egoverse

Q: The true soundtrack for the citizenship ceremony

2007-03-10T16:40:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-30T15:13:00.000-08:00

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

2007-01-06T19:00:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-05T09:34:00.000-08:00

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?

2006-11-23T18:14:00.000-08:00

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?

2006-11-08T18:02:00.000-08:00

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?

2006-10-25T11:50:00.000-07:00

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?

2006-10-23T12:27:00.000-07:00

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?

2006-09-11T16:02:00.000-07:00

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?

2006-09-01T14:56:00.000-07:00

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]

Q: Which song would you sing on a wedding?

2006-08-24T21:42:00.000-07:00

Tonight, as I am posting, there is a wedding going on in the house next to mine, and the air is filled with sounds of drunken guests hammering the karaoke machine. The CD they are currently going through, I believe, is the triple-cheese volume.
But seriously, folks, which song would YOU sing at a wedding? That would of course depend on your relationship to the bride and groom (do you like them? are you sober? is the congregation in the mood for something kinky? are the notorious sobbers demanding 'Unchained melody'). Me, a veteran of two marriages of my own, I would probably go for something unromantic, understatedly realistic, while soulful and somewhat below the belt, in other words, 'Makin' Whoopee' (and please don't think of Michelle Pfeiffer). A fabulous version of which, by the way, is located on Ray Charles' 'Live in Concert, 1964', which has a special place in my heart, as I would have (if I weren't already) instantly fallen in love with a girl, who, when asked if she knew it, just casually remarked, 'Yeah'.

A: Ray Charles - Makin' Whoopee (from Live in Concert, 1964) [Out of print]

Q: Which track would boost your country's birthrate?

2006-08-15T17:22:00.000-07:00

This morning I was shocked to learn that Germany had in fact almost the worst birthrate in the world (only beaten by Hong Kong. where the reds might have introduced a give-away condom program to stop the birth of capitalist-enterprising babies). A measly 8.6 compared to the world's 20 births to a thousand inhabitants average. I remember in Germany in the early eighties a song called Bruttosozialprodukt rallied the nation to increase our national gross product. So, in this spirit, come on people, we need to do something here. We need a re-launched hit to increase your dying race's birthrate ...
Well, a few objections come to mind, and an original solution is clearly needed here. One, merely stimulating increased sex, through, say, a national Barry-White-cast, will not produce more babies. Two, getting the 20/30-something working-bored to share their plasma-screen-fitted apartments with little porridge-spitters is as futile as it is desirable. Three, looking at the list of the most fertile countries in the world, it seems that the only thing that will increase offspringing is a decent civil war (Afghanistan, Liberia, Somalia, Sierra Leone and so on are the top ten).
No, clearly what we need is to return to a gathering place, a place to worship the womb and the pheromone, as erotisizing and celebratory as it is anesthesizing, making you forget that a child in the western world will cost you a fat million to raise to college age, in short, a VILLAGE OF LOVE.
So here's something from my favourite ex-stripper, ex-butcher, retro cover band, the fabulous Detroit Cobras (from the Peel Sessions), which by the way are coming to our rat town in October. Alabamalama!

A: Detroit Cobras - Village of love [Buy]

Q: A song for a snake?

2006-08-11T17:32:00.000-07:00

For the next two or three weeks I am offering bread and abode (or rather worms and glass tank) to 'Smoothie', pet snake of my son's daycare. Apparently, one of the visiting parents has an acute ophidiophobia (yes, I looked that up. now that my company is sending me a newsletter with a 'word of the day', I feel that learning a new word a day is not a bad thing), and she called the ministry on them. So it's the axe or a temporary exile for poor old legless. Here's to peer fascism, and a song of pity for our slithery, slimy friends ...
Well, maybe not pity exactly. Al Wilson's The Snake, a steamy, hard-to-find Northern Soul track, is a bit of a play on Aesop's fable of the scorpion and the frog, and the supposed unsuppressable nature of evil. Honestly, Smoothie doesn't look that bad to me, but maybe he's an anaconda at heart and he planned all along to break out one morning and feast one 25 human 5-yearlings. Enjoy.

