A CELEBRITY TRIBUTE TO THE PIXIES

For you Pixies fans who want some spit-Pepsi-on-computer-screen laffs, check out Matthew's Celebrity Pixies Tribute page, which features the tunes of Mr. Black & Co. as performed by the likes of

Prince "Hey" Hey, I like this as much as most of Prince's own recordings

Jimi Hendrix "Vamos"

The Beach Boys "Levitate Me" - a "Pet Sounds" outtake?

As with Gabba, the group we covered last week, the humor lies somewhat on your familiarty with the group being satirized, in this case, The Pixies (dig Jimi's intro to "Vamos"), but the impressions and performances are good enough to tickle even non-Pixieheads. The Sinatra-ized version of "Monkey Gone To Heaven," however, is partly amusing because he doesn't sound anything like Frank, and the synthesized horn section makes it all sound like a really bad lounge act. Even when it's bad it's good.

ABBA ABBA WE ACCEPT YOU...

If British quintet Gabba simply played Abba songs in the style of the Ramones, that would be amusing enough. And sometimes they do do that, but other songs are more like pastiches of both groups' styles merged into an inexplicable whole, with references to numerous songs combining to form what I guess one could call original compositions. Such as "Hej Ho Disco", available from their MySpace space.

British dj Bud The Weiser has put together a swell 20 minute mix of Gabba tunes here (second one down). Listen sharp - there's numerous quotes that only a real Ramones fan will pick up on, but even if you just arrived on planet Earth recently and know nothing of Da Bruddahs, or those Swedes, the hi-NRG rock'n'disco should have you slammin' around the house anyway.

ROLL OVER, CHUCK BERRY

Bellybongo, as some of you may know, is a rare-album mp3 site run by a Scandanavian guy, and is highly recommended to fans of '60s/'70s audio oddities. But Mr Bongo really outdid himself with this album by The Note-Ables, a '70s quartet from parts unknown, USA, who are indeed noteable for their almost complete lack of skill in any area of singing or instrumental performance. Neil Sedaka, Glen Campbell and The Beatles all get steamrollered by an out-of-tune guitar/accordian attack that resembles The Shaggs on speed. Old swing tunes merge into what is allegedly the surf classic "Pipeline," but sounds more like a very wrong version of "Wipeout." The band sounds like their having a great time, however, and their energy level and enthusiasm is infectious.

The Note-Ables "Roll Over Beethoven" - The opening moments contain some of the most inspiring guitar work heard in years.

But who is "Shikowski"?

HAPPY ROBOT MUSIC

Ian Sherwin of Birmingham, UK seems like a decent chap: according to his website, "He has worked with a wide variety of schools and groups, and has a lot of experience working with young people with learning difficulties and behaviour problems. Ian mainly works with young people introducing them to using computers and software to record and produce original music." So why does he do such terrible things to toys?

By taking exisiting electronic musical and sound toys like Speak and Spells and rewiring them ("circuit-bending") Sherwin takes wholesome artifacts of childhood and warps them into noisy unpredictable electronic musical strangeness that might frighten your kids. Or enthrall them. I wouldn't mind having a "glitch-switch" or a random-sound button on my synths.

"Speak and Math"
"Talk n Learn Animals" - "This is the lion: SKRREEEEEECH!!!"
"My Little Keyboard"

Like what you hear? "Please get in touch if you would like to pre-order any of the units featured on this page" and he'll make one for you.

Now when's he gonna jam with Toydeath?

KID'S POW-WOW SONGS

One of the most unexpectedly wonderful albums I've bought recently is "More Kid's Pow-Wow Songs" by a Native American group, The Black Lodge Singers. I say unexpectedly because I don't know much about American Indian music and had never really listened to it too carefully, but how can you not like hearing songs about Scooby-Doo or Spongebob Square Pants sung in traditional drum-and-chant style? Apart from the novelty value, the performances - really soulful singing and compelling rhythms - are terrific.

