Jarabe de Palo! / more music I can't understand

I've been really busy with so many people coming to visit me I really haven't had time to post here. I'm grabbing some quick songs to post before my parents come pick me up today, since now they're up to visit this weekend. Everyone loves me!

Jarabe de Palo is a group from Spain I never would have heard of except that my best friend took a semester abroad there and came back with them. From what I've heard of them, the group is pretty diverse musically and with what instruments they use and sorta half traditional with salsa and latin music. After that, it's all in Spanish, which I don't understand at all.



Jarabe de Palo - Perro Apaleao 3:23

Jarabe de Palo & Celia Cruz - A Lo Loco 4:15

Temple City Kazoo Orchestra

Got a quickie today - this one comes to us from a vinyl album of songs from the Dr. Demento Radio Show (if you've never heard the Doctor's show, it's a place where you can hear the most oddball songs and skits around).

Today's song is a cover of the Led Zeppelin song "Whole Lotta Love".

"Whole Lotta Love" - The Temple City Kazoo Orchestra [ buy Tales From The Rhino ]

The Tofu Hut is running a special now on acapella music, and some of it sounds like it's from novelty records (such as this particular song) - check it out if acapella music is your sort of thing... I've got a few acapella tracks I'm tempted to post on here if I don't see them show up over there, oh yes...

By request: Ukeleles!

By request of Teague comes an investigation into ukelele music!

First off comes "Uke Til You Puke", a sort of punk-rock ukelele ensemble.
"Tiptoe Thru the Tulips"

Next is the "Serious Ukelele Ensemble" No full songs of theirs to sample, but they do have short clip of a few different songs on their two albums...
"The William Tell Overture"
"The Entertainer" (files no longer exist on source server, links therefore removed)

John King has taken various classical songs and set them unaccompanied to ukelele...
"Allegro, from Concerto in D" - Vivaldi
"The Washington Post March" - Sousa

The Hazzards (formerly known as "The Ukes of Hazzard") is a two-girl ukelele group out of New York City. In addition to their one song available for free download and 5 others for $1 each, they also have a music video for their song "Gay Boyfriend" available for viewing.
"Let's Get Romantic"

Jonny Flash has some of the oddest covers of songs I've heard.
"I Think I'm Turning Japanese" - cover of The Vapors

The Fabulous Heftones perform all sorts of old-timey music, and all their songs are free to download!

As if just plain ukeleles weren't strange enough, ukelele/typewriter provides an accompaniement that makes ukeleles themselves look normal!
"Creep" - cover of Radiohead

Ukelele Afternoon brings ukelele music to Tokyo - probably best to check out the english pages, but I've found some mp3s on there that weren't on the english site, and some that were even off a totally different site as well...
donguri.mp3
"Ukelele Holy Night"
"Everybody Needs Somebody To Love" - cover of The Blues Brothers

Sonic Uke brings ukelele music live to NYC from their front stoop!
"The Wind Cries Mary" - cover of Jimi Hendrix

---

What makes this all amazing is this is only a small selection of the large variety of ukelele music that is out there... there seems to be people doing ukelele music for most genres, and several of those artists look like they appear in performance while wearing a cow suit. What the correleation is between ukeleles and cows is, I have no clue.

iTunes iMix

For those of you with iTunes, I've set up an iMix with all the songs posted on Radio KRUD that are available in the iTunes Music Store, making it easy for you to purchase any songs we post here that are available on there as well. Permanent link for it is over on the right for easy access, and if they don't have particular songs that we post that you'd like them to have, then why don't you let them know what it is that you'd want in there?

"Guilty"

I'm feeling a little bit out of it, recovering from jet-lag, so not much of an intro for this song... just some nice quiet blues (as nice as this song sounds, aside from the whole being abandoned by your girlfriend and becoming addicted to cocaine bit of the song, haha). Comic-con was lots of fun, and I got to do a little bit of promotion for Radio KRUD while out in San Diego, so if you're coming here from hearing about it there, I'd like to welcome you and hope you enjoy our selections.