A: Al Wilson - The Snake (from Searching for the Dolphins, 1968) [Out of print]

Q: A song to steel your resolve for the 'Define the Relationship' discussion?

2006-08-04T17:41:00.000-07:00

Or DTR as it is apparently known at the Brigham Young University in Utah (as I was pleased to be informed in this week's 'Savage Love'). So, yes my girlfriend is once again cancelling all appointments, suggesting time-out, and generally bringing the house of misery down on both our heads, for reasons that I, the male, have far too little right-sided brain matter to comprehend clearly. But I'm about to be DTR'd, and I need a theme song to steel my resolve: to listen, to empathise, to do it her waaaay ... (as my Dad used to only half-joke), and first and foremost not to explode.
This is off my favourite Violent Femmes album, Why do birds sing (1991). Favourite, because it's quirkier, happier, more psychotic than the landmark Hallowed Ground, and also because it was released when no one paid any attention to them anymore. Have mercy on me, I've got girl trouble up the ass ...

A: Violent Femmes - Girl Trouble [Buy] [iTunes]

Q: What's the greatest one-album band of all time?

2006-07-27T12:41:00.000-07:00

I saw the Raconteurs last night, and was entirely unimpressed. Whichever gypsy foretold Jack White and Brendan Benson that they would have a great chemistry and fourteen children together needs a cataract operation. On the contrary, I shall be surprised if they will record another album. Which would have the twin effect of not bothering us with more mediocre songs, and of putting this band in a rather exclusive category, namely that of bands who only recorded a single album.
So, if you get all these illustrious single-shooters into a club, who would be the president? The most relevant, most influential, most entertaining? My girlfriend and I racked our brains about this, and we both instantly came up with Blind Faith and very little else. But what about the Sex Pistols? They were together for about two years on full rock'n roll throttle, recorded a single album, and have since been marketed to death with every fart captured on tape released, re-released and re-packaged umpteenth times. But they're still a single-album band.
So there you are. The Sex Pistols it is, and to celebrate this answer, here's a little related anecdote:
In 1994 we (Instant Karma, that is) were recording our second album in Advision studios in Brighton, which at the time was owned and run by the guys from Yes. So Jon Anderson and Trevor Horn were around while we were mucking about, and they were friendly, and shared their guitars, and showed us their vault with its rather impressive collection of unpaid-for master-tapes (Bowie to Pet Shop Boys, reels the record companies were too cheap to ever fork out for, so they were kept. And, yes, that actually happens). Anyway, one night over a cup of tea they told us how they were brought in to record the 'Never mind the Bollocks' album. Apparently, the Pistols were pretty crap in the studio, and Malcolm McLaren wanted a much better sound, so they brought in the pros, Stevie Howe and the prog-rock elite to essentially. and quietly re-record what was to become the seminal milestone of punk rock. So in case anyone ever wondered precisely why Pretty Vacant etc. sound so tight ... yes! it's Yes.
So from the Great Rock'n Roll Swindle (1978, if the title's ever been a mystery, now you know the Monkees of their time), here's the wonderful French version of Anarchy in the UK ...

A: Jerzimy - Anarchie pour le UK [Buy]

Q: A song for the belly of the whale?

2006-07-17T10:57:00.000-07:00

There you are swimming out in the ocean, thinking about nothing in particular, and then suddenly a dripping maw opens and you get swallowed by one of life's big feeders. Which is exactly what happened to my company a few days ago. Now we're suddenly all in the belly of an American whale, lighting candles and hugging each other for warmth. It's interesting how people react, how some of us will instantly sink into gloom, while others smell opportunity even on a mound of half-digested fish. Since we're all in this together, let's have a little tune, a sing-a-long to lift the spirits, shall we?
This is from Nilsson's The Point (1971), an animated TV-special about pointless Oblio and his dog arrow: very tongue-in-cheek, very hippie, very entertaining, and Nilsson at his very nilssonesque. Sing along now ...