Not surprisingly, the group, led by Kenny Scabby Robe (Scabby?) of the Blackfeet people, is one of the most popular trad groups on the pow-wow (intertribal gathering) circuit. The fact that he recruits band members from among the ranks of his 12 (!) sons certainly means he's aware of what the kids are into - this is volume 2, with hopefully more on the way. Can I request the "Speed Racer" theme?

Black Lodge Singers: "Kid's Pow-Wow Songs Medley"

2 .TP CISUM SDRAWKCAB

The guy I wrote about recently who sings "Stairway To Heaven" backwards asked that it be removed from the inter-webs. Yeah, well, who needs him? Thanks to Maniac mwmiller, we've got something you might like even better, so go to this-here site:

Bill Lamphier's Mystery Tune

ART LIKES HIS MOTHER

It's Mother's Day soon here in the US of A, and I can't think of a better salute to our mommies then a tune by Madison, Wisconsin's most famous outsider, Art Paul Schlosser, who we first met here. I don't if Mama Fab would really appreciate it, though - she never seemed too amused when I would play my 12" of Mr. T's rap song "Treat Your Mother Right." But it's the thought that counts!

Right...?

Art Paul Schlosser - "I Like My Mother"

UPDATE: Big thanks to that legend "anonymous" for this swell video of Art Paul performing "I Like My Mother" live on the street.

GUYS SINGS "STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN" BACKWARDS

A Dutchman who obviously has a lot of free time on his hands named Jeroen Offerman learned how to sing Led Zep's "Stairway To Heaven"... backwords. It took him three months. Then he videotaped himself singing it and played that backwords. Just the kind of utterly pointless behaviour that makes life worth living!

"Neveah Ot Yawriats"

SO I SAW DANIEL JOHNSTON LAST NIGHT...

...perform for free - free! You can't beat that! - at Amoeba Hollywood. And it was, quite simple, utterly wonderful. If you've been put off by the possibility it will be just a freak show, forget it. It was 35 minutes of top-notch tunesmithery performed albeit a bit clumsily at times, but I couldn't imagine it any other way. He doesn't play that way to be indie-cool or low-fi or whatever. He's playing the best he can, and he even apologized a couple of times for his nervousness and "amateurness." A large supportive crowd would have nothing of it, however.

Before the show, the store actioned off an original Johnston artwork to benefit Hurricane Katrina victims. It depicted many brightly-colored skulls and captions proclaiming that the Devil is "a drag." It went for $550.

Having just seen the documentary film, "The Devil and Daniel Johnston," I was prepared for the worst - it depicts his mental condition as deteriorating. But the Daniel I saw last night looked fairly healthy, hair neatly trimmed, sporting an oh-so-hip goatee, and a "Hi, How Are You" tee-shirt. He was in good spirits as he performed solo guitar and piano renditions of songs that, in other hands, probably would have been done in a jangly-guitar '60s pop style. The ghost of his beloved Beatles and three-chord classics like "Needles and Pins" seemed to haunt the compositions played last night, even as he dropped in lines like "I'm just a psycho trying to write a song." He good-naturedly put in time at the autograph table later.

Some may have been disappointed that he didn't have a nervous breakdown on stage. Ah well, they just had to make do with one fine tune after another, like:

"Frustrated Artist"

TEA PARTY: VINTAGE REEFER SONGS

I certainly was surprised to see the news that Mexico is planning on legalizing drugs for personal use. Any drug: heroin, pot, LSD...hell, snorting elephant tranquilizer, for all I know. It should be an interesting experiment: will they now have to worry about illegal Americans crossing the border?

Which reminded me of this page that features some great vintage jazz recordings. Some of the greatest legends in jazz, like Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, and Ella Fitzgerald, sang weed's praises. Now, I don't indulge in anything heavier then a martini, so I'm not endorsing anything here. I just love the spooky feel of jazz recordings of the '30s and '40s - the far-away sound of low-fi 78s, and hipster slang like "viper" (pothead), "blowing gage," and "smoking tea."

