Back again with another weekly Mix CD:
We’ll start off with one of my favorite tracks from the Blaxploitation collections that I talked about last week. This is the classic track from Donny Hathaway’s 1970 debut album — I’m sure some of you will recognize the bass line and other instrumental snippets from this song, as it has been sampled dozens of times by various electronic and hip-hop acts. Donny Hathaway – “The Ghetto.”
Last month, I caught an episode of the Sundance Channel’s Iconoclasts — a tv series where they pair two people who are groundbreaking in their own particular fields, and just film them meeting with eachother. Very interesting stuff. The episode I saw featured Quentin Tarantino and Fiona Apple (who apparently knew eachother from when Apple was involved with director Paul Thomas Anderson, but hadn’t seen eachother in a few years) — very interesting stuff. Made me think about some of my favorite tracks of hers, including this one, from her largely-overlooked second album: Fiona Apple – “Fast As You Can.”
Sticking with the female singer-songwriter thing for a second: In my senior year of high school, I purchased Suzanne Vega’s debut album on cassette, and played the hell out of it. I never liked her later albums, which featured fuller arrangements — I always preferred what I felt was the “more pure” sound of her first. This is my favorite track from that first album, and, as such, my favorite of all of her songs: Suzanne Vega – “Marlene On The Wall.”
Another standby of my high school years was the soundtrack to Repo Man, which was my entry into punk. This song was a particular favorite, both for the content and for the looks it would generate as I played it loudly in suburban Johnson County, KS: Fear – “Let’s Have A War!” (Copy and paste the link, or click it and dig through the mp3 blog entry where I found it).
Last week’s mash-up link died right before I posted, so you never got to hear it. Ah well. Here’s another good one. Bass 221 productions take the Doors, Jefferson Airplane, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Peaches and a few other sonic nuggets and come up with the following: Bass 221 – “Break It Off.”
Here’s a new group I was introduced to this week. They’re called The Inner Banks, and they are a New York band that combines American roots music (folk, bluegrass, dixieland, western swing) instrumentation with electronica and ethereal vocals. It’s hard to describe, but wonderful. Give a listen: The Inner Banks – “Anthem.”
Another new discovery from the past week — an indie electronica group from Iceland called Worm Is Green. Excellent stuff. Listen to more at their MySpace page (linked back there). Worm is Green – “The Robot Has Got The Blues.”
Lastly, a new track from Fergie which is pretty cool — she’s done a Gwen-ish reggae-infused number, lending it some cred by having Rita Marley and the I-Threes provide backing vocals. I liked this far more than I thought I would…especially when the song completely changes about two-thirds of the way through. Fergie – “Mary Jane Shoes.”
EDIT: Almost forgot! This is one for , which I’ve been telling him about for a while. The 90s UK novelty song for fans of dialects: Bosnians – “Manchester Rap.”
There you go. Enjoy.
