Sometimes these posts just write themselves, and thanks to youtube, today is one of those times. I had two ways to write about Mind Your Own Business by the Delta 5. One, since it's the New Hampshire primary today, I could make a dumb joke about this being a Ron Paul-style campaign theme song. But Ron Paul has already beat me to it! (Here's another politically-themed version actually using the song.)
Or, I could say that if you've never had an irrepressible urge to dance around like an idiot, then you definitely have never heard this song. Here are a couple of girls bouncing around to it. Here are a couple more. And here's my favorite, a guy dancing around the corner of Prince Arthur and St. Dominique, which is kinda ground zero for tourist Montreal. In fact, that bar in the background is exactly where the bachelor party last summer initially gathered. Anyway, great tune, unstoppable bass line, you'll love it.
Photo: Sun goes down in Hudson Square.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS
Monday, January 7, 2008
OH BONDAGE UP YOURS!
Hello, it's me! I say that only because some of you (all of you?) may be disappointed to learn that Corbett isn't blogging this week. Instead, I'm here, and Corbett will pick up again sometime soon. We do have an innovation to introduce later this week, though, so stay tuned.
My posts for next few weeks are going to have a rough theme: "Punk Music Is Fun!" I want to write just a few words about that. It's an advertisement for the tunes we're posting (i.e., these are going to be fun and you should listen to them), but also an admonishment for myself. For a bunch of reasons, punk music has never seemed that fun to me. More like hard work. Punk music was supposed to slay the dinosaurs of 1970's rock music. The trouble was, I knew those dinosaurs pretty well, and loved them too!
Punk, on the other hand, didn't get played on the radio, and didn't played at my house. So I didn't know much growing up. And with so much written about punk's aesthetics, ideology, secret histories, and everything else, I felt it's almost easier to tune the music out than to engage with it and get to know it.
That won't do, though, because even if you think (as I do) that the Sex Pistols are tedious and overrated, there's a ton of great music sitting there that doesn't need an explanation or an argument to get it across.
Anyway, I don't want to overstay my welcome here, so let's get to the music we're posting. The idea is to post some great, fun songs, nothing too obscure, favorites of ours from the punk canon. We do hope you'll like them if you don't love them already!
Oh Bondage Up Yours! is pretty famous, but these days you're more likely to hear it sampled (Poly Styrene's ecstatic lead-in, "1! 2! 3! 4!," appears in dance & hip hop tracks with some regularity) than played through.
The title pretty much sums up the lyrical content to the song, and it's considered a feminist manifesto, the opening track to any decent "Woman In Rock" compilation. The best part of the song (apart from the wailin' sax) is how much righteousness and defiance is in the vocal. She means it, man!
Photo: Christmas Day.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Does anyone care about the FA Cup?
I care that we won our match today, but is that the same thing? If I was told that we were disqualified tomorrow on account of Eduardo blinking too many times per minute, I'm not sure it would make any difference to me at all. Maybe this is where being a British/local fan against being an overseas fan comes most into play. I don't have any romantic attachments to the cup; I don't have any feeling whatsoever for Burnley, I don't even know where Burnley is (though I suspect that IS something I have in common with plenty of North Londoners). At the moment, I think I care more about the Carling Cup than I do the F.A. Cup, because the former is an undiluted glimpse of our team's future. Our F.A. Cup teams have an odds and sods character to them.
Meanwhile I still defend the college bowl system (though less and less all the time) mainly for its nostalgia value...
Friday, January 4, 2008
TIFIT HAYED
Our last South American selection is this bonkers tune from the "Colombia!" compilation. I looked around the internet a little today and saw that this track has been featured elsewhere before. Why? Because a song that gets its percussion hook right at the beginning, like this one does, basically can't fail. The arrangement is so effortless and assured, it sounds like a live staple, or a cover (or both). Dig that disco synth line too! I can confirm, however, that it's not The Huck playing the killer bassline...
So concludes our near month-long tour of South American music! Enjoy your weekend and see you on Monday for something completely different.
Photo: Statue of St. Alphonsus.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
PRENDEME LA VELA
This criolla selection comes from Luaka Bop's "Afro-Peruvian Classics" compilation (via), a landmark release as far as getting this music heard internationally.
Prendeme La Vela is a recording that brings you into the room and surrounds you with joy. The lead artist, Abelardo Vasquez, was Senior Professor at the Peruvian Center of Black Folklore, but there's nothing academic about the music. A total gas.
Photo: Bath scene.
More than a feeling
I don't read OU message boards but I can only imagine what they're saying today. What a debacle. In every way we embarrassed ourselves last night, and it's gotta be hurting the brand sooner or later. Bob's halo has well and truly slipped now, I'd have thought?
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
NEGRO CARBON
Afroperuano music is a relatively obscure strain of American music. It's special music, born of the unique culture developed by black slaves sandwiched between the Pacific and the Andes. It's called musica criolla, a term that additionally references the Andalucian and Roma influences on the music (such influences being even more apparent in dance).
While to my non-specialist ears it sounds much like, say, afro-cuban music, you can theoretically listen for local instruments like charangos and especially the cajons (basically wooden boxes used in percussion. Traditional percussion instruments like drums with skins or marimbas were once banned by colonial authorities. The cajon is the result of creative musicians' ad hoc responses to this ban).
