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Thanks to a glitch on my part, this newsletter was “published” on October 3, 2025, instead of October 3, 2024, which is when it originally went out. Buttondown doesn’t let me amend the pub date. If you’re looking for the latest RADIOLIO missive, click here, then scroll down. (Or if you’re already on the archive page, keep it moving.)

⋆｡°✩ 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟 ⋆｡°✩

Before I knew it, the future had arrived. All those long-ago entries in my digital planner, and some spontaneous ones too. Hit after hit after hit. A funeral and a wedding. A (band) breakup and a backstage jaunt and a book announcement. Recovery comes slowly. I say I wait for ordinary life to tuck me back under its tidy cloche, but I also do my best to escape routine. I ache to be in the world, of the world, for the world. To catch autumn’s eye, savor summer’s parting kiss, before riding the slow turn into the Bay’s brittle wet winter.

Anyway, music. Quick recap, in September, I went to four shows:

• Dummy / Aluminum / Buddy Junior at Kilowatt

• MASS OF THE FERMENTING DREGS / Cam Kahin / Blush at Great American Music Hall

• Mitski / Wyatt Flores at the UC Greek Theatre

• Charly Bliss / Raffaella at Bimbo’s 365 Club

I want to keep up the show-poem habit, but it’s hard to make time for a hobby built on the back of another hobby (because at this point I must admit that I’m choosing to spend discretionary time/money on show-going for pure music versus for any sort of, like, real professional development*.) Maybe I’ll dip back into show-poems for particular shows, special life-changing moments, but as I type that, most of the shows listed above were life-changing, in ways I did expect and ways I didn’t.

MASS OF THE FERMENTING DREGS in particular was, and is, something I’m still reeling from. There’s lore there: Diane introduced me to the band years ago. I dug into their discography because of their album art (never believe people when they say they don’t judge books by covers), then imprinted on their song “Sugar” so hard that I wrote it into my first novel—it’s the “ending credits song” of Mugen Glider, the fake anime that’s named after a song by the band ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION.

Besides putting their band names in all-caps, Masudore and Ajikan both embody this particular kind of sound that I’ve long associated in my life with Japanese rock music. To be clear, there are many, many genres within “J-rock,” and I’ve fucked around with a few different strains. (Tokyo Jihen and Gackt/vkei in general come to mind immediately.) But there’s a specific kind of melody, so plaintive, yearning, nostalgic and bittersweet upon impact, that, even when I hear that quality in music by artists from other countries, I immediately identify as a “Japanese sound.”

Sometimes, I’ll listen to a Japanese band or a band that’s (on purpose or not) channeling that sound, and feel played: the difference between bittersweet and treacly really isn’t that subtle, and I find it borderline offensive when I can sense the swoon cue coming a mile away. But this is my personal gripe; I’m aware of my ungenerous nature, and there are obvious ontological crises and shortcomings in my subjective categorization. But it’s like, sometimes a hug can be a life raft, and sometimes a hug can be the Kill Bill Quincy Jones cue. Context as history as context, matter. And few things create context as history as context, draw the bow and fire the arrow right into the sacred organ, the way music can.

I’ve been driving a little more than usual lately, running errands like my life depends on it, so instead of fussing around with my Bluetooth connection, I’ve been playing the only CD that I keep in the car: the pillows, FLCL No.1 Addict. For a long time, my canonical version of the soundtrack was the one I’d downloaded off Mediafire or whatever back in my preteen years. Then, I picked up a jewel case at Amoeba Hollywood (RIP!)—in the “world music” section, which is still where I find the most exciting stuff**—and was shocked that, while many of the song titles were technically the same, the versions weren’t. “Carnival” on the CD is an instrumental, and much condensed; “Advice” on mp3 has a yelping, abrasive vocal.

A few weeks back, I was chatting with one of Colin’s co-workers at a bar, and mentioned the different versions of the FLCL soundtrack. He was a little stunned by the knowledge, in a way that I didn’t probe but understood. You’d linked a specific title to a specific song from a specific soundtrack to a specific show, all those dominoes of memory and meaning, and then suddenly the tiles are scattered, out of sorts. But you can put those associations back together. Sometimes, weirdly, the switch-up makes those connections stronger, or brings buried ones to light.

