Here's a fantastic 90+ minutes of novelty and oddball recordings inspired by this here blog. Some we posted here originally, most we didn't. Includes: '50 kiddie records, Space Age/electro, New Wave weirdness, crazy covers, comedy/satire, private press eccentrics and mashups/sound collage.I'm flattered! Thanks muchly to DJ Useo for such a wildly entertaining tribute.
The DJ Useo Music For Maniacs Podcast Tribute
01-I Wanna Be Your Dog- The 7 Stooges
02-Rat Fink- Allan Sherman
03-More Than A Feeling - Dondero High School
04-I Hate Banks - Mojo Nixon
05-Be Nice - Fry & Laurie
06-Embetterment Ingrinable - The George Bush Singers
07-Polly Wolly Doodle - Burl Ives
08-Dr. Seuss - Fox in Socks - Walt Kelly
09-Jazz Deliciously Sampled (The Bonzos vs Norman Cook) - DJ Useo 10-Crescent Fresh - The Sifl & Olly Show
11-Antidance (Vocal) - Mr.Mee
12-Batman and His Grandmother - Dickie Goodman 13-I Wan'na Be Sedated - Two Tons Of Steel
14-Are You Middle Class Enough? - The Dog Police
15-No Feelings - Bananarama
16-Living In The 50's (Once More) - The Android Sisters
17-The Sickly Sweet Odour Of Old Rotting Teeth - Jonathan King
18-Voodoo Banter Rap - M.C. Python (aka The Geez)
19-Hey Rocky - Boris Badenough
20-Polka Power ('99) - Weird Al Yankovic
21-Badinerie (from the Suite in B minor) - Swingle Singers
22-Keep Your Knees Together Daughter - Madame Mame
23-Plexiglass Toilet - Styx 24-I Walk The Line - Rick Powell 25-We're Off To Go A'Whippeting - National Whippeter
26-Musical Evolution - Josie & The Pussycats 27-Wonderbread - Jobs For America
28-The Man With The Golden Winkie - Grumpy & Lumpy
29-Guess I'm Falling Into Bubbles - RIAA
This might be the strangest music I've ever heard. It might not even be music.
David Rothenberg plays music with whales. Actual, living-in-the-sea whales. No, this isn't one of those corny '70s New Age albums with whale song sound effects dropped in. He actually traveled around the world, went out on boats, dropped a speaker and a mic into the ocean so he could hear the whales and the whales could hear him, and played clarinet along with their songs.
He may be crazy. He's the first to admit that. Since no-one knows what whale songs are for, he could be interfering with some important function they may have, like navigation. Plus, it's illegal. This possibly irresponsible activity led to the occasional confrontation, even shouting matches, with whale lovers he encountered on this scientific/artistic voyage.
His fascinating book/CD from last year, Thousand Mile Song, recounts his travels from the Pacific Northwest, to the Caribbean, to sub-Arctic northern Russia, listening to whale songs, playing along with them, and seeing what happened. Along the way we learn many fun-to-know facts about whales and their songs, e.g.: they have structure. They are not random noises. And these songs change - a whale will "write" a new tune, which will sometimes catch on with other whales, and they ditch the old songs. And different kinds of whales have different styles. Killer whale and beluga songs are as different as, say, punk and r'n'b.
So there's a scientific component to all this as well - to see what happens when an interloper drops in with his music. Occasionally, as in the case with today's mp3, it seems like the whales might be responding. This track, named after the boat Rothenberg was riding on when he made this recording, could be abstract electronica, or maybe a free jazz improvisation by someone like Sun Ra or Albert Ayler. But it really doesn't sound like anything you've heard before.
David Rothenberg + whales: "Never Satisfied"
I read this book last summer whilst listening to the cd on a hotel balcony overlooking the ocean, as seals were barking on the beach. You should try it!
