“Live! In California” was recorded absolutely live (no overdubs) over two nights at The Satellite club in Los Angeles in December 2015. The album features 76 minutes of the trio's unique brand of high-energy psychedelic rock n'roll. The material is pulled from all their studio albums and the songs feature new arrangements.
“Live! In California” also includes the previously unreleased song "Chance Of Fate", a cover of the seventies' band Saint Anthony's Fyre.
Radio Moscow is Parker Griggs on guitar and vocals, Anthony Meier on bass and Paul Marrone on drums. Now based in San Diego, CA, the band has five studio albums on Alive Records, including their self-titled debut produced by Dan Auerbach (2007); Brain Cycles (2009); The Great Escape of Leslie Magnafuzz (2011); 3&3 Quarters – early demos (2012) and Magical Dirt (2014). They have toured the U.S. and Europe with acts like Graveyard, Witchcraft, Joe Bonamassa, Pentagram, Sheepdogs and Nebula. They have shared the main stage at the Psycho California festival with Kylesa and Earth and perform in Europe, South America and Australia.
If live albums are often dismissed as the preserve of bands fresh out of ideas and with nothing else to release to hoover more money from their witless and obliging fans, it’s time to re-assess that call. In fact, Radio Moscow’s barn-busting, sprawling opus screams out for a re-think. – The BARMAN / I94 BAR
Live albums can be disappointing affairs, few capture the atmosphere or sound of a concert accurately, Live! In California is not one of those albums, this release proudly boasts having no overdubs and it is a perfect snapshot of a band live. Radio Moscow sound amazing live, the album is full on wall of histrionic guitars, rumbling bass and precise drums, it’s even more impressive when you consider there are only three of them. – The PUNK SITE
MAGICAL DIRT REVIEWS :
I would be lying if I did not say I have been completely taken with this, the fourth album from lovingly/freakishly retro combo Radio Moscow—a fabulous trio from Iowa including the amazing guitarist/singer Parker Griggs, bassist Anthony Meier and drummer Paul Marrone. With an album cover that absolutely evokes another album I have seen in my lifetime but simply can’t remember—must be the font, you’ve got to love these guys—the band actively evokes all that was great about hard-rock trios of the ‘60s, the Blue Cheers, the Creams, etc., but does it with such gleeful abandon you’ve got to admire both their spirit and whatever time capsule they rode in on. Great fun. – Dave Dimartino / ROLLING STONE
Tempering scathing hard-rock jams with narcotic mantras and borrowed blues, this ambitious 10-song set has a loose, opus-like schematic. Combining fast and slow tempos, and soft and loud timbres with the greatest of ease, Griggs' limber outfit (also featuring newcomer Anthony Meier on bass and Paul Marrone on drums) never gets caught in a rut. But it's the raucous moments that sizzle best, dominating and ultimately galvanizing the frantic head rush. - John Fortunato / CELEBSTONER
This is real, dirty and gritty, play-until-the-fingers-bleed, sing-until-the-throat-is-red-raw, rock ‘n’ roll music. Don’t expect to sit back and relax to this set. When tracks such as “Death Of A Queen” and “Before It Burns” shoot forth from the speakers, they sandblast the sides on their way out. This is a sly, serious lesson in how to be a rocker and how to stick firmly to three chords and the truth in an age of pointless soul searching and self-exploration. - Jonathan Muirhead / POPMATTERS
Iowa-bred, California-based power trio Radio Moscow deliver another blistering winner in “Magical Dirt,” their most enjoyable offering since 2009 gem “Brain Cycles.” – PITTSBURGH IN TUNE
This is a big, bad band, dead on course with a garage-to-heaven trajectory. It’s part throwback to when people swore that the devil was in the guitar, and part flash forward to hearing the second and third generations of those core ideas being echoed and redefined at the hands of new masters. - RUST MAGAZINE
DIRT lives up to Moscow's ambition to "send you on another trip into heavy psychedelic headphone heaven". It's pretty intense, boasting nine supercharged originals plus a lumbering, ragged take on Brain Police's "Gypsy Fast Woman". - Jeremy Isaac / SHINDIG!