Like: back in 2018, working the summer camp job, I’d always be running late in the mornings so, instead of fussing with my phone, I’d play the only CD in the car. For some reason, I started obsessively repeating the instrumental “Carnival,” and began singing my own (English) lyrics along to the song. This is what I sang for the pre-chorus into the chorus:

One step forward / two steps back
It’s never over / with you
It’s just like a movie / but true
Talking in / circles to no one / about nothing

Okay, eerie, as I relived those memories of speeding through the Posey tunnel between Alameda and Oakland, screaming lyrics to a song I didn’t write and yet was writing on top of, I remembered that I’d done the very same thing to “Mugen Glider” the song, back in college, I think. Again, I wrote my own lyrics to the melody—and what I mean is, I didn’t look up the English translation of the Japanese lyrics and try to finesse it. I was doing a karaoke translation of my own doing.

I don’t remember most of “my” “Mugen Glider” lyrics, except for the opening line of the chorus:

So give me some contact!

The person I was singing to was my friend Rachel, and typing this out reminds me that I need to get back in touch with her, Rachel who introduced me to Girls Aloud and Annie, who sat at the same junior year biology table*** as the boy I was in love with, and L, oh how we’d laugh and cry at Snorcross and her neglected cactus and goofy nature, how stable and in the fold I began to feel again in junior year after hitting a rock bottom the year before.

I don’t think I tried to get Rachel into my “anime music,”**** but maybe I did, and maybe that’s part of why I missed her so much when we stopped talking, and maybe that’s why I rewrote “Mugen Glider” for her. And a decade later, even though I don’t remember what else I wrote into and over the song, I know the tone I’d used. Plaintive, yearning. Writing toward emotion, using music as a guide to bring me past the point where language alone failed.

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Believe it or not, three hours ago, I sat down at my laptop only to write about the Danish band Mew, whose members are bowing out of the scene 25 years after they entered. I wanted to write about Mew for a few reasons, one of them being that listening to Mew brought me and my junior year (college) roommates closer, back when they were party friends and acquaintances, before we realized how well we could and would fit into each other’s lives.

Now that I think about it, Mew has that it quality, the ability to evoke nostalgia. They don’t deploy it often, and, listening to their songs on my own, I don’t wring too much emotion from them. Rather, I ride the emotionality of the music without grafting myself into it _{the way I do with say Mitski} so, I can feel the “oof” in lines like, “For such a long time I didn't know if I'd find you / Say stop, made up, lying on the bathroom floor” without _usually needing to actually lie down on the floor, Ophelia-esque.

There is one exception. The song “Comforting Sounds,” off their 2003 record Frengers, a portmanteau that describes a person who’s “not quite a friend but not quite a stranger.” I was mostly an And the Glass Handed Kites “girlie” back in the day, but my frengers-turned-friends got me into Frengers, as it were, but I mostly listened to the opening tracks of the album.

Until I saw Mew live. Back in 2015, and that, that was a show that, even as it was still happening, I knew had changed my life. I’d already started crying, and then “Comforting Sounds” came on, and I left the Fonda smiling while sobbing, surrounded by these strangers who’d become frengers who’d, finally, landed in my life as best friends.

(Gerard was there. I remember thinking, How embarrassing, that I’m crying in front of my friend’s dad. But he took it in stride; in my memory, he was all smiles, and perhaps a little relieved that music still could, and would, move people to tears.)

As luck would have it, I reviewed the show for some local outlet (that definitely didn’t pay me ha! ha! ha!). I found my review in my email archives, so let’s take one more trip down memory lane:

꩜

9/25 Mew at the Fonda Theatre

The first Google Images search page (and then some) for the word "Mew" turns up the mysterious, adorable Pokémon. It's also known colloquially as the idealized form of a cat's meow, the vocal equivalent of the :3 emoji. But to a much smaller slice of population, Mew is one of the most transcendent working bands of the modern day. Though I've been to many, many shows in the five years I've spent working live music in Los Angeles, I can say with confidence that Friday night's Mew show at the Fonda Theatre was easily one of the top three rock acts I've ever seen in my entire life, both proof of the power of the cult audience and of the payoff for following this enigmatic, effervescent band on its utterly enchanting journey.

