Dave and Caleb have a close encounter of the third kind as they choose the best album for seeing aliens. Is music a universal enough language to avoid world domination? Do aliens even exist? Is it better to give them the best music the world has to offer, or the music that most stirs your soul?

Caleb presents our unidentified anomalous phenomena friends with Marvin Gaye's classic What's Going On?, and confesses something that leaves Dave stunned. And Dave finally presents DJ Koze and attempts to find words to explain why he is so spellbound. Plus, what song nearly ruined the total solar eclipse?

Discussed today:

Marvin Gaye - What's Going On?

DJ Koze - Amygdala

Bad Bad Hats - Bad Bad Hats

Nia Arhives - Silence is Loud

Hosts: Dave Sandell & Caleb Gardner

What's the right soundtrack for barreling down a highway in pursuit -- or being pursued -- in your very own General Lee? Dave & Caleb lay out the criteria, buckle in, and gun it to 95 with The Prodigy's Fat of the Land and The Reverend Horton Heat's It's Martini Time! Two albums from a golden era of the 90s when, for one shining moment, electronica and swing music improbably had its grips around our collective imagination. Plus, the single scariest moment of young Dave's life. Also, what we're listening to this week, including a band we love with the most unfortunate name.

Discussed today:

The Prodigy - Fat of the Land

Reverend Horton Heat - It's Martini Time

The 90s swing era (including Brian Setzer Orchestra, Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Royal Crown Revue and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy)

DMX

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven

Waxahatchee - Tiger's Blood

Alice Coltrane - The Carnegie Hall Concert

Alice Coltrane - Journey in Satchidananda

Check out our new playlist on Apple Music, Best Music For 2024. (Spotify coming soon.)

Special guest co-host Vince Brackett joins the podcast this week to discuss what it means to “sell out” for a variety of musicians, and the template for popular and highly successful musicians to “reverse sell out” with an album cycle (or more) marked by attempts to be taken more seriously as an artist. Along the way, they unpack the careers of the strangest bands to have ever momentarily hit it big (Primus, Butthole Surfers), artists who made giant left turns to restart their career (Rebecca Black!), aging rock stars who pump out albums that seem wholly disconnected from their vital days (The Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder), bands that “real” fans never forgive (Green Day) and bands that everyone embraced despite doing all the things that sell-out bands do (Blink 182). Plus, Vince looks at a band who could have sold out but chose to forget their own path, The Roots, and their 1996 opus, Illadelph Halflife. And Dave unpacks Rihanna’s seminal Anti, and how she seemingly threw hit making to the wind and bet on her own taste.

Discussed today:

The Roots

Rihanna

Butthole Surfers

Primus

Rebecca Black

Coldplay

Green Day

Lorde

The Black Keys

Blink 182

Stevie Wonder

The Rolling Stones

David Bowie

David Byrne

The Wailin’ Jennys

The Smile