Electric Junkyard Gamelan are a veteran quartet that build their own fanciful instruments and play fun, accessible original compositions on them. It's largely the project of New York madwoman Terry Dame who was initially inspired by Indonesian gamelan music. While some of their songs do indeed resemble the hypnotic percussive melodies of a Balinese/Javanese gamelan orchestra:
Electric Junkyard Gamelan: The Nutbutter Challenge
...other tunes definitely strike out into new, distinctly urban American directions, like this funky jazzy groover:
Electric Junkyard Gamelan: Ode to Fred Beans (excerpt)
Instruments are "fashioned from coat hangers and rubber bands, bed frames, old farm equipment, turntable platters, clay pots, saw blades and truck springs." The "Big Barp" rubber-band harp makes a particularly unusual sound:
Electric Junkyard Gamelan: The Big Barp
They have some mp3s and videos on their site, as well as two albums for sale.
Too bad they don't seem to get out to the West Coast. You Easterners are lucky - they play a lot. But don't cry for me Argentina, there's plenty to do here in Los Angeles, including the return of the annual Microfest, a series of concerts featuring microtonal music. Can't tell if Electric Junkyard Gamelan uses microtones - that realm of infinite possibilities in between the standard Western do-re-mi 7-tone scale - but the "American Gamelan" concert coming up this May 11 does. (The May 29/30 show dedicated to Harry Partch is highly recommended, and I'll most def. be talking about that later.)
While visiting the exhibit of weird religious album covers I wrote about last week (highly-recommended, btw), I ran into Howie Pyro, of superstar mashup crew The Illuminoids (and that most Maniacal of podcasts Intoxica Radio) who informed me that, contrary to what I had written, he had contributed at least as many records to the show as Don Bolles. My apologies, Howie, I was just going by what the LA Times had suggested. Mislead by the mass media! Another first.
The exhibit reminded me of how many odd religious items I have. I was surprised - thrifting for tunes means coming across countless zillions of religious records, most of which get passed over. But I guess they can add up, even if you get just one in a hundred. So I thought I'd post some more from my archives. Yes, there's no shortage of scary Christian ventriloquist/ horrific child singers/ ranting preachers, etc. But here's a record I recognized from my collection (albeit with a different cover then the one shown) that's actually some nice listening.
"In the Land Beyond My Dreams: Organ renditions of Paramahansa Yogananda's Cosmic Chants, arranged and played by a Self-Realization Fellowship monk" is nothing but mystical organ instros a la '50s exotica star Korla Pandit, but this is from 1970. Ripped from a sealed vinyl copy I scored recently in Las Vegas on safari with my brother (thanks, dude!)
"In the Land Beyond My Dreams"
01 - In The Land Beyond My Dreams
02 - Blue Lotus Feet
03 - From This Sleep Lord/Do Not Dry The Ocean of My Love
04 - Light The Lamp of Thy Love
05 - In The Valley of Sorrow
06 - Recieve Me On Thy Lap
07 - Deliver Us From Delusion
08 - They Have Heard Thy Name
09 - When Thy Song Flows Thru Me
10 - When My Dream's Dream Is Done
Or dig this sample mp3:
Paramahansa Yogananda "Blue Lotus Feet"
There are verses printed on the album cover to accompany each song. Most of them aren't too interesting, but I like this surreal poem for "Blue Lotus Feet":
"Engrossed is the bee of my mind on the blue lotus feet of my Divine Mother."
Sing along!
Crazy leprechaun named Mr. Fab, from the gang called Paddies with Attitude. I'm of Irish descent, so I'm allowed to say that. Wasn't crazy about all the Catholic school, but I love corned beef & cabbage. Green beer is silly, but Irish-American comedians like Carlin and Denis Leary kick butt (especially when they make fun of Catholicism.) Irish folk music rocks, and I like hearing it mixed with bizarre, funny, illogical other musics. Henceforth I present an album's worth of Celtic mashups I've collected over the past 4 or 5 years, recorded by an international line-up. No U2! Or Riverdance!