The Rough Guide to Afro-Peru is a great contribution to an excellent series, and it is where we find Negro Carbon by Manuel Donayre. While Negro Carbon isn't rock n roll, it's sweet and smooth like a Soul Stirrers recording. You can see Mr. Donayre doing his thing on a choice few youtube clips.
Photo: Lincoln and Reagan.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
A sniff of the new year
Hope you all had a nice and easy New Year's Day, just like us!
Photo: Martin taking in 2008.
APRESENTACAO
Happy New Year! Welcome to 2008!
The idea this week is to play some less "pop" and more "authentic" sounds from South America (using quotation marks to avoid arguments about just what those terms should mean). For much of the last couple of weeks, it's been all non-Brazilian South American music, but for 2008 we're bringing back the Brazil! Apresentacao is a favorite batucada of mine (batucada being Carnival music, samba, but with everything but the percussion left out) (which isn't leaving out very much). I especially love each of the breaks in the music, which almost remind me of breakbeats, but even more give me a sense of a group of musicians walking in a parade and periodically going back to themes or patterns as they move along the route. A festive and heavy way to start the year.
The group of musicians playing on the track is called a samba school (the prefix "G.R.E.S." is a Portuguese designation of same), and it's taken from a wonderful Soul Jazz comp that you can find here if you look hard enough.
Again, Happy New Year!
Photo: Town of York Civil War Monument.
Monday, December 31, 2007
LA QUEBRA' DEL AJÍ
AYER CACHE LA QUEBRA' DEL AJÍ by Los Jaivas.
Happy New Year's Eve! Obviously it's still the holiday season and we're correspondingly getting low traffic at the moment, which is kinda too bad for these songs.
It's certainly no reflection on my opinion of Ayer Cache La Quebra' Del Ají. I think this is a thrilling piece of work, and I probably like it just as much if not more than the Jaivas track we put on the holiday mix, La Quebra' Del Aji Corre Que Te Pillo. The song we've posted today has a more pungent vocal that really appeals to me, but may need a few listens for others.
Los Jaivas are one of Chile's most famous groups, and they spent literally decades refining their Andean/prog folk sound. I've been trying without success to get more of their material, but there's always 2008...
Enjoy your parties tonight! We'll be back tomorrow and the rest of this week with just a few more South American selections before we move on to territories anew.
LATE UPDATE: What a mess! Thanks to a kind commenter, I went back and double-checked the tracklisting for my copy of "Todos Juntos," the album from which I took all of these tracks. Sure enough, it was all mislabeled. The track uploaded here is actually La Quebra' del Ají, not Ayer Cache. The actual song named Ayer Cache was mislabeled in my copy as Cuero y Piel, which I could have figured out was wrong if I had listened to the lyrics closer. Not having much Spanish, though, it's difficult. And so on. The song I had listed on the holiday mix as La Quebra' del Ají is actually titled Corre Que Te Pillo, so I suppose I'll have to go fix that! Anyway, the songs themselves are all the same, and it's quality through and through. I encourage you all to go find the whole thing. This place has it all correctly labeled, but the sound quality isn't as good as the mislabeled tracks you can find here. All apologies!
Photo: Jose Artigas, Trump Soho.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
...And a Happy New Year!
Friday, December 28, 2007
VIRGIN
Another quick one while we're away... Virgin was also on the mix for a long time until we decided that Meshkalina, another Traffic Sound song, should go on in its place.
Virgin is more sophisticated in its arrangement and production; it's really solid, in fact. It's the title track to Traffic Sound's best album and therefore one of the best albums to come out of this whole period. I haven't listened to it much since the beginning of the month and am looking forward to hearing it again in a minute!
I'd write more but the beach beckons... have a good Friday!
Photo: View of Manhattan Bridge through a screen.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
EL MUNDO ES UNA FLOR
We're blogging from snowy Maine today so comments will be brief. The last thing we were waiting on before we finished the Christmas CD was this record from Hojas, a well regarded Uruguayan band (but from Colonia, not Montevideo).
We waited and waited, and then it finally came, and I put it on. El Mundo Es Una Flor was the definite standout on two or three listens, but I couldn't find a way to work it into the sequence, so I left it off. Now you can make your own evaluation.
Stay warm!
Photo: Amtrak station, late afternoon.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
EVERY NIGHT
Happy Boxing Day! We'll ease back into music here with some songs that didn't make it onto our Holiday mix for whatever reason. Today's selection is from Los Mockers, who we've already alluded to being the Uruguayan Rolling Stones, and here is the aural proof.
Like the Chocolate Watchband, the Mockers had their Jagger and Jones imitations down pat, which could yield some pretty good tunes in their own right, but could also leave them open to being mere copyists.
Every Night is one of my favorite Mockers tracks, and as so it sounds like good early Rolling Stones but with its own thing. It's a good arrangement and recording, how it comes straight into that ascending guitar line and leaves plenty of space for the drums and vocals to accent the groove.
See you back here tomorrow (hopefully, we'll be blogging from Maine) (hopefully, having beaten the sailors).
Photo: Federal courthouse, dirty window.