"Guilty", The Blues Brothers [buy The Definitive Album]

I think I'm about ready for another nap...

My favorite Uzbekistan music

I first heard Sevara Nazarkhan last year opening for Peter Gabriel on his Growing Up tour. Going in not knowing a thing about her, except she was on the Real World label, I expected something good and interesting, but she blew me away. For starters, Sevara has an immaculate voice that she really uses as an instrument. Her phrasing is sharp and crisp, then smooth and flowing together, perfectly matching the song and creating moods without the benefit (for me) of understanding what the words mean. Sevara is a singer songwriter from Uzbekistan, where a woman singing and accompanying herself on a stringed instrument is an ancient tradition. Her music is steeped in this tradition, but has many other qualities as well. Peter Gabriel introduced her by saying her sound was a mix between traditional and modern music, but it's how she accomplishes that mix that really astounds me. That and the fact she's a pop star in her native country. Her debut CD on Real World showcases less upbeat and poppy songs, most of them traditional folk songs in fact, but when I saw her perform, she also did songs in a cowboy hat that were decidely more modern without skipping a beat.


Sevara Nazarkhan - Ei Nozanin (Beautiful) 4:14
Sevara Nazarkhan - Yallajonim (My Dearest Song) 4:15
[purchase Yol Bolsin]

Things I picked up in Ireland/Morcheeba

I'm a big fan of buying music I normally wouldn't listen to in other countries. For some reason, that distance seems to make things normally boring and unpalatable into something interesting. It also forces me to broaden my tastes and not just write off entire genres. I like having something of everything. So when I went to Ireland for a couple weeks about 4 years ago, I picked up everything I could (especially the beer, since I was under the drinking age back in the states). I came back with a lot of dance, pop, and eletronica- things totally foreign to the rest of my music collection.

The bigs hits while I was there were Robbie William's Rock DJ, Madison Avenue's Don't Call Me Baby, and other listenable, tongue in cheek dance pop tunes. My favorite (as well my little sister's) was Morcheeba's Rome Wasn't Built In A Day. It's poppy, fun and sweet and gets stuck in your head. Morcheeba, as I've since found out, is a trio that seems to defy cateorization. After getting Fragments of Freedom, which is a great album all in the same vein as Rome, I picked up Who Can You Trust? and Beats & B-sides, both with their own flavours, but both decidely more mellow, jazzy and smooth. It's the sort of thing I'd reccommend as a starter set to trip/trance/pop styles on account of its accesibility, without me knowing much at all about those genres. They don't rely on jarring or dischordant sounds, like a lot of the trance stuff I've heard. The song I've picked out from Who Can You Trust? is the oddity on the album, with horns and strings and is probably the most interesting track, music-wise, though not very representational. The rest is a little bit more electronica, though similar in tone and variation within the song.

But, as usual, you get to judge for yourself. And feel free to tell me things I don't know about this group, or the genres involved, because while I admit my lack of knowledge, I still want to know. I like music, ya know.

Morcheeba - Rome Wasn't Built In A Day [purchase Fragments of freedom]
Morcheeba - Col [purchase Who Can You Trust]


I really reccommend Glenn's mix CD, even though I already have my own Jetsetting CD. It's called Frank Sinatra's Come Fly With Me. XD

Music To Jetset By

Like I mentioned in my previous post, I'm going to the San Diego Comic-Con for the weekend (I'll most likely be hanging out somewhere with my chums around the Keenspot/Keenspace booth *shameless plug*), and for the lack of posting while I'm away I've created the first radioKRUD Virtual Mix CD™! It's a zip file (84 MB! set some time aside for the download!) of a mix of several different songs that would be perfect for a mix on its own. This one in particular is titled "Music to Jetset By"... the overall tone of the album is generally loungeish / jazzy music that make me think of travelling (especially in airplanes). While I've got several dozen more songs that make me feel the same way, I tried to go for a relaxing tone on this mix, and arranged a few in the order of the things they remind me corresponding to an actual trip.