Straight Outta Ireland
1. dj BC "Da Sound Of Da Irish Police Band"
2. RIAA "London Derriere"
3. N.W.Kilts "100 Miles N Jiggin"
4. Overdub "Give it to Ireland"
5. RIAA "It's Whiskey"
6. DJ Prince "Pick Up the Harmonium"
7. dj BC "The Reel Hip-Hop"
8. The Who Boys "Devil Is Dead Metal"
9. RIAA "Compton's In The Dingle"
10. JADMIX "Rising Shadow of the Moon"
11. DJ Topcat "Boondock Pain"
12. Dj erb "I'm Sprung (dj erb's St. Patty's Remix)"
13. Cheekyboy "Qtip vs Leprechaun"
14. DJ Shyboy "Shaved Head"
15. DJ Topcat "More Than On Point"
16. JADMIX "James Street"
17. RIAA "Bagpipes 'n' Breakdancing"
The rich history of Irish America is something most Americans know nothing about. Hell, Ireland is something most Americans know nothing about. (Lesson one: we're not British. Not even from the same island. Completely different history and language.) African Americans get "Black History Month." What do we get? Shamrock Shakes. Hence, St. Patrick's Day doesn't mean much. But it could, if done right. Can't the Kennedys do something about this?!
"Within Heaven's Earshot" is an exhibit of weird, kitschy, funny religious album covers opening tomorrow at Synchronicity Space gallery in Los Angeles. Most of the records are from the collection of Don Bolles.You probably think of Bolles as the drummer for bands like The Germs and 45 Grave. But Bolles was probably the first (after Dr. Demento) to expose me to the kind of non-mainstream, abnormal sounds that we celebrate here at M4M, through his long-standing (though off-and-on) L.A. radio presence. Checking out the album covers is more then enough reason to get me in the door, but hearing that Bolles will be co-DJing with his partner in sound collage Professor Canteloupe is the icing on the cake. And there will be "a filmed greeting by ventriloquist Gail Wenos"!
Speaking of Christian ventriloquists - From my own vinyl collection of thrift-store religious oddities, here's Little Marcy. She's mentioned in the LA Times story I linked to above.
Little Marcy: from The Jesus Story
Nothing like children singing about torture and pain, eh?
After posting Mistabishi's sampled computer printer tune last week, some kind Maniacs pointed me towards other musical uses of this noisy/tuneful obsolete office technology:
[The User] is a Canadian duo who created a half-hour long piece in 1999 using a dozen or so printers that was performed live. Judging by the pictures I've seen of it (such as the one to the left) it must have been quite a sight. It certainly sounds good. An album was released in 2002.
[The User] "Symphony For Dot Matrix Computers (excerpt)"
Japanese electro-pop producer Cornelius' 2006 album "Sensuous" also makes good use of a printer in this brief jazzy electric piano ditty:
Cornelius: "Toner"
Thanks to Anonymous & Eddie!
A sampled old office printer (remember how noisy those things were?) makes for an awesome tune. Love this kinda creative recycling.
Mistabishi: "Printer Jam" (mp3)
Mistabishi: "Printer Jam" (video)
I know nothing about Mistabishi except that this is from his new (UK only, for now) debut album.
Yesterday's post about the Post-Punk Junk film festival starting this week served as a bit of a kick in the pants for me to finally organize some of my own mp3s I've made off of my collection of '70s/'80s underground vinyl. Here's a CDs worth of mutated funk for New Wave dance floors:
Get The Funk Out, Punk (WeirdFunk USA)
Didn't have room for the Euro stuff; maybe a vol. 2 if anyone's interested?
