Q: The true soundtrack for the citizenship ceremony

Exactly two days ago my efforts to become a Canadian citizen culminated in a 90 minute citizenship ceremony, wherein I and about 75 other hopefuls were following the bizarre proceedings to receive the coveted card, handshake and picture with mountie. We all raised our right hand, and we rose and followed the judge's abominable French to affirm allegiance to "rain elizabeth duh", we had fun guessing each other's land of origin (how is it that you always know the Russians?), we sang O Canada (of course), and with patience we suffered through slow and open-armed speeches given for an either inane or firmly ESL-only audience. But most of all we suffered through a 20-minute maxi-version of Kenny G's guitar-plucking brother's version of Call of the Loon while we all receive our heartfelt handshake and photo-op. For crying out loud!
No, the entire time I was thinking of a multitude of more fitting soundtracks to this auspicious moment, and some Chicago soul with Bull and the Matadors hummin' Judge, you sho is funky ... paired with Big Sugar's rendition of O Canada and finished with The Animals' We've gotta get out of this place constituted the top of my rapidly assembling mental list. Oh, yes. The judge wasn't bad, but she sho wasn't funky, and a little ditty to lively up the place already would have made a difference. Welcome to the true North, funky and free. So here we go ...

A: Bull and the Matadors - The Funky Judge (1968) [Buy] (more on Funky 16 Corners)
A: Big Sugar - O Canada (from Brothers and sisters, are you ready?, 2001) [Buy]

Q: A hymn to celebrate Robot Day

Sometimes I feel like I'm in the middle of a Dilbert strip. The other day the HR person comes around with a notepad, and asks everybody for ideas how we could have more FUN IN THE OFFICE $%@^%#*!!. Ideas ranged from putting little bouncy feathery things on the top of our pencils to having remote control car races in the hallway during lunch hour. Anyway, far and above my favourite was the notion of having a designated Robot Day, where everyone had to speak like a robot (oh, the humanity ...), which is harder than anyone would think. Apart from the concept of answering the phone and talking to clients this way, it takes zen-like-focus to stay in character for more than a few minutes (after which you will have used up all the common robot clichees like, you know, 'Error error', 'Insufficient Data' and 'Does not compute' etc).
Anyway, I love Robot Day, and so should everyone, and here's a song to celebrate: a sufficiently robotic hymn from the infectious soundtrack to Namco's Katamari Damacy.

A: Akitaka Tohyama - You are smart (from Katamari Fortissimo Damashii, 2004) [buy]

Q: A song for the Catastrophe

Last night I took my girl to see a new movie called Children of Men, all about mankind plunged into darkness and despair when we lose the ability to reproduce. I thought it was great, she hated it, and no soon after we were engaged in some kind of emotional fallout. Things were said, other, touchier topics exposed, and suddenly we're plunged into this ambiguous quiet were everything is questioned and there is no obvious way out.
I was thinking of a song for this state (which I'm slowly getting very tired of), and the Wallflowers' Everybody out of the water was certainly a candidate. But after watching that film yesterday (and recently reading the entire X-Men Age of Apocalypse series) I feel more apocalyptic, more ... hm, Brazilian ...

A: Sepultura - Refuse / Resist (from Chaos A.D., 1993) [Buy] [iTunes]

Q: A song for rebellious teenagedom

My girlfriend snatched up 6 tickets for the Wolfmother show in Seattle on Sunday night, and we were all set to go with rental-SUV and sandwiches made, when her two teenage daughters stalled and didn't want to go. Without need to go into the entire massacree with four-part harmony and full orchestration, we ended up not going. This morning the ipod-shuffle spat out something which made me think of my own teenagedom simply for the reason that it was the only song I consciously hid from my parents (as we were allowed to play pretty much anything, and Iron Maiden was pretty much as bad as it got). So here it is, not in its original Dead Kennedys guise (1981), but in a pretty remake (and the girl voicing it sounds everything but... in fact she sounds about exactly right).

A: Nouvelle Vague - Too Drunk To Fuck (from Nouvelle Vague, 2005) [Buy] [ITunes]

Q: A track to hurl in the misshaped face of the taxman?

OK, nothing but pure unmitigated sour grapes here. A few months ago I got a demand from the German tax authorities for part of my liver or at least a kidney, quoting tax laws made for the likes of Boris Becker (Monaco denizen). Yesterday the old proverbial hit the fan as another letter announced that all my assets in the fatherland were seized until I coughed up. Nonewithstanding the fact that my assets over there are nil, cough it up I did (and gasped, not realizing that a wire transfer from the new world costs $35), because just about the last thing I want is for my old folks to have to cling to their TV set as it is carried out by some hired ruffians on account of 'familienhaft'. Anyway, here is a fitting expression of my rage, and the old proverbial in the teuton vernacular (did I really say that?).

A: The Seconds - Scheisse (from Kratitude, 2006) [Buy]

Q: What song would have you rise out of the box if played at your funeral?