Track Listing (click the album covers to buy each cd - with a large mix like this I strongly urge you to buy the albums these songs are from, or at least try to get the individual songs off of Apple's iTunes store):


1. "The Girl Next Green Door", LUXURY, Fantastic Plastic Machine
Yeah, yeah, I know I covered FPM just a post or two ago. Hearing this song at the beginning makes me think of elevator / lobby music from the 60s: stale air smelling of cigarettes... plaid suits... fiberglass seats with vinyl cushions... molded plastic furniture... public address systems from which you can't understand what's being said... white courtesy phones... and from there the song becomes more sophisticated yet still retains that underlying tone of canned music.



2. "Incident at Gate 7", Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi, Thievery Corporation
Thievery Corporation is one of those bands who tend to make me want to take a nap. This particular song makes me think of just hanging out in the airport, waiting for my flight, staying cool, calm, and collected while people bustle about. If I could only find someone to follow me around all day every day I'd have so much fun picking out songs for my own soundtrack.



3. "Everybody Ready", Action Figure Party, Action Figure Party
I always think of the airplane tugs when I hear this song, or I think of taxiing to the runway. I could see this song being used in a commercial for Southwest Airlines, but why Southwest I couldn't tell you, they just seem like they'd work together. Of all the songs on this mix, this one is probably the odd man out. Compared to the others, this one is more of a jazz than a lounge sound.



4. "Airplane", The Sound of Music, Pizzicato Five
As the song picks up tempo in the beginning I can think of the plane doing its takeoff roll and rotating at the end of the runway. This one's catchy, and I had to include this song in the mix even it if wasn't - the song ends with the sound of jets flying by, making this one completely apropos.



5. "So Nice (Summer Samba)", Six Degrees 100, Bebel Gilberto
A nice calm song as the plane reaches crusing altitude, dipping over, under, and through the clouds on a nice summer day, the sun illuminating the landscape below.



6. "Toh-Sui", Ki-Oku, DJ Krush
I really like this album even if most of the songs all run together. This song in particular appeals to me with the brass tones being interspersed. I've heard a little bit of other DJ Krush albums and they don't really sound anything like this particular one, so if you like jazzy/lounge sort of music then this one is a good one to get, but don't expect all his work to sound like this.



7. "Missione a Bombay", Jet Sounds Revisted, Nicola Conte / Eddy & Dus Vs. Jazzalektro
I used to work at Tower Records back in the day and one day on the store playlist we had "Bossa Per Due" playing - I liked the music (it kind of reminded me of the in-game music if you've ever played The Sims, but the signature track "Jet Sounds" recently became popular due to being used in a certain Joe Boxer commercial), and bought the album. "Jet Sounds Revisted" is a collection of remixes of the different songs on "Bossa Per Due", so if you enjoy this then I'd recommend checking that album out as well.



8. "Dolphin Dance", Maiden Voyage, Herbie Hancock
More cruising in-flight music, but this one is more jazz than loungey.



9. "Bright Nights (feat. Yukimi Nagano)", Waltz for Koop, Koop
I discovered Koop via the "Jet Sounds Revisited" album... nice and soft...



10. "Shadows of Ourselves"
11. "Lebanese Blonde"
12. "Le Monde"
The Mirror Conspiracy, Thievery Corporation
The style of Thievery Corporation gives me more of a feeling of being an international traveler. If I were filthy rich and could afford to travel internationally at the drop of a hat, I'd hire someone to follow me around with a pair of speakers hooked up to this particular album, just so I could have music to set the scene, hahaha...



13. "Il Cerchio Rosso"
14. "Bossa Per Due"
Bossa Per Due, Nicola Conte
See my notes a few paragraphs back about "Bossa Per Due" - the song "Il Cerchio Rosso" really does sound like in game music from The Sims!



15. "Room Service", The Fifth Release From Matador, Pizzicato Five
Just the thing to relax to when you finally arrive at your hotel, stretched out on the bed with your shoes kicked off!