1. Black Randy & The Metrosquad - Barefootin' On The Wicket Picket
2. Funktionairies - Kiss My Funky pt 1
3. The Wa
itresses - Wait Here, I'll Be Right Back (Son of Comb)
4. Lotus Lame and the Lame Flames - Bad Sex
5. Animal Things - Wanna Buy Some
6. Carmaig DeForest - Crack's No Worse Then The Fascist Threat
7. Baby Buddha - Then I Sleep
8. Funkapolitan - As The Time Goes By
9. The Soul Dads - Youre Fat (And I Like It)
10. Fela Johnson - They Call Me Fela
11. The Offs - Everyone's a Bigot
12. Cambridge Apostles - Cant Fight The Feeling
13. No Y Z - X Machine
14. Black Randy & The Metrosquad - Say It Loud -- I'm Black And I'm Proud
15. Rand Kennedy - Enorma Jones
16. John Sex - Bump And Grind It (Extended Mix)
17. Funktionairies - Kiss My Funky pt 2
Apart from legends like Black Randy and the commercially successful Waitresses, I don't know much about some of these obscurities - click on the artist name for whatever link I could find. But it's all rude, raucous funky fun, uninhibited, full of life...
Bret from over at Egg City Radio (formerly Post-Punk Junk) is curating an awesome-looking film festival dedicated to the original late '70s/early '80s punk scene. They're mostly on-the-spot documentaries that haven't been seen in ages. Some, like the legendary concert film "Urgh! A Music War," can't be released on DVD due to licensing hassles.
Every Thursday for the next couple of months! If you're in Los Angeles, or are planning on visiting, mark you calendars, kids.
Post-Punk Junk: Punk and Post-Punk On Film
Thursday, March 5th - "The Punk Rock Movie" [future Big Audio Dynamite member Don Letts made this Super 8mm document of the London scene] + "The Blank Generation" [about the New York/CBGBs scene; I never even heard of this one]
Thursday, March 12th - Two Films about The Fall ("The Wonderful World of Mark E. Smith" + "Hail The New Puritan")
Thursday, March 19th - "Made In Sheffield" [industrial] + "Shadowplayers" [Factory Records/Joy Division, etc.]
Thursday, March 26th- "Urgh! A Music War" [Hell, yeah! Haven't seen this one since I was a kid] + "Debt Begins At Twenty"
Thursday, April 2nd - Post-Punk Junk mix night [various shorts]
Thursday, April 9th - European Punk night ("La Brune Et Moi" + 2nd film TBA)
Thursday, April 16th - "Breaking Glass" + "Crash 'N' Burn"
Thursday April 30th - Target Video tribute night [Lots of great Cali stuff here...ah, nostalgia...]
Every Thursday night at 8PM, @ The Cinefamily
611 N. Fairfax Avenue, LA, CA, 90036
Two years ago, I guest dj-ed on Radio Misterioso, the program of "In-depth conversations on the paranormal alternating with weird music and audio." It's hosted by Greg "SpaceBrother" Bishop, one of our pre-eminant weird-ologists, and the man behind "Flying Saucer Music" and the new "Music/Not Music."
I shall return! this Sunday, March 1, 8:00pm PST. Here's the previous show, zipped up in one big ol' 2-hour mp3.
Radio Misterioso 1-7-07 Warning! When you click da link, the audio plays automatically.
intro
"Late Great Planet Earth
Jean-Jacques Perrey "Chicken On The Rocks"
The Lamb Sisters "O Come All Ye Faithful"
Dr. Danny Hart "Those Funny Little Saucers In The Sky"
Seksu Roba "Telstar"P-Model "Kalamari Pop"
The Plastics
Robert the Robot
Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra "Re-Max"
Bent Bolt "Mechanical Man"
talk break
MSR song poem "Oh, That Zipper On My Pants!"
