Man On Earth - Blizzards Never Seen The Desert Sand

Geggy Tah - Lotta Stuff

The Mountain Goats - Raja Vocative

Tonic - Flowerman

Rock Garden Tour 10: Honk If You Don't Exist, Botanically Speaking.

Lots of action in here. Flowerman talks beets. Oil Can tries his hand at some extinct bird calls. Badger tries to sabotage the show. Tonya gives Flowerman a yellow card. That about sums up RGT 10, you're not going to want to miss this one. Thanks to LeTwan from over in pest control for letting us use an image of one of her paintings in today's post. This guy looks like our kind of beet farmer.

Download Rock garden tour 10 podcast 

Keep it rural.

Synthetic plant industry attempts sabotage on rock and roll garden show with helium.

Another wild night at KAUR studios. If you tuned in to hear the top of the 8pm hour you heard what the Rock Garden Tour might sound like if it were hosted by chipmunks, some odd technical glich it caused our jams to play in super speed. We suspect it was the synthetic plant industry. Lucky for all ye rock gardeners, we sorted it out, no thanks to Badger (tech crew team leader), and were able to blast out a pretty decent show on beets. Stay tuned for the podcast.

RGT 10 featured sweet jams by Beat Happening, New York Dolls, The Hopefuls and much more. Here's the set list:

Patrik Fitzgerald - Buy Me, Sell Me

Jim And Jennie And The Pinetops - Country Boy Rock & Roll

Beat Happening - Bad Seeds

Beat Happening - Let's Kiss

New York Dolls - Dance Like A Monkey

Rock Garden Tour Family Band - Information County Highway

The Clash - Pressure Drop

The Hopefuls - Virgin Wood

The White Stripes - Jolene

Pixies - Dig For Fire

The Rural Alberta Advantage - Edmonton

Pixies - Dig For Fire

Rock Garden Tour Family Band - Badger Pie

Cat Fight - Mamie Van Doren (Native of Rowena, SD: FACT)

Dandy Warhols - Legend Of The Last Of The Outlaw Truckers

Neko Case - People Got A Lot Of Nerve

Adventure - Iron Stallion

Iron & Wine - Boy With A Coin

Old Crow Medicine Show - Wagon Wheel

Stiff Little Fingers - Alternative Ulster

Rock Plaza Central - When We Go, How We Go

Pavement - Date W/IKEA

Gang Of Four - Natural Is Not In It

Tonic - Flowerman

Tragically we were not able spin a track by the Mountain Goats last night - this is the first time ever, in history, ever, that we failed to spin at least 1 song by our favorite band. We had planned to spin Raja Vocative. Next week we'll play it twice in a row. Keep it rural.

Rock Garden Tour Live From Devil's Gulch?

 

In this photo: Flowerman and an RGT Intern.I could tell you more but I'd rather not give away the ending. Listen to the Rock Garden Tour tonight on KAUR 89.1 from 8-10pm. Or wait for the pod-launch early next week. Keep it rural.

Synthetic Plant Industry Hits Us Where It Hurts: The Yams

The Rock Garden Tour spent the better part of November talking yams. You want the truth? Yams barely exist. In North America almost every time you see a tuber labeled yam, botanically speaking, it actually isn't a yam at all, but a sweet potato. Feel free to check the archives for more information. When we started the New Rock Garden Tour back in October this was one of the key objectives handed down by our corporate office in Dolton SD: Put an end to yam disinformation - Teach Rock Gardeners, once and for all, the difference between yams and sweet potatoes.

Judging from this photo sent to us by Rock Gardener Brian Hague, we need a new Louisiana correspondent.