So that's the mix - I had to take the other songs I've posted off to fit this up, but I think that the mix in this one makes up for it. Like I said, most of the songs are of a jazzy/loungey type, so if that's not your sort of thing then you might want to steer clear and check out Megs' post about The Rutles instead.

See you when I get back!

Picking Up The Slack/Request Line

I am going to be very, very, very sad this week. Comicon in San Diego is a yearly tradition for me, but my moving to Canada prevents me from going this year. So I will miss the chance to hang out with fellow radioKRUDer Glenn while helping Dave pick up the slack.
We've gotten a few emails about the pictures - I drew them in Expression (a vector program) and they're supposed to blend in perfectly with the site design for radioKRUD I haven't quite finished yet.
If you're on Livejournal and want to get this blog on your page, I set up a syndicated feed there.

ONTO THE MUSIC!

By request of my dear friend Susan, I've dug out my old Rutles CD and ripped a couple of songs from this classic group. There are so many amazing songs in their repitoire, it was hard to single the number down, but here's what I choose to represent such an iconic band that has recorded so many hits through such a long period of time:


Hold My Hand
Ouch!
Another Day

Dirk, Nasty, Stig and Barry (the Rutles) were a Beatles parody put on by Neil Innes and Eric Idle (of Monty Python fame). These songs come from the movie that chronicles the group from its comic inception to its even more comic end. It's hilarious as a parody, but the Beatles imitation is downright creepy in the songs. Hold My Hand, with it's "yeah yeah yeah"s manages to combine at least two Beatles songs into one, sounding like both at the same time, while not actually borrowing the Beatles tunes. Ouch! doesn't sound as much like Help!, but has a lot more fun with the "love hurts" concept than any song I've ever heard.

What's great, though, is that these songs stand alone just fine. I got tricked when I first heard them. I was 14 and a friend stuck them onto an otherwise serious classic r&b; tape and since so many bands of that period had silly songs, Another Day didn't stand out as fabricated to sound just like them. When he tried it next with Piggy In the Middle and Cheese and Onions, I got it. But then, I was even then a Monty Python fan and knew Eric Idle's musical work with the show, as well as Neil Innes, who colaberated with them on songs from the movies.

[buy the album]
[buy the movie!]

Pitchfork Media

I don't know if any of you have ever heard of a website called http://www.pitchforkmedia.com but that's where I usually go when I want to find very obscure songs by unheard of bands. Pitchfork Media deals with music news, album reviews, and they also provide a section where you download free MP3s of, as I stated earlier, relatively unknown bands.
 
For the most part, I have not been disappointed with the songs I have found there. In fact, I've found some real gems that have made me want to go out and by the CDs that these unknown artists have released. Some of the better bands I've run across are the Desert Fathers, Girls Are Short, the Russian Futurists, Oneida, the Doxies, Fiel Garvie, Sea Ray, and Raising the Fawn. Those bands are all worth checking out as is http://www.pitchforkmedia.com.
 
Also, I would like to apologize for the severe lack of substance in my posts. I'm at the family computer right now and my own computer does not have an Internet connection, so I can't do as much as I normally could with these posts.

Notice:

No musicblog post from me tonight, I'm going to be going to the San Diego Comic-Con from Wednesday through Sunday, so I may or may not be able to update while I'm away - instead, I'm working on the first radioKRUD Virtual Mix CD™ "Music to Jetset By" to be posted tomorrow! Hope you enjoy it!

Fantastic Plastic Machine

Fantastic Plastic Machine, aka Tomoyuki Tanaka (no, not that Tomoyuki Tanaka of Godzilla fame, the other Tomoyuki Tanaka) provides us today with music to cover pretty much any mood. It's lounge crossed with electronica crossed with dance crossed with retro crossed with crossed with cool crossed with I think you get the idea. And how cool is FPM?


I don't think things could get cooler than that guy right there (especially if you see his picture on the front page of his his website - that one in particular just EXHUDES coolness!). To me, FPM is like natural pop music - nothing really artificial here!