Thank-you Radio Moscow for coming up with all of these familiar songs and having the skill and vision to make it all sound so fresh and invigorating (even if your real fans don't use words like 'fresh' and 'invigorating'). This is rock music, learn to love it. – DC ROCK LIVE
Every track is a killer. My particular favourites are ‘So Alone’ with its Cream swagger in its stop and start guitar play, and also ‘Death of a Queen’ that mixes the best parts of MC5 with Hendrix's vocal delivery. It works so well, hook after hook, track after track. - PENNYBLACK MUSIC
Not sure what kind of grass these fellas been walking on? But the dirt beneath their feet where their favorite kind of mushrooms grow must be magical and insanely brightly colored! - STONER HIVE
You’re a fan of Stoner Rock? You’ll take to this. But if you’ve ever picked up Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain” or dug into Hendrix’s funkier material then you’ll be even more at home. - I-94 BAR
If Randy Holden and John Nitzinger had gone through some sort of genetic experiment, this is what the result would be. Seriously one of the best live bands out there, Radio Moscow provide a high class psych boogie like no other group right now. – IT'S PSYCHEDELIC BABY
The 3-piece outfit’s new LP “Magical Dirt” pays homage to all the great blues rock bands (such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath), but also successfully blends that with the psychedelic sounds of The 13th Floor Elevators, all without losing their own unique flavor. - LYYNKS MUSIC
After several albums, it has become very clear that Parker Griggs is hearing a concert in his head and we are lucky that he's sharing it with us. - GLACIALLY MUSICAL
Hard-hitting masters of their craft, Radio Moscow pump out ten more heart wrenching tracks on their fourth studio album, Magical Dirt. With psychedelic swag, and licks tasty enough to make Jimi Hendrix salivate in the grave, this trio rock from start to finish. - BLUES ROCK REVIEW
This is not post-punk, it's not post-anything. It's rock for rock's sake, by a band who knows exactly what they want to do and has continued to improve their ability to do it. - WYMA
10 tracks of vintage, bluesy, rock that acts as a time capsule taking you back in time when the guitars were loud, excess reigned supreme, and nothing was off limits musically. - The SLEEPING SHAMAN
Erupts into a barrage of fiery psychedelic mayhem and deliciously hard-hitting blues that the outfit has become known and loved for. - KEEPING THE BLUES ALIVE
Since the release of their self-titled debut in 2007, Radio Moscow have specialized in tight-knit heavy psychedelic blues rock, topped off with the barnburner fretwork of guitarist / vocalist Parker Griggs. In drummer Paul Marrone (also Astra and Psicomagia) and bassist Anthony Meier (also Sacri Monti), Griggs has a rhythm section not only able to stand up to his own playing, but to meet it head on, and their fifth album for Alive Records, MAGICAL DIRT, is all the stronger for it. (...) At any moment, songs like opener ‘So Alone’, or ‘These Days’, ‘Got the Time’ or ‘Rancho Tehama Airport’ sound like they could completely come apart, like when you shake the bolts loose on a piece of machinery and the whole thing collapses into a pile of parts, but even at their fastest, Radio Moscow retain control, and while the whole of Magical Dirt retains an organic, live-feeling production, it’s also got clarity enough to showcase just how precise the band is in pulling it all off. - ROADBURN (Album Of The Day) / THE OBELISK
What’s most impressive about this Midwestern psyche-blues heavyweight contender is that not only will fuzz-brained Blue Cheer and Cream fans get their psyches freaked out by these interstellar psyche freakouts, but fans of art jazz “important” music can definitely dig on these rolling, rambling, noisy, powerful “important” sounds. This mind-expansion magic is H-U-G-E! – ROCTOBER
Sounding like Cream on a heady mixture of acid and amphetamines, Radio Moscow will detonate your mind with one listen to their third album “The Great Escape of Leslie Magnafuzz”. Just listen to “Little Eyes” the intense and crazy opener that mixes Blue Cheer with Acid Mother Temple, offering the whole thing to the Gods of fucked-up noise (…) Over twelve tracks, this album is a relentless steam train of guitar riffing, dirty solos and power chords, held together by rock solid rhythms and crying out to be turned right up, the energy levels never faltering and the interest held until the very end, as “Inside Out” finally shreds the last of your grey matter from the insides of your skull. The perfect match of sixties excess and stoner riffing. – TERRACOPES RUMBLES
Nothing succeeds like excess and Radio Moscow deserve a shedload of it. Success, that is. An old-style power trio with an overload of psychedelic headspace, they’re structured around guitarist Parker Griggs whose exemplary six-string work carves sonic holes. They play songs that are only occasionally lengthy (most clock in at 4mins) but the tightly-coiled intensity’s the thing. – I-94 BAR
Trends come and go, but the idea of a bunch of guys getting together in a garage and playing the kind of music that makes the neighbors call the cops — that’s forever. And it’s that idea that’s crystallized in the form of Radio Moscow, more so than any other local product.
