Category: Music

….and here we go: The first Friday Music post of 2010!

We recently finished watching the UK series Misfits, about a group of young offenders in a work crew who get struck by lightning during a strange storm, and develop superpowers. Fun stuff, and some really excellent music as well. The theme to the show, for example, is this track: The Rapture – “Echoes.”

One of the episodes featured a club scene, spotlighting this great example of Grime (the UK’s home-grown electronic/dance-music based variety of hip-hop, which I’ve posted about before): Skepta – “Rolex Sweep (Vandalism Mix).”

Excellent series — give it a go if you haven’t seen it yet.

Track from the Canadian band You Say Party! We Say Die!, from their third album, XXXX, released in late September. Twin Peaks reference, retro-80s sound (seriously — very OMD), and a female vocalist — Sign me up! You Say Party! We Say Die! – “Laura Palmer’s Prom.”

Speaking of retro — for a new year, I’m doing an awful lot of listening to old music. Over the holidays, I picked up a real gem — A 4-CD set of music from the immortal Stiff Records, the label responsible for ushering in the late-70s/turn-of-the-80s post-punk/new-wave movement in the UK. A lot of great stuff on this collection: Elvis Costello, Ian Drury & the Blockheads, Lene Lovitch, Madness… and several brilliant pieces by Stiff’s live-in producer and occasional solo act: Nick Lowe – “So It Goes.”

This is new, but it sounds old — another “super group” has reared its head: Them Crooked Vultures, a three-man jam formed by Josh Homme (Kyuss/Queens of the Stone Age), Dave Grohl (Nirvana/Foo Fighters) and John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin). Straightforward 70s-esque quasi-psychedelic cock-rock — for example, check out this VERY Cream-influenced track: Them Crooked Vultures – “Scumbag Blues.”

Listening to that reminded me of the very Led-Zep influenced track from one of my favorite “almost-was” bands of the 80s, Zebra. I really expected these guys to be much, much bigger. I still regularly listen to their first album, which featured “Tell Me What You Want”, “One More Chance” and this track: Zebra – “Who’s Behind The Door?”

Lastly, here’s a symphonic metal track from the Dutch band Within Temptation — I have to admit that I have a soft spot for this genre. It’s almost genetically designed to be the background music for the most Awesome D&D campaign EVER! Within Temptation – “Ice Queen.”

There you go, kids. Copy-and-paste the links if they give you any trouble.

More next week….

Click on the album cover (or this link) to download the album as a 60-something MB zip file from Rapidshare (if you don’t have a rapidshare account, just click the “Free User” button).

The liner notes:

Track 1: “Gabriel’s Message” – Sting. Not the version that you already know, from A Very Special Christmas, but rather a more traditional version from his newest exploration of “I’m a Serious Musician” pretention, If On A Winter’s Night… A very pretty version of the song — but I, for one, am ready for the man to return to recording pop songs.

Track 2: “I Believe in Father Christmas” by Greg Lake. Lake, of King Crimson and Emerson, Lake & Powell fame, recorded this amazing track in the early 70s. Hauntingly beautiful music, backed up with scathing lyrics like “they fed me a fairy story, ’till I believed in the Isrealite” and the final “Hallellujah Noel, be it Heaven or Hell — the Christmas we get, we deserve.”

Track 3: “O Come All Ye Faithful” by Pomplamoose. Internet darlings recording a Christmas classic in their own quirky style. (And for those of you who missed my Twitter/Facebook post — they’re currently giving away an mp3 of their brand new, original XMas song if you Give A Goat via World Vision )

Track 4: “Papa Ain’t No Santa Claus (& Mama Ain’t No Christmas Tree)” by Butterbeans & Susie. Bawdy, naughty bluesy argument between lovers in this 1930s vintage underground track.

Track 5: “A Christmas Duel” by The Hives & Cyndi Lauper. The same sort of sentiment, only with a 21st century vibe. Funny, sick and more than a little bit awesome.

Track 6: “The Coventry Carol” by Mediaeval Baebes. Traditional carol, performed acapella. Shivers.