It's hard to describe the songs overall, though. They can't be tied down to one particular genre, but overall they'd be considered somewhere between pop and electronica. You can really tell the difference between Tanaka's early works versus his later ones too... the overall tone is much more mature, so it may be possible that you don't enjoy earlier works as opposed to later or vice versa.

My main complaint about FPM is that too many of songs all seem to sound the same in the end... there's only a few particular songs I can place to their titles, and those are generally my favorite tracks as well ("Take Me To The Disco" from Beautiful; "Theme of Luxury", "Honolulu, Calcutta", "He Became A Beatnik", "Lotto", "I've Forgotten My Fagotto", "The Girl Next Green Door", and "MPF (Mezzo Pianoforte)" from LUXURY; "L'aventure Fantastique", "Dear Mr. Salesman", "Bachelor Pad", and "First Class '77" from Fantastic Plastic Machine). These songs all really have something major (some hook, or lyrics, or even just how cheesily retro they are) to distinguish them from one another. Everything else eventually puts me to sleep because of their unremarkableness, but I suppose that could be a good thing in the case of a cd selection for soft party background music. It also took a few listens for some of the other tracks (some of my favorites, in fact) to grow on me - I wasn't sure if I liked them or not until I gave them a few listens so I could think them over.

Other than that, I think FPM is a rather good listen. It's as if 60's pop/dance music were still being made today! See what you think!

"Bachelor Pad" [ Buy the album! ]
"He Became A Beatnik" [ Buy the album! ]
"Whistle Song [ Buy the album! ]

Artscape Present & Past: "Violent Femmes" / "Preservation Hall Jazz Band"

Tonight I went with a friend of mine to Artscape, a free art festival held in downtown Baltimore every year - this was my second year going (last year was much better since I was able to actually attend more than one event), but it's great to go at all if you can because there's three or four different stages with all sorts of different musical acts or bands performing. It's kind of like a small-scale Music Midtown with the same variety of acts, but (my favorite part) this is FREE! :D A shame I missed out yesterday - Isaac Hayes was performing, and how cool would it have been to hear the theme from "Shaft"?? But I digress...

Tonight we went to see the Violent Femmes (who aren't really "violent", nor are they "femmes" - false advertising, I say! When I hear "violent femmes" I want to see catfights!). I hadn't really known much about them other than that they did the hit "Blister in the Sun" and occasionally hearing "Kiss Off" yet not knowing the title of that particular song until I looked it up about 3 minutes ago. After that concert, though, I've got quite a bit of appreciation for their artistry. Not only did they rock out, but I heard them cover all sorts of genres - rock, pop, blues, country... this is a rather versatile group.

But see, the first thoughts that usually enter my head when I hear someone mention "Violent Femmes" are either "out of tune" or "bad singing". But this is where they actually ROCK - while most, ok, all bands have some semblance of musical harmony ("The Shaggs" notwithstanding - I'd say that "My Pal Foot Foot" is more an excercise in dada than actual music), you have to admit that singer/guitarist Gordon Gano doesn't exactly have a throat of gold. Furthermore, during the concert they brought out a brass ensemble during one of the songs, and they belted out the most bizarre cacophony I have ever heard outside of the dopper effect on a bicycle bell.

However, being "out of tune" or having "bad singing" doesn't really hold them back - they rock out at practically everything else! Guitar melodies went up and down with fingers flying all over the place! Bass lines thumb-da-da-thum-thum'ed like crazy! In fact, one of the best things to see during the concert was the percussionist rocking out INCREDIBLY hard on the drums! He was beating those drums as if they owed him money! What's more, unlike most percussionists, this guy was not sitting down on a little stool for the duration of the concert... oh no, this guy was running around and jumping up and down and banging and beating and clanging and clashing all over the place! Amazing!

