WILLIAM SHATNER REMIXED

Well, now I've heard everything.

As you doubtless know by now, Cpt. Kirk has a new album, "Has Been" and it's honestly good. I'm almost disappointed. After rockin' his '60s record for years, I was hopeing his return to the studio would be an update of that style, something like, "Here we are now...Entertain...us...We are stupid!..and...courageous!" Naw, he's legit now.

But a remix contest? William Shatner? Ay ay captain, it's on at AcidPlanet. You might win ACIDPro 5, the software all us big-time mashers use. You can only use the 2 Shatner songs provided, and Acid beats and samples, but there's still been a lot of diversity in the entrants so far, everything from well-made hip-hop ("William Shatner Keepin' It Gangsta" - LOVE that title), to the "dub-western" of "An Ideal Woman Has Been", to thrown-together fart jokes. Yep, still boldly going where no man has gone before...

CONELRAD'S ATOMIC BOP

I've been sick. And not just in the head like usual. But being home alot lately has finally given me the time to explore the wonders of CONELRAD.com, a bomb-shelter's worth of Cold War audio and visual artifacts. From Bert the Turtle telling kids what to do in the event The Bomb falls (why, just duck under your desk!), to "The Complacent American"'s horrifying vision of the nuclear death that awaits those who don't attend Civil Defense Dept neighborhood meetings, from the '50s teen-death ballad "Fallout Shelter" to the toe-tappin' sounds of The Goldwaters (singing "Folk Songs To Bug The Liberals"), there's hours of paranoid music and unintentionally hilarious dialogue in Real Audio. Quoth the site: "CONELRAD is presently hard at work on a deluxe 5 CD ATOMIC PLATTERS boxset produced in association with Bear Family Records and scheduled for a Spring 2005 release." 'Til then, you can listen for free. And remember, when stocking your bomb-shelter, "By all means provide some tranquilizers to ease the strain and monotony of life in a shelter. A bottle of 100 should be adequate for a family of four. Tranquilizers are not a narcotic and are not habit forming. Ask a doctor for his recommendation."

NICKELBACK VS NICKELBACK

As requested by a reader a few weeks back:

Two years after grunge-rockers Nickelback had a hit with "How You Remind Me," they basically released it again, with different lyrics, as "Someday." A British website hosts a mix made by Bumblefoot of both tunes played simultaneously, one in each channel:
Nickelback vs Nickelback.

THE CONSERVATIVE PAR-TAYS!

Bud The Weiser cuts up political dialogue over U.T.F.O.'s old-skool hip-hop joint "Roxanne Roxanne." Tony Blair encouraging binge drinking is amusing, but things really get cookin' when Ronnie gets busy with Maggie. Click on this, baby.

Here's another (better?) version with Herbie Hancock: "Blair Drinks With A Rockit."

GO TO COMFORT STAND

The excellent "net-label" Comfort Stand is going on hiatus until August. All the old stuff is still available, just no new tunes/odd sounds til then. Aw, durn. Well, it gives us a chance to catch up on things like Dan Deacon's "Lion With A Shark's Head," a They Might Be Giants-ey gem that would go well with the nerdcore stuff I wrote about earlier, (e.g. the The Nourishment).

"Party Fun With Recorders" is a marvel of sonic archeology, collecting home cassette recordings from thrift stores of families, friends and children, goofing off in front of a microphone. I have got to do a remix or something of The Cheese Band.

GOOFY BOOTLEGS & WACKY MASHUPS

-Pheugoo cross-breeds rapper Jay-Z with some classic 18th century Americana in "Oh Encore"

- Lex Plays Cheese, in this instance, fusing the mod '60s grooviness of the theme from "The Odd Couple" with the modern bubblegum disco of SClub7 into "Soddcouple7," available here.

- Mr Shhh time-warped the Beastie Boys back to the days when mc's had to bust rhymes over banjos and whistling: "Boys Went A-Courtin'," which is "Intergalactic" over a track from Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music: "King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O" by Chubby Parker. The direct link isn't working. Hmm. Well, get it from here.

- and it doesn't get sillier than this: DJ Tripp from The SanFran area asked me to do a Depeche Mode song called "Sea of Sin" in a lounge stylee for a bootleg Depeche collection he's compiling. He asked for it, he got it. Mr Fab and his Bargain Slacks sing "Sea of Swing" over a karaoke version of Louis Prima's "Just A Gigolo." Sing along!

NERDCORE prt 5: DISASTERADIO

By coincidence, the last two posts were dealing with Australian music, so as long as we're Down Under:

Disasteradio: New Zealand's answer to Perrey & Kingsley, Wendy Carlos, Kraftwerk, and DEVO all rolled into a one-man obsession with cheezy synth pop and obsolete technology, dropping (mostly instrumental) songs like "Synthtease" that could be the backing track to the greatest song Soft Cell never recorded. Elsewhere, he goes on a "Science Badge Adventure," is haunted by the "Ghost In The Pong Machine," and salutes one of the first sampling synthesizers in "Fairlight (Preset Delight Mix)." Even when he indulges in the standard nerd fantasy of running over the hot chick's jock boyfriend, he plays it on rinky-dink Casios so you know he wouldn't really hurt anyone. Unless he's building a giant laser death-ray in his room...