The Barney Bigard Sextet: Sweet Marijuana Brown
Bea Foote: Weed

UPDATE: Or not. As Scott pointed out in his comment, now Prez Fox is reconsidering.

BEA ARTHUR: AS NASTY AS SHE WANTS TO BE

If I wasn't married I'm sure I wouldn't have considered seeing Bea Arthur's one-woman show "Just Between Friends." Not that I have anything against the famed actress, star of TV classics like "Maude" and "The Golden Girls." I just figured it would be an evening of songs done in her froggy voice and show-biz anecdotes, but Mrs. Fab wanted to go, and so we did. And, whatdoyaknow, I quite enjoyed it, if, for no other reason, some of those songs and stories where, well, filthy. Not even those rappin' grannies I wrote about recently had anything on this 70-something bad girl. She remade some nasty old blues tunes that can be found on compilations like "The Copulatin' Blues" such as this ode to furniture sales:

Bea Arthur: "If I Can't Sell It, I'll Keep Sitting On It" - as well as a bonus anecdote about an unnamed actress' personal hygiene that would make Leoncie blush.

FROM POL POT TO HIP-HOP

Continuing our series of posts about unlikely rappers: Did the founders of hip-hop music in the '70s ever imagine that one day their music would teach the Cambodian people their horrifying history? Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash et. al. would have been open-mouthed in shock if they heard that a bootleg of a rap album recorded by a Cambodian-American youngster in his parents' garage would do just that. Much to praCh's amazement, his debut album, little known beyond Long Beach, CA's Cambodian community, became the number one album in the land of his birth. It served the dual purpose of schooling Cambodians in American-style hip-hop, and telling some grim truths about dictator Pol Pot's murderous regime.

praCh: "The Great Escape" - A gripping account of his family's escape from Cambodia
praCh: "Ah-Yei (Khmer Rap)" - performed entirely in the Khmer language

RAPPIN' GRANNY

After the Gangsta Fag post a couple of days ago, someone posted asking about other oddball rappers from demographic groups one normally wouldn't consider in hip-hop. I immediately thought of my Valley homegirl Rappin Granny (aka Vivian Smallwood). Tired of the kids blaring a music she hated, she decided to fight back with her own rhymes.

I don't know who the original rappin granny was, but this is not the one who appeared in the 1985 film "Rappin'", or the different rappin granny who was in "The Wedding Singer." Nor is she Fruity Nutcake, the New York white lady who has appeared on Howard Stern. Wow, there could be a best-of-rappin-grannys compilation.

Here's footage from one of Ms. Smallwood's many TV appearances. The music may be 50 Cent's, but the lyrics are largely hers. She even, er, shakes her booty. Granny got back! (sorry) Was there really a show called "America's Most Talented Seniors"?

Rappin Granny "In Da Club" - Well, Shirley Jones seems to enjoy it.

ROCK ROCK ROCK ROCK ROCK'N'ROLL HIGH SCHOOOOLLL...

...sang the Ramones, and few schools rocked like the Dondero High School A Capella Choir, of Royal Oak, Michigan. For 35 years Rick Hartsoe has been the Choir Director, aided and abetted by energetic instrumentalists, also culled from the student ranks.

Sadly, not only is Dondero High closing, but so is Otis Fodder's 'net-label Comfort Stand - a generous heaping of Dondero High's annual performances are Comfort Stand's last offerings.
There are many gems here, but check out this cover of Boston's

"More Than A Feeling" - the arena-rock bombast of the original is transformed through the choir's singing, handclaps, and more low-key (but still energetic) arrangement into an innocent campfire singalong. Just charming.

Don't know what Otis will be up to now, but I hope it means completing another Bran Flakes album of thrift store record-inspired mashups. And as for the beloved Mr. Hartsoe, he, like the school, is retiring.

