Sleazy Listening (recorded in 2007; A Fistful of Soundtracks episode WEB84)

A Fistful of Soundtracks, whose format was music from original scores that were composed for film or TV, was a college radio show I hosted from 1997 to 2002 and then relaunched in 2002 on an internet radio station of the same name. I hosted and produced the show until 2008, but the station continued broadcasting until 2016. A Fistful of Soundtracks is why my alias is DJ AFOS.

This episode of AFOS is from the week of February 12-18, 2007. It recreated the playlist from "Sleazy Listening," a 2003 episode that grew out of my love at the time for a British internet radio station called Exploitika, which, like my radio station, doesn't exist anymore. Exploitika's format was funky and loungey grooves from '60s and '70s film scores, and the station was split into two different programming blocks: Cinegroovin', "non-stop sleazy listening, loungecore, crimejazz, funk and groovy beats," and Bloodstream, "the nastiest, scariest and spookiest music from the soundtracks of cult horror, thriller & giallo movies from the 60's to the present."

"I [made up the name Exploitika] back in October 2001 when I had a weekly DJ spot at a bar in Oxford (UK)," wrote Col, Exploitika's founder, on the station site back when Exploitika was online. "I needed a name for the night that I thought would sum up the wide spectrum of groovy, funky and laid-back movie music. It kind of has its roots in the word 'exploitation' - from 'exploitation movies' (another love of mine)."

In 2007, I re-recorded the 2003 episode in a professional studio in San Francisco because I hated how crappy my mic sounded in the 2003 edition. An episode featuring both the theme from Sessomatto—a famous hip-hop break—and the excellent Ennio Morricone theme from one of my favorite comic book movies of all time, Danger: Diabolik (a movie amusingly reenacted by the Beastie Boys in their 1998 "Body Movin'" video), deserved a much better mic.

There's also lot of Burt Bacharach during "Sleazy Listening." I wish the episode contained my favorite fake Bacharach song—the one Maya Rudolph sang when she guest-starred as Dionne Warwick on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt:

"When you break up with Leonard Nimoy/You get a bus ticket to Sacramento/And a case of crabs for your memento/Why do I have a thing for spaaaaaaceships?"

Key art: Barbara Bouchet in Amuck, a.k.a. Alla ricerca del piacere (1972), one of the movies whose scores are featured in "Sleazy Listening"