Nancy Dupree & students "James Brown"
James Brown "Future Shock of the World"
"Sesame Street Disco" "Rubber Duckie"
Luie Luie "Touch of the Pharoahs"/"A Touch of Light"
Gerty Molsen "Walk On The Wild Side"
Les Dance & His Orchestra "Let's Dance/Louie Louie"
Bakersfield Boogie Boys "Okie From Muskogee"
Jed Gould (aka KROQ's Jed The Fish) "LA CA Perv"
talk break
Rael "Elohim"
Frank Strange "Flying Saucers Unlimited"
Russ Garcia "The Goofy Peepl of Phobos"
Buchanan & Goodman "The Flying Saucer Goes West"
The Byrds "CTA-102"
talk break
Richard Hayman "Goin Out Of My Head"
Doc Severinson & The Now Generation Brass "Power To The People"
Robert Byrne "Good Morning Starshine"
Fred Carson "There's A Hippy Girl In Town"
Circle of Tyrants - Acid, the Story of LSD
Klaus Weber - Public Fountain LSD Halltalk breakEdith H. Boxill "Guantanamera" (from the album "Music Therapy for the Developmentally Disabled")
Previously On Lost are a Brooklyn-based band that watch each episode of the "Lost" TV series and quickly write a song about it, posting it online before the next week's episode. It's a great, very entertaining way to remind you of all the confusing stuff in the show's increasingly labyrinthine plot.
Musically it's quite diverse and theatrical, of definite interest to fans of, say, Sparks, or They Might Be Giants. Check out this girl-group/doo-wop pastiche:
Previously On Lost: Ballad of Sayid Jarrah
Their debut album, "The Tale of Season 4 and The Oceanic Six" is now available from their MySpace site. Yep, they start at season 4, so if you want to get hep to the first three seasons, you're on your own, sport.
Here's a real outsider oddity: an autobiographical album of original songs and spoken-word narration from an elderly woman recounting her life as a pioneering female Jewish cantor. This 1997 release apparently came with her book of the same name, "Trusting The Song That Sings Within." Looks like you can still buy it.
Dora B. Krakower's singing isn't as horrific as, say, Mrs. Miller or Leona Anderson, but the spare piano accompaniment certainly doesn't hide her voice or pretty it up with lush orchestrations. You get to hear it in all it's operatic glory.
Dora B. Krakower: "I'm Pussyfooting Around My Age"
Dora B. Krakower: "I Keep On Trusting Me/She Calls Herself A Cantor?"So if you want to hear an older woman singing about her "drooping derriere," look no further then the first song. The second tune contains the memorable lyric: "Shall I recant from the chant/ like a toady syncophant,"
which she pronounces "psycho-phant."
Jews For Jesus. It sounds like a joke, doesn't it? Jewish comedian Jackie Mason said there's no such thing as a Jewish Christian: "You're either a table or a chair." But they are a real organization, and, like most religions, they have music.
A group with the somewhat unwieldy name of The Liberated Wailing Wall (now, how are they gonna fit THAT onto t-shirts?) have been singing the praises of Y'shua ("Jesus" in Hebrew) since the early '70s, and much of their music is available for free (scroll halfway down this page.) Some of it still retains that early-'70s "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing" feel to their vocal harmonies, but they command a wide range of styles, most successfully when they kick out the klezmer jams.
Klezmer is a frantic Eastern European polka-like dance with a punk-rock tempo. It's lots of fun, especially when it's a showtune-like bar mitzvah song about a young Jewish boy accepting Jesus. Kinda weird that's it's sung by a woman, but, then again, so is the entire concept of Jewish Christians. The Liberated Wailing Wall: "Today I Am a Man"
You may have heard that The Boston Phoenix diabolically extracted all the bad words from President Obama's audiobook reading of his book "Dreams From My Father." Courtesy of the UK's Rediculant, here is an inevitable remix, and a catchy 2-and-a-half-minute bit of 'tard-tronica it is, indeed:
Remute: "The Sweary Remix"
This comes on the heels of producer Revo Lucian's remix of actor Christian "Batman" Bale's on-set meltdown. Lucian's done this before, with a Barbra Streisand on-stage rant, and he throws a bit of Babs into this mix as well:
Revo Lucian "Bale Out"
There's probably a lot of Bale remixes, but I knew this one would be good - Revo Lucian is working on the new RuPaul album after all. So it's been a good week for cursing celebrity remixes.