There’s no hipster lo-fi. No digital manipulation to muddle the sound or Slipknot-style gimmicks to distract from it. Radio Moscow is rock music as the gods intended: recorded straight to tape and full of dirty amps, manic drums; syrup-thick bass lines and some of the best modern-day guitar hooks this side of Buckethead.
Parker Griggs – the magician responsible for those licks and pride of Story City – is not just a cheap homage to dervishes like Hendrix and Jeff Beck. Rather, he’s a direct descendant, cobbled together from whatever pieces of cosmic cloth were left over from their creation and handed a guitar. – Chad Taylor / AMES TRIBUNE
The Great Escape of Leslie Magnafuzz firmly feeds from the teat of late sixties and seventies Nuggets comp forefathers, vocal effects and hallucinogens dripping from the speakers. – BLURT
If you remember Grand Funk and Blue Cheer with any degree of affection (and you should) this is what they sound like crash-landing in the twenty-first century. – LEICESTER BANGS
Apart from being almost shocked that a modern band are not only playing and writing this type of music but doing so extremely well, there is also the revelation which is Parker Griggs to take in. – PENNYBLACK MUSIC
It would seem that rather than being the central character of a grand concept album, the Leslie Magnafuzz of the title is more likely an amalgamated nod to the band’s love of revolving speaker cabinets and vintage effects pedals, with the Great Escape part perhaps referencing Griggs’ recent incarceration for possession of marijuana. – SUBBA-CULTCHA
One can only dream that Radio Moscow could be sent back in time to tread the stage of Winterland on a bill with Hendrix, Sabbath, Crimson, Ten Years After or Humble Pie. The album opens in full hypersonic stride, with the bass and drums threatening to run away from the ear-clearing wails of Parker’s fuzzed guitar, and the bombast doesn’t let up until disc’s end. – HYPERBOLIUM
Reproducing the sound and the atmosphere of an early 70s, pot-addled psych rock jam band is a hell of a lot harder than it first appears, but creative dynamo Parker Griggs – who plays everything here apart from the bass guitar – is clearly some kind of wicked genius, because songs like Little Eyes, Speed Freak and the wonderfully skewed Insideout sound like they have been spoon-fed tie-dyed hash fudge and then beamed forward in time, perfectly formed and thoroughly convincing. – Dom Lawson / METAL HAMMER
The Great Escape Of Leslie Magnafuzz shows that the US trio have perfected their ‘psychedelic blues meet stoner rock’ style. – TOTAL GUITAR UK
Where is Parker Griggs? The 27-year-old lead singer of psychedelic blues band Radio Moscow may as well be off the grid entirely.
Griggs created Radio Moscow in his hometown of Story City, though it was relocated to Colorado, then back to Iowa, and now to a secluded cabin in an unincorporated area of northern California.
“It’s a strange mix of folks out here,” Griggs said. “It’s quite different.”
It’s the kind of seclusion that hardly exists in the 21st century: no Internet access, spotty phone reception and few neighbors. But it is an ideal practice space and home for a band looking for the freedom to play music on its own terms and disappear for a few months to create a new album. – Erin Randolph / DES MOINES REGISTER
Radio Moscow’s frontman and founder Parker Griggs doesn’t just play stoner rock; he is stoner rock.
The proof is in his wafer-thin frame and long hair, his pot-inspired album artwork, his imprisonment for possession of hash and his unapologetic devotion to classic psychedelic rock and proto-metal blues inspired by Blue Cheer, Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple and Cream. It is so ingrained in every fiber of his being that one could argue that he arrived on the scene 40 years too late.
Yet before anyone accuses Griggs of being the musical equivalent of an acid flashback, consider the modest success Radio Moscow has earned in its short life during a time when boring, predictable, corporate-backed musicians rule the roost. To be sure, the “new is old philosophy” that applies to retrogressive predecessors like The White Stripes, The Black Keys, Amy Winehouse and Raphael Saadiq applies to Parker.