I'm not known as a hypochondriac, and in fact, you will usually have to attach several hungry equestrians to my testes to drag me to a doctor, but last week I was living with a chance that I might have the big C, and that in fact I might die sooner than I had hoped. Suffice it to say that I had some unusual syptoms that had even the doctor spooked, and he ran all the tests my medical insurance could buy. Today he told me all the tests are great, but last week I was looking at the Globe and Mail's obits ("mother, grandmother and sister passed before her time", "young life dearly missed" etc) with an uneasy feeling.
So for our question of the day, what song would you definitely not like to hear at your funeral? This would have to be something realistic, something one of your surviving relatives might actually be tempted to put on. I've pondered this for a bit, and since my Dad left his Gospel Choir last week there is little chance of them turning up and singing 'Oh Happy Day'. In fact, since my family is pretty thoroughly steeped in musical taste, it's hard to imagine how any of them might err, except ... yes, yes that's right, didn't my Dad have an unnatural fondness for Eric Clapton's Unplugged album (shudder)? Might he be tempted to lay Tears in Heaven on the sobbing and unsuspecting congregation?
So there, that would have me definitely defy the worms and spirits and rise up with vengeance. Turn THAT OFF! OFF, I said!
But since there is no way I am going to post that here (actually I have considered posting Paul Anka's version, but as it were, it sucks ass too), I shall instead post something equally inadequate, but much, much funnier. Rodd Keith, quoth Wikipedia, is "perhaps the best known figure in the obscure musical sub-genre known as song poem music". Now, song poems, or 'song sharking' as it is also known, was a business where companies would extract a fee from budding and gullible poets to have recordings and records made from their compositions. And if you want to know what that sounds like, here it is, but I think it is quite possible that even the wretch who wrote and paid for this would not want to hear this at her funeral.

Q: Rodd Keith - Unspeakable Love (out of print, but for this and more Rodd Keith go to Fudgeland)

Q: Your favourite stolen track?

Yesterday by bike was stolen. To be fair, although I loved it for its sheer practicality, it re-entered the system whence it came from (I had bought it for 10$ from an ex-tuna fisherman on Hastings, and it must have been stolen and re-stolen a thousand times over since its rightful purchase in ca. 1973), and I should rejoice and not mourn the loss (cue in soft-edged pictures of my bike being kissed by elated new owner, a Postman who will ride it to work every day).
But I take this as a prompter on the theme of appropriation (ahem) in music.
Now, I really can't stand blatantly stolen music. If you can't come up with anything original, don't bother, and for Blind Willie's sake don't nick other people's stuff (it's the saving grace of notorious thieves like Led Zep or the Stones that they by and large did). The one kind of theft that I cheerfully condone and enjoy, however, is the Sample, and its much bolder big sister, the Mash-up. Good Mash-ups are like pinching luxury cars, parking them on City Square and having a beer on the hood. This one by Mark Vidler aka Go Home Productions is one of my favourites. It opens artistic dimensions the originals were never in sight of:
a. the noise and violence of Whitney Houston over loud guitars is unbelievable, an assault that puts Cannibal Corpse to shame
b. famous appropriators Radiohead (remember 'Thief', I mean 'Creep'?) re-enter the karmic free-for-all with a riff of their own here
Turn it up.

A: GHP - Radio Houston (unreleased, 2003)

Q: A song to change the fall letdown?

Every year it's the same: summer the time to breathe and dream, to let things out and design the future, and fall the reality call, the pull down to earth, the eternal fifteen squares back in the game of snakes and ladders.
So, a call to arms for the power of music (choking back reflex gag). What's going to get me up on this drizzly Tuesday morning (and it's certainly not a wailing Nina Simone that my girlfriend chose for breakfast)?
Here's a suggestion, a present equivalent for a raw egg and hot sauce pick-me-up: The Good Things by John Wayne (as himself). It's a bit of a suburbian sixties apple-pie wash-car-on-sundays idyll kinda thing, but hey, it's the Duke, and it cheers me up anytime because it illustrates the power of self-hypnosis. (Repeat after me: I am great in bed, I am great in bed, yeah, I AM! ...)

A: John Wayne - The Good Things (from America, why I love her, 1973) [Buy]

Q: What song reminds you most of your school-days?

My little boy had his first day in school this week, and I was as excited as he was walking into this big building with all the older kids crowding around us. The little groups, the bikes, the ipods and PSPs, the chatter. To make it relevant here: which track would I associate most with my school-days?
Actually, two came to mind. One was Sniff 'n' the Tears's Driver's Seat, which for me will eternally symbolize standing in dark corners on school dances and hoping no-one will notice (and which I will mercifully no include here). And the second was Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. I specifically remember three days of religious orientation in some North German hicktown, sitting in a black-outed vicary basement with incense and berry-tea and rewinding the tape (which some guy had taken from his older brother) over and over again to take in the epiphanous 17 minutes of this. The drum solo. The organ solo. The closest we ever got to smoking weed.
When I listened to it again (to return to the awkward age) here at work, my co-worker turned around and told me that it reminded her of her long lost brother. So, Carlos, if you're out there in Guanajuato, call home, your mother is dying.

A: Iron Butterfly - In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida [Buy] [Itunes (single-version)]

Q: Which music makes you feel lonely?

A tiny, but sensitive post. My girlfriend's gone to Mexico, my boy spent a week in Ontario, and all of my work colleagues have been posted or are on holiday, which leaves me to work alone in a vault designed for 25, and mine the only key that works. Now, I'm of course perfectly well adjusted, but initially I had to grapple a bit. So here, as the closest thing to an answer, is a piece of porn music (which as a categoy rivals karaoke music and ringtones as the cheapest music on the planet, and which is the worst thing to consume if you want to feel loved and happy).

A: Laying Pipe [Not in print]