A: Harry Nilsson - Think about your troubles [Buy]

Q: What would you listen to in you darkest hour?

2006-07-02T16:29:00.000-07:00

It behooves us not to cry and moan, but England are out of the World Cup. Let's be silent about the why and how, but suffice it to say that I've enjoyed the ride thoroughly, and that we went down fighting. What other song to play in the hour of defeat and loss than Oscar and Hammerstein's rousing gospel, as interpreted by the congregation of the church of Anfield Road? Walk on, Wayne. Walk on, Joe ...

A: Fans of Liverpool FC - You'll Never Walk Alone

Q: Who would win the World Cup Song Contest?

2006-06-11T19:14:00.000-07:00

That's awfully hard to say, although a surefire loser are already the commercial music-shops. I've tried to download the Lighning Seeds' Three Lions, easily one of the most enduring and popular football songs ever, on no less six different services (Rhapsody, Yahoo, Napster, HMV, O2 and E-Music), and only one of them had it available (predictably the British one in the list). And on that one I was still not able to buy it (alas, the empire is no more). Anyone may draw their own conclusions ... but I think they just suck the big-ole donkey dick.
Anyway, the scores from the Estonian jury are in, and the winner of the Eurovision World Cup Song Contest is ... Quincy Delightt Jones Jr.. Ha, you didn't expect that, did you? But then, no one expects the Spanish In-Quincy-sion (arrgh, dreadful pun, Cardinal Fang, poke him with the soft cushions ...). Yes, my favourite is the theme for the 1969 movie The Italian Job for which ole' Quince wrote the soundtrack. It's great, incorporates some common Cockey-isms (get yer skates on mate) and features the rousing chant of the England supporters ... tcha tcha tcha-tcha-tcha, tcha-tcha-tcha-tcha-tcha ENGLAND!. So may Blighty win the trophy, and may we play this through open windows to the entire street of Portugal and Italy supporters outside.

A: Quincy Jones - Get a Bloomin' Move On (Self Preservation Society) (from Italian Job OST, 1969) [Buy]

Q: A song for a close shave?

2006-06-01T16:07:00.000-07:00

I knew it was ominous when the boss of company walked into our department to make an announcement, and sure enough, five minutes and a rather lenghthy preambula later everyone knew their ass was fired. All posteriors warming chairs except one girl's and mine that was. I had been transferred to another project only half a day earlier. It had been a long time coming. The department had been shrinking steadily, and on many a day it seemed as if we were all stuck on ice-floe headed into warmer waters, people falling off right and left. Now the floe is gone, and I find myself skipping to another a few hours before it melted to nothingness. Phwew.
Now, I'm not a pessimist by nature, and not easily unnerved either. So I needed a song with a joyous thump, a heart-skipping, frenzied little tune, something to shoo away the ghosts of glum, positively. And a good repository for the travails of the young urbanite is the catalogue of Mr. Ben Folds (which, on a side-note, includes the ultimate break-up song Song for the Dumped). So here's something to cheer up the survivor of a close shave.

A: Ben Folds - Fired (from Rockin' the Suburbs, 2001) [Buy]

Q: Which song fits best to extreme fly & roach swatting, after I noticed late saturday night that I forgot to take the rubbish out for a week?

2006-05-23T10:15:00.000-07:00

Actually, this question comes from Dwayne (just to point out that the above situation is completely unknown to me), and it is an interesting one, since the answer depends entirely on your mode of attack on the little animales. So for the leisurely approach, the relaxed and methodical swatting, let's have some cool funk/hip-hop/reggae thing to keep the mind focussed and the hand steady:

A: G Love & Special Sauce - Parasite (from The Electric Mile, 2001) [Buy]

I saw their show a few weeks back, here at the Commodore, and it's great to see acts who are not on adrenaline and pills to survive the 200 shows a year promo grind. GL&SS were chill, they were tight, and going strong on endomorphines. Needless to say there were a few hundred types of sweat, one brand of reefer, and copious clouds of pheromones in the air that night. Good thing.