O.G.: ORIGINAL GAYS

Gangsta Fag

Well! That says it all, doesn't it? Countless rappers, inspired by NWA's "Straight Outta Compton," have filled their music with anger, violence, and curse words, but it's usually been directed at gays, not from them. Gangsta Fag's Twisted G, however, has come straight (well, as straight as he can be, har har) outta New York with music that goes after gay-bashers with a baseball bat. He has the requisite street credentials (prison time, etc), and claims he used to rob and rape crack dealers! That'll teach 'em.

From an interview on his website: "Q: Is it true that most of your fans are straight men?
Twisted G: Yeah that shits very true...Straight people find it disturbing, repulsive, and incredibly fucking hilarious. They love the shock factor and that's cool too! But if you find yourself singing all the lyrics and dancing to it around the house all the time, than yeah, you are a mutha fuckin fag and that's cool too baby!"

Gangsta Fag: "Run From The Faggots"


Thanks to Radio Clash

POP SURREALISM...

...is how books like this one describe some contemporary underground ("lowbrow") artists who's surreal scenes are populated not with melting watches and guys in bowler hats, but with images from contemporary culture. And "pop surrealism" is not a bad description for the work of some mash-up music types. They don't just make a dance club novelty by, for example, putting a Fifty Cent acapella over a rock track (not that there's anything wrong with that), but plunge you into a dream-logic landscape, creating psychedelic audio collages that can make your head spin.

Case in point, DJ Earlybird, aka The Flying Soccer Moms aka Beaufort Kissdrivel aka Uganda. "Serge Gainsbourg vs Elvis feat. Dolly Parton" takes Monsiour Gainsbourg's late-'60s porno-funk grinder "Je t'aime...Moi Non Plus" and inexplicably mixes it with spooky Elvis wails (from "Blue Moon") and Ms. Parton's high-and-lonesome cries. Do not listen to this one while driving or operating heavy machinery (Ya gotta go here, third one down)

Aber N. Stein: "Voodoo Dick" (Click here, second one down) - in a fit of major cleverness, Mr. Stein takes Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Chile" guitar riff and twists it into Led Zeppelin's "Moby Dick" and "Stairway To Heaven." Guaranteed to make the stoners in your life say, "Duuuuuude..."

And while we're at it, RIAA presents what is quite possibly the silliest, most ludicrous mashup of all time:

"Johnny SKAsh" which mixes the Man in Black's "Folsum Prison Blues" with Bad Manners' version of Mancini's "Baby Elephant Walk," some Skatalites, Wall of Voodoo (both doing "Ring of Fire") and more cartoonish sound effects this side of a Spike Jones record.

THE GOLDEN AGE OF MOUSTACHE-ROCK

Mike Watt recorded a great rocker a few years back that went, "The kids today must protect themselves against the '70s." And this 1977 video by Danish group the Tommy Seebach Band, a riot of facial hair, cheesy choreography, and ludicrous lip-synching and mugging for the camera, is Exhibit A why Watt was right. Or, perhaps, wrong, for our perverted purposes. I'd watch more MTV if they showed stuff this bizarre.

The song they're playing is another version of "Apache," the surf guiter instro made famous by 6-string kings like Jorgen Ingman, The Shadows, and the Ventures, but here given a soft-core Euro-disco arrangement. It may seem hard to believe that this song would have anything to do with hip-hop history, but, as all crate-digging headz know, Michael Viner's Incredible Bongo Band did a funked-up "Apache" that became a break-beat classic. This one, however, is a lot more funny:
Tommy Seebach Band: "Apache" (video)

LEONCIE: THE CHARO OF ICELAND

Bosoms! Lots of makeup! Wildly dramatic trilling! Casio-riffic no-budget music! It can only be that "icy spicy" babe Leoncie. Did I mention bosoms? As Miss Thing herself says, "A Little Bit Of My Cleavage Shows, And Then The Icelandic Volcano Explodes. Boooom!"