This is where we flashback to last-year's Artscape: at this same particular stage last year I saw the "Preservation Hall Jazz Band", best known for their performance of "When The Saints Go Marching In". I've never been to New Orleans, but apparently they're one of the must-see things-to-do down there. They performed at last year's Artscape, and it was an overall entertaining show.


The best part was (and you'll have to skip ahead to about 5:55 into the song to hear something similar) their percussionist - he looked as if he was ready to fall asleep for most of the set, but when they came to that final song and launched themselves into a rowdy version of "When The Saints Go Marching In", boy howdy did that guy become alive. He rolled into one of the most impressive drum solos I've seen - when you're hitting those drums and cymbals hard enough to cause one of your cymbals to go flying across the stage then I consider that a fantastic feat.


- "Jesus Walking on the Water", The Violent Femmes [ Buy the album! ]
- "When The Saints Go Marching In", The Preservation Hall Jazz Band [ Buy the album! ]

I love those celtic/rock/folk/fun guys!

I went to college in the middle of nowhere, Virginia, at a woman's college. Needless to say, when a band of handsome guys who played incredibly fun music were in the vicinity, I was there. Carbon Leaf is one of those local southern acts that I discovered while in college and boy-deprived. When first saw them in 98 or 99, they weren't alltogether great, but some of their songs were excellent and their overall energy was just fun. Over the years, they've honed that potential into a real quality sound and their songwriting ability isn't so much hit or miss as hit. The last time I saw them perform was last fall in Atlanta and I brought my parents with me to the concert. My dad is even more of an audiophile than I am, being a recording engineer and not just someone who grew up around recording engineers, and given that they were playing in a small venue, their sound was such that even my dad was impressed. But let's face it, my whole family is one big sucker for Celtic music and rock n' roll, and Carbon Leaf's blend is usually pretty darn good.

The band also encourages sharing certain of their albums via mp3. You can go to their webpage [carbonleaf.com] and find a mass of songs for download. I'm just going to pimp one of my favorites here:

Carbon Leaf - Shine [This album Echo Echo is one of their best. Also reccommended highly is Five Alive, their live album. But going to see on of their shows live is the BEST.]

Actually, I lie. Better than a Carbon Leaf live show is a Jump, Little Children live show. Similarily "cursed" with a just plain clumsy name (Carbon Leaf is a little too neohippie, while JLC is named after a really awesome song, it's long and easily confused), the band just changed their official title to what has been their nickname for a long time. They now go by just "Jump". Which is a lot of what you do at a concert. These guys are just plain fun. At least half the time. The rest their come out with sweet, uncanny softer songs that utilize one of the best voices I've ever heard.

The song I'm posting of theirs is one you can't buy on any album. I like that kind of sample, because then I get both a taste for the artist and don't feel cheated when I buy the album and already have some of the songs. The reason Pink Lemonade isn't published is because of the evils of copyright extension. Most old stuff ultimately goes into the public domain, but the keepers of You Are My Sunshine are very, well "greedy" and thanks to lobbying on the part of bigger copyright holders (like Disney and its mouse) they get to keep it. But you can't have Pink without the Sunshine.

Jump, Little Children - Pink Lemonade

If you like Pink, the albums that reflect that sound best are their early Licorice Tea Demos and Buzz. Both are availible together in their Early Years compilation, as both albums are out of print. Magazine was probably their most well known release, featuring the ballad Cathedrals. Vertigo has some excellent songs, including some of my favorites, but is an exercise in bad recording. The mix is dull and bland. Their latest, Between The Dim And The Dark, on the other hand, is one of their finest recordings and is their best album, as opposed to a bunch of great songs in one place. Their sound has mellowed over the years, but deepened as it went.

I've always enjoyed them the best, still, as a live band. I've travelled states in the dead of night to see these guys and they're one of the things I miss most about living down south. Thank goodness for the Live Music Archive and the dedicated people who record their concerts!