MARDI GRAS SONG BY A GAY

I love Louisiana and it's culture, and today is the mammoth bachanalia (or however you spell it) known as Mardi Gras. I've been to New Orleans a few times, and have seen many of the legends of Louisiana music, like The Neville Brothers, Buckwheat Zydeco, Boozoo Chavis, and The Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

But we won't be listening to them.

I don't know if Russian singer-songwriter Alex Jones (now living in Sydney, Australia) is gay, or, as he would say, "a gay," but I do know that of the countless songs recorded to celebrate Fat Tuesday, Carnaval, Mardi Gras, etc., there has never has anything quite like this: a heavily-echoed Jones sings in accented English over a Casio beat about a gay Mardi Gras celebration, with lyrics like, "Gays are successful in keeping profile, Attracting young people by their lifestyle."

You'll probably need to read the lyrics as you listen to "Mardi Gras." The bespectacled, conservative businessman-looking Mr. Jones has many other tunes available as well, like "That's Where I Wanna To Be." And, yes, that is the name of the song.

MINISTRY OF SHIT

Auatralia's bad boy of electronic music, Dsico, has been awfully generous lately - first, he dropped his "You Fight Like A Girl" EP on us, as noted last week. And now he makes a 2003 compilation available for free download: "Ministry of Shit: 2003 Anus" is a various-artists collection that violently demolishes pop music. He plans on making this available for only a week or two, so don't dilly-dally or you won't get stuff like:

- Trotters "Ice Ice Bacon": a hilarious cut-up that makes Vanilla Ice sound obsessed with pig fat;
- Mark N "I Love Feces": Louis Armstrong reveals his favorite kinky fetish;

- and DJ Smallcock's "Curse of the Smallcock," about which Dsico writes, "Dj Smallcock is the psuedonym of Lucas Abela, who is known for his rather extreme performances using combinations of contact mics, turntable styluses, sheets of plate glass, powersaws and other potentially harmfull objects. so yeah its supposed to sound like that - i think he did really tiny little edits of the entire vocal track to get a unusual digital distortion. its not really for the dancefloor..."

It's not?

DJ SCOTCH EGG

Carrasco from the UK writes: "just got home from the Go Team's gig in liverpool (fucking excellent), and thought i'd enlighten you all on the support act DJ Scotch Egg. well, this Japanese looking fella steps on stage in a cap and ear muffs with a stuffed pig toy down his top, with just a keyboard, megaphone and microphone. his music was kinda heavy techno/gabba/drum and bass with computer noises. he played 3 tracks, all with the same lyrics, which i could make out as "fuck. fucking... fuck KFC, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Fucking KFC. KFC will fuck you up." Then he went mad and started throwing eggs into the crowd. on the whole a nightmare and a genius in one. if you get chance to see it at a gig do because he is hilarious."

Apparently, he was originally known as Shiez 2000 when KFC contacted him to do some commercial music. However, according the the adaadat Records site, "overindulgence in the heavily treated foreign foodstuff left Mr. 2000 with a bad attitude and much excess aggression. Concerned, ADAADAT's resident music therapist encouraged him to channel this negativity into live performance. DJ SCOTCH EGG was born." They promise a debut album soon. Doesn't say if they will all be anti-KFC songs or not.

ACAPELLA HEAVY METAL

Remember when Beavis and Butthead would stand there playing air guitar and singing Black Sabbath songs? "Dah dah dah-dah-dah!" Jud Jud actually do that - two guys making acapella metal originals (no Sabbath covers - yet) like "Fast Song." They sing all instrument parts, even do drum fills and that double-bass drum roll so common in thrash-land. Unlike their cartoon contemporaries, however, they're deadly serious. Which, of course, makes them all the more funny.

Entire Jud Jud albums to listen to here.

RHYMES WITH "VOGUE"

You know where to find me the first Friday of the month: Club Moog, downtown Los Angeles. Dancing 'n' romancing to retro-techno hits of the '60s/'70s spun by several DJs, with trippy lighting and visuals, and, to kick things off this Fri, master thereminist Sukho Lee of the wonderfully cheezy Space-Age Japanese pop band Sexu Roba will be performing. On theremin, not Moog. But that's ok. I've seen this guy live before - he doesn't just wave his hands around and make a racket, but plays with astonishing beauty. One of the lightshow guys goes back to the '60s, and claims The Velvet Underground on his resume.

If you can't be in LA, check out this Moog-tastic album called "Electric Hair" available thru Sunday as a free listening stream, courtesy of the good people at Basic Hip.com. Scroll down to "Click'n'Play Albums," and open the pod bay doors, HAL.

Well, since I mentioned them, let's listen to Seksu Roba's "Velvet Star."