Forget yer Bjorks - Leoncie may be from Iceland (while claiming Indian heritage), but there all similiarities end. She writes and records her own music, even makes some of her own outfits, while performing everything with the breathless enthusiasm and relentlessly up-beat optimism of old-fashioned show-biz, even though her lyrics can turn baffling ("Radio Rapist"?) or, as in the case of "Satan City," which she claims is based on a real Icelandic nighborhood, nightmarishly surreal:

Leoncie "Satan City" - a place so offensive to her devoutly Christian sensibilities she claims they're "fucking on the street." Come on everybody, clap your hands! (But mind the abrupt ending.)

Many of her songs are about love. Or, more accurately, lust. Not for the easily embarrassed:

Leoncie "My Icelandic Man" - Wow, I wonder how she performs this one live. Hey, you two, get a room!

This page has more mp3s on the bottom, including her "headbanger" number:

Leoncie: "Wrestler" - And, yes, it's about wrestlers. Get this woman a tv appearance NOW!

SCANNER MUSIC

This website tells you how to rig your computer's scanner to play stuff like Beethoven's "Fur Elise" as this video demonstrates:

scanner: Fur Elise

Be a hit at your next office party! However: "use at your own risk. The author assumes no liability for any damages incurred by its use..."

TERRY KNIGHT: THE PHIL SPECTOR OF THE MID-WEST

Crass, outrageous, unpredictable, Terry Knight was all showbiz. Before being stabbed to death in 2004, he had worked with everyone from ? and the Mysterians to Ed McMahon. If he's remembered for anything, it's for his involvement with early-'70s arena rockers Grand Funk Railroad. But, as Barry Stoller reveals in his biography "I (Who Have Nothing): The Terry Knight Story," Knight had a surprisingly diverse portfolio in the '60s - dj, singer, songwriter, producer, record company exec, in styles from raungy garage punk ("Comin' on Back To Me" is a classic "Nuggets"-style rocker) to shmoove EZ-listening. And it's almost all out-of-print. Today's guest post tells the tale of Knight's brief production/A&R career at Cameo-Parkway. Take it away, Barry!

Knight never intended "I (Who Have Nothing)," his breakout national hit
with the Pack and his first foray into lounge music, as a 45. The
decision rested with Neil Bogart, president of Cameo-Parkway, the
company which distributed Terry Knight &The Pack's locally-produced garage records. When
the tune hit, Knight immediately seized his chance and submitted to the
influence of C-P (and Richard Rome, C-P staff arranger, who produced the
string-laden ballad).

"Comin' Back To Me" (by the Alabama garage band, Rites of Spring) was
Knight's first production duty with C-P (and his second ever with a
group other than his own). Essentially, he 'saved' the Rites of Spring's
failed 45 attempt, initially a demo, by supervising the re-recording of
the vocals which featured new lyrics. The tune, released while "I (Who
Have Nothing)" was still on the charts, bombed.

"If Love Is" was a vanity project for 'Dandy' Dan Daniel, a DJ at New
York's influential WMCA-AM. On this, Daniel's third C-P 45, 'Dandy' Dan
emotes Rod McKuenesque poetry over a backing track originally intended
as a Knight solo session. The music was written by Knight with
assistance from Rome; the lyrics are probably Knight's. The backing
track was recycled on a subsidiary C-P easy-listening album by the
International Pop Orchestra. Summer 1967, one of the last C-P releases.

Knight composed "The Incident Theme" on the set of the movie (which is a
malignant kicker) shortly after C-P folded in a flurry of lawsuits
between Allen Klein (who leveraged a buyout of the label) and Bogart
(who fled the label with several newly signed groups and producers plus
a stack of masters which surfaced in a variety of contexts). Knight was
managed by Ed McMahon at the time and McMahon had a part in the flick.
Promoted on the Tonight Show. Arrangement by Charles Fox (who did the
score for Barbarella shortly after). November 1967.

After The Incident bombed, Knight and McMahon went separate ways. Knight
was without a recording or production contract until early 1969. The
rest is heavy metal history.

- Barry Stoller
Utopia 2000