Thanks to Brent!
As a tribute to the recently deceased Lux Interior, lead singer of one of my favorite bands The Cramps, I will not be posting any Cramps material because all the other blogs are doing that (as well they should.) Instead, I'll post some absolutely wonderful, should-have-been-hits ripped-from-vinyl obscurities that I think Lux would have liked.
A "rat fink" was an insult, the crazed character created by pioneering artist/car designer "Big Daddy" Roth, and (as "Rat Pfink") the title mock-superhero in the film "Rat Pfink a Boo Boo" by legendary cult film director Ray Dennis Steckler, who also passed away recently. These tunes all come from the fertile late '50s/early '60s music world that The Cramps drew their life's work from: novelty, surf, garage, rockabilly.
Low-down, sleazy, bursting with energy and subversive wit, this is what rock'n'roll was all about, and what Lux & Co. were dedicated to preserving.
In the days before the internet and the reissue mania, there was no way to hear this kind of music unless you were an obsessed record collector, as The Cramps were. Their covers of songs like these brought a whole new world to my (and countless others) tender eardrums.
Mike Russo/Mad Magazine "Let's All Do The Fink" - from the 1961 album "Fink Along With Mad!"
Ron Haydock & The Boppers "Rat Pfink" - One of my all-time fave rockabilly rumblers.
Mr. Gasser & The Weirdos "Hey Rat Fink" - Killer surf instro; "Big Daddy" Roth had some involvement with this album.
Allan Sherman "Rat Fink" - Great rock parody by the man behind "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadah."
The Kornerstones "Doin The Rat Fink"
Dammit, why are all my punk heroes dying before all the boring hippie Baby Boomer acts? Joey, Johnny & Dee Dee are gone, Crosby, Stills & Nash live on. Joe Strummer is worm food while Eric Crap, er, Clapton still draws air. That's not right! I hope his better half Miss Poison Ivy continues the good fight.
The Cluster spacecrafts record the sounds of "the interaction between the solar wind and Earth’s magnetosphere." That's what creates the Aurora Borealis, "The Northern Lights," that not only look spectacular, but sound pretty cool too - like some hard-core electronics, e.g. Morton Subotnik, David Tudor, Cage, that kinda thing.
But it's also kinda scary, like "Electronic Voice Phenomenon."
Auroral Kilometric Radiation (ESA Cluster mission)
Reminds me of a brilliant bit of retro-techno by the sadly short-lived Richard Maxfield that was inspired
by the nocturnal birds and insects he heard in New York City parks. As great as this piece is, it doesn't appear to be in print - I ripped this from a 1967 album called "Music Of Our Time: New Sounds In Electronic Music" that also features famous folk like Steve Reich (the first appearance of his seminal tape-loop piece "Come Out") and Pauline Oliveras.
Richard Maxfield: "Night Music"
Maxfield's obscurity is no doubt due to his brief life and career - he jumped out a window whilst on a bummer trip in 1969 at age 42. Someone reissue this man's works, please!
Jim "Supersaw" Leonard has a fantastic new collection of songs recorded in the late '70s/early '80s that originally appeared on cassettes sold at folk music festivals. I'm sure many of you have heard saw music before, but not like this - Leonard's innovative technique, allowing him to play a quick succession of notes (as opposed to the saw's usual theremin-ish drones) creates a wibbly-wobbly sound that really does my head in. Makes me feel like I'm hallucinating! A whole album of this could drive lesser men mad.
The album, which consists mainly of early 20th century hits (Berlin, Gershwin, etc) and a few hymns, is a Japanese import, which means that a) it sounds great, and b) the 16 page booklet is written entirely in Japanese. Good pictures, tho. It's available from his website, some shops (I got mine at Amoeba Hollywood) and thru Aquarius Records. Here's his demented take on an old Latin standard:
Jim Leonard: Tico Tico
Jim Leonard lives in a small, remote California desert town, and apart from still playing and teaching the saw, pursues other interests: amateur radio, and astronomy.