Track 7: “What Do You Get A Wookie For Christmas” by Savanteous Q. Malmsteen. A cover of a track from the lauded Star Wars Christmas album. The answer, of course, is obvious: Wookies don’t celebrate Christmas. They celebrate Life Day. Duh.

Track 8: “Santa Came Home Drunk” by Clyde Lasley & The Cadillac Baby Specials. Blues track, complete with backing soul girls. Hells, yeah.

Track 9: “Christmas Tree” by Lady Gaga. In the 80s, this sort of thing would be a 45 sent out to the fan club. Today, it’s an mp3. Largely disposable bit of cotton-candy amusement from the Haus of Gaga, with the eternal Christmas lyric, “Light me up, put me on top, let’s fa-la-la-la, la-la-la-la!”

Track 10: “Boogaloo Santa Claus” by J.D. McDonald. Early 70s classic funk, Christmas-style.

Track 11: “Holly, Ivy and Rose” by Tori Amos. Traditional (a version of the 15th century carol, “The Holly & The Ivy”) sung as a duet between Tori Amos and her daughter, Natashya Hawley, from Amos’ album Midwinter Graces.

Track 12: “Christmas in Washington” by Steve Earle. Earle laments the state of the nation, and calls out American socialist icons like Woodie Guthrie and Emma Goldman to rise up like Christ and redeem us, for the “unions have been busted, their proud red banners torn.” Haunting and beautiful.

Tracks 13 & 14: “I Like Life (Reprise), Father Christmas (Reprise) and Thank You Very Much (Reprise)” from Scrooge (1970 musical). I finally got a copy of the soundtrack of my favorite musical version of A Christmas Carol, the 1970 film Scrooge with Albert Finney. These are the tracks that accompany Scrooge’s rebirth, and seemed an appropriate close to this year’s selection.

Thanks for reading, folks. Have a wonderful holiday.

Alright, here goes…

Welcome to my favorite song, circa 1983. I got the Business As Usual Album for Christmas ’82 and proceeded to play it daily for the next 8 months or so. Oddly enough, despite regular radio and MTV airplay, this song never charted in the US, because it was never released as a single — which was the criteria at the time. Men At Work – “Be Good Johnny.”

Apple has done it again — found an obscure bit of music for their latest commercial (for the new iPod Nano) which is so damned infectious, I have to go hunting. A while back, it was “New Soul” by Yael Naim, an Israeli. This time around, the track is from a Swedish pop singer — and ironically, it’s a song that bashes the complacency of acquisition-minded suburbanites. Miss Li – “Bourgeois Shangri-La.”

I’d never heard the band Metric before, but stumbled across this track. They were described as part of the whole Indie neo-New Wave thing, which is what drew me to listen. I was rewarded by some really tight instrumentation and brilliantly cutting lyrics: Metric – “Gold Guns Girls.”

Another absolutely *brilliant* mashup by DJ Moule — this time mixing “Walk This Way” by Aerosmith, “Give It Away” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and “Block Rockin’ Beats” by the Chemical Brothers. My jaw, it drops. DJ Moule – “Give This Way.”

Yesterday was Paul Hardcastle’s 52nd birthday. Back in 1985 (when he was 28), he gave us one of the best electro tracks ever recorded (and a big part of my initiation into electronic and sample-based music): Paul Hardcastle – “19.”

Was thinking a bit about Titan AE earlier in the week, wondering if it might have done better as a live-action film. Not sure — but as a starship-nerd, I have to admit that I love the sequence of the main character piloting the ship through the gas clouds, accompanied by this track: The Urge – “It’s My Time To Fly.”

In honor of the ass-screaming drop in temperatures and the snow seen across large parts of the country this week, a track that I think is a better version than the original it covers: The Bangles – “Hazy Shade of Winter.”

…and, speaking of winter: Next Friday, I’ll be posting the annual Friday Music XMas Collection (complete, as usual, with cover art) for your holiday pleasure.

Enjoy, and see you then.