Alternatively, if you're a mouthwash-connoisseur and bugs freak you out, here's the sound track for Banzai! mode, the late, great, one and only Screamin' Jay (and his pet skull Henry):

A: Screamin' Jay Hawkins - Frenzy [Buy]

Q: A Song For The Fatherland, or what's the best out of Germany?

2006-05-19T16:05:00.000-07:00

I just spent 2 weeks back in the land of poets and thinkers (self-advertising), after having been almost four years away, and not much has changed in the big G's total contribution to world pop culture. Predictably, German hip-hop (shudder) is now massive and has reached the beverage market on the corner, and dark and dangerous (if somewhat wooden) rhymes from the suburbs of Stuttgard and Frankfurt are now wedged between the sanitary products ads on the radio. And little else seems to be happening. So time for a little Rückschau (look back in a bad mood). What was the best stuff to come out of Germany the last couple of decades.
Well, to clear the nasal tracts, let's get the seventies out of the way: Krautrock, Can, Tangerine Dream are awful and overrated, Udo and the Scorpions only slightly preferable to appendicitis, and Kraftwerk a nuisance the first time round. Let's also exclude (rule 12, subsection b) all music completely devoid of humour (Techno, Rammstein etc), and, for practical purposes, all poets and thinkers (hamburger schule, blumfeld etc), because nobody understands them anyway. This leaves, you guessed it (you did, didn't you?) ... tada! ... the Eighties.
The time of Interzone! The time of Trio! The time of Ideal!
Yes, in my humble opinion, the Germans were at their best in 1980, when they came up with some fresh approaches to pop music. The attitude was 'gimme dat casio, set the timer to 3:33, and eins, zwei, drei, fuck krautrock'. It was a brief flare of creativity, and accompanyed by a lot of fecal matter, but still my definitive pick for Germany in the '80 files around the world' compilation. So here is a track by Ideal (from Ideal, 1980, out of print), which translates as 'Red Love'. Right on.

A: Ideal - Rote Liebe

Q: A song to console a 1st world missionary?

2006-04-11T13:39:00.000-07:00

Since the emergence of two new daily rags here in rain town, the publishing battle is fought at the mouths of the sky-train stations. Students hand out free, stapled tidings of car crashes, celebrities in town and local hockey team losses, which is fine, since you can decline, or hurl them into the large yellow bins put up for this use. But now a third front has opened, as Pensioners make use of their spare time to hand out copies of the New Testament. First world missionaries, aiming to heal the wounds of disrupted families, lost values, and aimless existences. From the response, it takes a hardy soul to do this, to keep up the smile, to not let the tone slide in the face of these hurried heathens, to fish the books back out of the bins and stand up again. So, what song could I find to console the poor zealot?
I came up with one of my favourites, and with the words of King Missile, heal ye faithful, and rejoice, cause Jesus was way cool: "He told people to eat his body and drink his blood, That's so cool. Jesus was so cool. But then some people got jealous of how cool he was, so they killed him. But then he rose from the dead. He rose from the dead, danced around, then went up to heaven. I mean, that's so cool. Jesus was way cool." (from Mystical Shit, 1990).
(and thanks to my first wife, who gave me a green and pink Mystical Shit t-shirt after our split; I still haven't figured out whether it was revenge or charity)

A: King Missile - Jesus Was Way Cool

(no [buy] link for this one as it is out of print, but could pick up a copy of John S. Hall's poems: Jesus was way cool)

Q: A song for the chocolate factory after dark?