The Dodos, a two-piece outfit from the Bay Area comprised of Meric Long and Logan Kroeber, started the night off with a high energy but unfortunately brief set. Kroeber's kinetic drumming bolted the audience into the floor; Long's flexible guitar playing was something you couldn't tear your eyes away from. As the floor finally began to fill up, alas — their turn was over. And then thirty minutes later, five lanky Danes took the stage and proceeded to explode the Fonda.

Mew's discography isn't easily summarized; their iteration of rock isn't bolted to the traditional ABABCB structure, nor is it as formless as their more structure-eschewing contemporaries.***** Rather, their songs all work toward release, which comes in forms both obvious ("Sometimes Life Isn't Easy") and not ("Making Friends"). In the dim hum of the Fonda's nightmare landscape, Jonas Bjerre's voice took on an otherworldly hue, the dedicated fanbase screaming along every line from albums as recent as + - and as far back as Frengers and ...And the Glass Handed Kites. (The band actually played more old than new records, an uncommon practice in a music landscape dominated by people obsessed with denouncing old hits in pursuit of a newer/"cooler" audience.)******

It was a devastating, prolific performance, to see the cordial, seemingly thunderstruck band members take these already complicated songs and take them to their sonic extremes, especially on songs like "Rows" and "Comforting Songs." (Bjerre repeatedly stared out into the crowd in baby-faced wonder, as though he still couldn't believe that everyone there was for them.) There was a real sense of free-flowing emotion within the audience; for my part, I started crying a few songs in, and left the Fonda with comical streaks of makeup blazed on my face.

One woman I spoke with at the front barricade had traveled 100 miles to see the band on tour, their first in over half a decade. While most acts have that kind of core dedication, for it to center on music both cerebral and unpretentious (just read through their sometimes surreal lyrics) is rare. For it to be as moving as it was, as completely and utterly perfect in its execution, is rarer still. 

Set list:

"Witness"
"Satellites"
"Special"
"The Zookeeper's Boy"
"Introducing Palace Players"
"Sometimes Life Isn't Easy"
"Water Slides"
"Snow Brigade"
"She Spider"
"Making Friends"
"Rows"
"Am I Wry? No"
"156"

Encore:

"She Came Home For Christmas"
"Comforting Sounds"

꩜

꩜

*But sometimes, chance is on your side :^)

**Just last week, I found both BoA and Guang Liang (aka Mr. Tong Hua himself) in the “world” section at the bookstore I volunteer at. Earlier this year, I picked up Utada’s Deep River there too.

***In the piece I link out to, I mistakenly wrote that Rachel sat at my tenth grade biology table. Our school was weird: we did our sciences in the order of physics, chemistry, biology instead of the normal (I think?) biology, chemistry, physics.

****Among other contributions, AKFG’s song “Haruka Kanata” was an iconic opening song for Naruto, and their song “Rewrite” was a solid opening song for Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), aaand that’s it, I’m going to put together my favorite anime openings/endings in a future issue this year.

*****I didn’t edit any of this text but…sometimes shame is a good thing to feel. Like, what does “structure-eschewing contemporaries” even mean…inscrutable…

******Shaking my younger self by the shoulders for this one.

꩜

FLYERS:

• This weekend, I’ll be at FORM Arcosanti, and I actually have no words right now to express my excitement (mostly because it’s almost 2 a.m.) about not just the lineup, but the space itself. I’ve been waiting for FORM to come back since 2019—expect missives here, in November’s Showpaper (thanks Amar!), and on IG.

• The only proper show on my October calendar right now is Cassandra Jenkins at Rickshaw Stop on October 13; if you haven’t gotten on the My Light, My Destroyer train, this is your conductor telling you to get on board.

• Not music-related, but: I’m going to be a reader for this year’s Lit Crawl SF. October 26, Saturday, 6:30 p.m. at the Drawing Room Mission Street Annex, part of a group entitled “Why We Love YA.” I’ll be popping into the city throughout the next couple of weeks for different events, and also hanging out before and after my reading. If you’re around, drop a line.

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Thanks for "listening." Stay tuned...!

♬ xoxo Lio

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♬ﾟ࿐⋆｡♪₊˚. ݁₊ ⊹ *:･ﾟ. ݁