It's official - we've got one of the sons of Kenya sitting on top of the world. So let's get to know a little Kenyan culture, shall we? After all, some of the oldest known human fossils have been found there - we may all have a little Kenya in us.
The late, great guitarist Daniel Owino Misiani is responsible for one of my favorite African albums. It's actually one of the few Kenyan releases I own. Though it's capital city Nairobi is as cosmopolitan as any on the continent, Kenya's current pop scene seems to me (and correct me if I'm wrong) largely dominated by reggae, rap, and West African styles like Congolese soukous. Hence, it hasn't really carved out it's own identity. Misiani's "benga" style does indeed favor the soukous influence that swept African music in the '80s and '90s, but he puts a brilliantly unique Swahili spin on it.
On paper, soukous/benga looks a lot like punk: electric guitars, drums kits, simple chord progressions, furious energy level. But the off-kilter rhythms, and dazzling guitar melodies (Misiani tosses off killer licks seemingly at will) take the old guitar/drum/bass lineup to a whole other place. Like soukous, the songs start melodically, shifting from vocals to guitar workouts for the second part of each song. In fact, if you're short on time and just want to skip to the "good parts," you may want to just listen to the last couple minutes of each song. But it's all good.
The lyrics often are derived from the tradtional practice of the "praise song" - only now, instead of praising tribal chiefs, the all-Swahili lyrics (according to the liner notes) praise their friends, a judge, even a furniture seller who employs many local citizens, and whose sofas are so comfortable that "you soon fall asleep."
Daniel Owino Misiani and Shirati Band - Benga Blast!
I'm posting the entire album because I see that it's now out-of-print. In fact, the entire Earthworks label seems to have gone under. Shame, they released some great stuff. Well, what the heck, he
re's another classic Earthworks release then:
Dudu Pukwana - In the Townships (1973)
This album is totally different - it hails from way down South Africa way, features sax and piano instead of guitar, is mostly instrumental, and is based on the "township jive" mbaqanga style. It does, however, share the same infectiously joyous spirit and unique (to Western ears) rhythms, all serving to create high-energy dance party mayhem. Pick hit: "Nobomyu."
It's been 50 years since Brazil's greatest gift to the world, the bossa nova, first hit our eardrums, and to celebrate, er, you should really go listen to classic stuff by cats like Antonio Carlos Jobim instead of this silliness. First up, the California-based Grupo Falso Baiano does a great version of that old Brazilian standard, the "Super Mario" theme, complete with furious Carnival-ready percussion:
Grupo Falso Baiano: Irmaos Super Mario
And then there's the not-so-great series of psuedo-bossa classic rock tribute albums coming out of Europe. So far, there's two-count 'em-TWO volumes of Rolling Stones remakes entitled "Bossa n' Stones" (that's how they spell it) and, even more weird, a Guns 'n' Roses tribute, "Bossa n' Roses." Having dutifully listened to these, all I can say is: if cheezy low-energy electro/lounge/house remakes of classic rockers as sung by yet more post-Portishead breathy femme vox is your cuppa, well, knock yourself out, sport.
I have to wonder: why? These albums don't appear to be meant as a joke. Is this simply continuing the long tradition of EZ remakes of hits? But what real rocker would want to listen to something like this?
It is pretty funny, in small doses. Hearing a woman calmly sing Mick Jagger's sexist lyrics adds another layer o' fun:
Anakelly: "Under my Thumb"
Scubba: "Paradise City"
Here's a fantastic 90+ minutes of novelty and oddball recordings inspired by this here blog. Some we posted here originally, most we didn't. Includes: '50 kiddie records, Space Age/electro, New Wave weirdness, crazy covers, comedy/satire, private press eccentrics and mashups/sound collage.