2006-04-16T20:25:00.000-07:00

Easter is the focal point of the year if you are a) a chicken, b) a christian, or c) work in a chocolate factory, where you're on crazy overtime, hands deep in the brown delight until Good Friday. Then the factories shut down, the chimnies cool, and the great conveyor belts of pralines and cream-filled eggs and molded bunnies come to a screeching, hesitant stop. And the lights go out.
Imagine breaking in. Imagine walking along the great belts, dipping fingers into vats, turning on the lights, and putting a song on the PA, to fill the halls while you dance and try and taste. What would it be?
My choice, and I admit that it's a rather obvious one (ha, but not the most obvious, see footnote), is the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, a sweet and suitably creepy piece of music. And on a particular twisted night I would even go for the Portsmouth Sinfonia's rendition of the same (from Portsmouth Sinfonia Plays..., 1973, out of print). This now defunct orchestra was founded on the idea of harnessing the raw energy of people with no or little experience on their respective instruments, and combining them with some seasoned players who knew what the music was roughly supposed to sound like. Boasting a pre-Roxy Music Brian Eno and film composer Michael Nyman among its players, it was quickly and rightfully billed as the world's worst orchestra, but it worked. At least in curdling all the chocolate factory's milk, and shaking loose all its sugar-crusted bolts.
Here it is, and remember to turn out all the lights when you're done ...

A: Portsmouth Sinfonia - Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy

(and as a bonus, the more obvious choices would be something from the original Willie Wonka's factory, like The Candyman, or an initially creepy, then strangely wonderful Gene Wilder singing 'Pure Imagination'.
A: Gene Wilder - Pure Imagination)

Q: A favourite track for the end of a tape?

2006-04-08T15:31:00.000-07:00

Read 'tape' here as a metaphor for every limited space for conveying music, and most compilers have a mental list of tracks for the last 40 or 50 or 60 seconds left on the reel, a no-brainer, subconscious, vegetative reaction reach. Songs filed under 'short', but also under 'punctuation', as they need to work as a comma between two halves, or as a period at the end.
I used to use 'Down Around O'Connelly Corners' by the Doobie Brothers, when I still liked the Doobies, because it was exactly that, a walk around a corner, passing buskers, ambulate from block to block, or to walk out of the picture altogether. Maybe I'm just older and slower now, but now I like a tea break, a cup o' rosie with crumpets or cuke sarnies, and I put in 'Tea' by Sam Brown (from 'Stop', the great white hope of '88). A flourish of eccentricity, a display of operatic scales, and, incidently, an example of why the great white hope didn't work out. She could not choose between the forest and the sea, between conventionality and unconventionality.
(Also, incidently, another great tea track, and a don't-miss is 'T.U.S.A.' by the Masters Of Reality, Ginger Baker's lament of the bag floating in lukewarm water-milk emulsion)
Enjoy.

A: Sam Brown – Tea (from stop, 1988) - [buy]

Q: Woah, what's this?

2006-03-28T16:15:00.000-08:00

Well, it is a game of sorts, at least it started as one. It was born in one of the valleys of the shadow of death, or more accurately a personal drought in having a useful tool to find new music (one dies, then you find the next, then that dies, and so on. don't get too attached, it hurts too much). The idea was to find a willing soul, then to email each other questions about music until you we had about 20, and then to make a CD each answering all questions, and most importantly to write about each choice.
A grand thought, a fell swoop: glimpses into the egoverses of others, choice new music, and some reasons for love. It kinda worked, and we had fun playing with the pencils and filling out the forms on the group W bench, but I was secretly unhappy. Exchanging music with buddies is like exchanging body fluids with your girlfriend (or boyfriend. or wife. or ... let's not get into this). It's good in a homely sort of way, satisfying, yes, but titillating, surprising ... only for the luckiest. Like anyone in solid relationships, I was secretly pining for the music and thoughts of strangers. So we write stardate 78563.45 and along come the music blogs, and suddenly this is exactly what's out here. Writings, tracks, personal energy. Giveth and you shall receive, etc. So here's what i'm going to do:

I will post a question, or little thought experiment for the music fan (like, say, "Which song would you pick, if you sneak onne onto the pope's ipod?"), and I will do my best to answer it with a track and some lines. And then I will invite you (yes, you! don't look so surprised. you knew there was a full set of brushes coming somewhere) to post a comment with your own answer (and track if you like). and then we'll see what happens ...

So, I'm exited, and I hope you are. Alora, cheers everybody, and let the games begin.