“When we started, there wasn’t anything like us going on,” said Parker, 27, from his California home. – CITY VIEW
Most of the album actually feels like the LSD-induced blur which typifies the era it is trying to emulate. Guitar riffs blur into one another, vocals are definitely interchangeable, and you find yourself at the end of the 12 songs wondering what to do with yourself. – The EDGE
Lovingly concoct a Cream/Hendrix inspired album of cosmic blues. – EVENING TELEGRAPH UK
Reviving the spirit of reverb pioneers Jimi Hendrix and Cream, The Great Escape… seamlessly interweaves classic rock and blues that experiments with both vocal and sound distortion. Griggs, Zach Anderson (bass), and Cory Berry (drums) carry their predecessor’s torch into 2011 with songs that simultaneously make your heart swoon while melting your face off. Near the end you’ll reach the track "Deep Down Below," which best exhibits the true mojo of this power trio’s music. – The WASTER
With a powerful, crunching Sabbath-style chords and fiery solos that earn the right to be called Hendrixian, Iowa power trio Radio Moscow plants its flag firmly in the territory where psychedelic rock, cranked-up blues, and metal meet. The sound is unabashedly retro (specifically, FM radio from around 1973), so it’s easy to see how it caught the ear of The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, who produced its 2007 self-titled debut. Like the Keys, Radio Moscow updates an old-school style with pure passion and a refreshing lack of irony. – Christopher Bahn / The ONION (A.V. Club – Minneapolis)
Call it blues rock, call it psychedelic, call it hard-grooved stoner rock. Call it whatever the hell you want, as long as you just call it ROCK. – PAJIBA
Blues-psychedelic sound that is sure to fuel bong circles in smoky dorm rooms all over college campuses. – HEAR YA
Brought to you by Russia’s international radio broadcasting service – by way of Iowa, admittedly – Radio Moscow does for Blue Cheer what the Black Keys do for 21st century blues: stomps it. Sophomore disc Brain Cycles pulses with Parker Griggs’ best Hendrix, while bassist Zach Anderson’s monolithic fuzz mashes beats with drummer Cory Berry. – Raoul Hernandez / AUSTIN CHRONICLE
I’m about 100% positive that I’m not the only sucker out there for some vintage psychedelia. Radio Moscow is the type of down-home bred band we all imagine. You know, the no name town (Story City, Iowa), the direct influences (Peter Green, Nuggets compilations, really any psychedelic guitar god), and the boy prodigy (insert Parker Griggs). But make no mistake, these boys are the real deal. – John Bohannon / POPMATTERS
Amidst the Pitchfork-friendly indie bands that crowd the lineup of nearly every SXSW showcase, Iowa’s Radio Moscow were a refreshingly unpretentious change of pace: a power trio that cranked out Hendrix/Cream-inspired blues-rock jams. – METROMIX NYC
Like Peter Green fronting the Flower Travellin’ Band, Radio Moscow’s second album Brain Cycles is as full of blues, soul and psych experimentation as Richie Havens’ set at Woodstock. – RCLD
This is a new Moscow wind, fresh-air. This album crushes you a little bit harder than the previous self-titled. What you did not get from the previous one, completes you here. – HEAVY COMET
The band exists out of time. And like those two bands, Radio Moscow also manages to take a well worn style and make it its own. An astonishingly good debut. – StonerRock.com
Singer/vocalist Parker Griggs displayed serious chops, pulling off the type of guitar work Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton (Cream) patented. His Orange amp produced the right sound for making blues-based, heavy jam music. – HIGH TIMES DOOBIE AWARDS SXSW / Blistering
Crustier than a bad case of psoriasis and greaser than a chicken fried steak, the Ames, Iowa threesome Radio Moscow put the power back in power trio. – MODERN FIX
This is blues rock as it was meant to be played, not as it was watered down by the hairspray-conscious acts of the 80s. – Bob Lange/Rock and roll and meandering nonsense
Awesome record-fun and slutty and cool. – Matt Cibula / POPMATTERS
SPIN Artist of the Day on Spin.com : marrying the bluesy psychedelic fervor of Cream with the big, precise fretwork of Jimi Hendrix, Radio Moscow relish in distortion and grittiness. Prevalent are themes of heartache, heartbreak, and drug intake, sometimes accompanied by instrumental forays into tumbleweeding country ("Lickskillet") and East Indian-influenced soundscapes ("Ordovician Fauna").
A nice blast from the past played today. Cool stuff. The Rock’n’roll Report
Dan Auerbach helps Ames, Iowa, psychedelic blues-rockers Radio Moscow tap into their love of Jimi Hendrix and the Allman Brothers on this debut effort, which also delves into country and East Indian sounds. – MTV NEWS
Radio Moscow’s debut cd is electric guitar fueled blues rock that can find a groove and ride it so hard it’ll scar your speakers. – NINE BULLETS
Official Web site: www.radiomoscow.net