Yoko Kanno / Samply Red: "Perfect Rouge

Welcome to all the listeners from The Tofu Hut - gee, only a few days live and we're already being pimped out? I guess that means we're starting to hit The Big Time in musicblogging already (whatever that is)! The mind boggles! Have a look around and see if you like what you hear - the site's still going through some changes thanks to megs, so we are going to have a redesign shortly. But who cares what the site looks like? On with the tunes!!

Continuing on from yesterday with peppy Japanese music, if you've listened to at least the music to Cowboy Bebop (movie or tv series), or even listened to a few other various anime soundtracks, you ought to be familiar with the work of Yoko Kanno.

I found out about this particular album when I went on a trip to Japan to visit some friends for two weeks, and ended up wandering around the country by myself for one of those weeks. During my stay in Tokyo I was wandering through Shibuya and found a Tower Records store and figured I'd take a look around. After poking around I saw this cd set up for sampling, and after giving it a try I was hooked - took me a little over a year to find the cd, but thanks to the magic of the internet and my new favorite webpage for cds from Japan (cdjapan.co.jp, of course), I was able to hunt it down. Tonight I'd like to share with you some of her work - used for TV commercials - as part of the group "Samply Red". Think of it as music from Cowboy Bebop meets big band jazz, or just plain old big band jazz if you haven't heard the music to Cowboy Bebop...


"Perfect Rouge III TV Version"
"Perfect Rouge II TV Version"
Buy the album!

Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra

Ahh, Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, or 東京スカパラダイスオーケストラ if you're Japanese. This (and by "this" I mean their cover of "Hit The Road Jack") is perfect pick-me-up music, yet has enough of a lounge sound to keep you in your seat - I suppose it's the type of music that would have you reclining in your La-Z-Boy, yet you can't resist tapping your feet in time with the music.

Not all of their songs have that kind of happy-relaxed feeling. Oh no, some of them (the theme from "Tetris", or their take on the theme from "Lupin the 3rd", for example) have a kind of wild anything-goes feel to them. In fact, actually, the theme to "Lupin the 3rd" makes me feel like getting in wild car chases from the police. I guess that's the nice thing about ska... it's kind of a controlled chaos. I'm not much of a ska fan, but I know what I like.

This site says more than I can ever say about the band. Take a look through to see what T.S.P.O. is all about, and then download the songs. Go ahead and cut loose and dance if nobody's looking. I won't tell. Really! Promise.

"Hit The Road Jack" [ Buy the album! ]
"Tetris"
ルパン三世'78 (Theme from "Lupin the 3rd") [ Buy the album! ]

Bit Of An Introduction

The Daveman here with a bit of an introductory post. I figure I'd just say what music I listen to (i.e. what kind of stuff you might find me posting here). I guess you could dumb down my musical tastes to "everything" because I do in fact like almost every conceivable genre out there. It doesn't mean I like all the music I hear, but the chances that I will are pretty good.

Anyway, I'll start off by introducing an artist who has had his hand in a number of musical genres and done well in them all as far as I can tell. He's a bit of an idol of mine, a man by the name of Devin Townsend. He's the lead singer of the heavy metal band Strapping Young Lad and has also formed a punk rock band called Punky Bruster and gone solo to do alternative rock. He has his own label called Hevy Devy Records at http://www.hevydevy.com where you can download a full track from each of the albums he has released. I was able to get a really cool live version of "Oh My Fucking God" by Strapping Young Lad from their live album No Sleep Till Bedtime from mp3.com, but I don't what's going on with that site nowadays. All of Devin Townsend's work is of high quality, so go check it out any way you can.

Frank and Frank

Well, well, well. Here we are. When Glenn first asked me to join in on this MUSICBLOGGING(!!!) adventure, my first concern was that we might populate it exclusively with Frank Zappa songs.


So, I consider it my duty to begin with a Mothers tune. Or rather, two tunes in one. I don't have this album (We're Only In It For The Money - link to amazon.com) on CD, just taped off a friend's LP, so I'm not sure where I got this mp3 from. It takes an instrumental he did in 1961 and pairs it with the lambast against hippies and not-hippies and just about everyone that runs through this album. It's also a couple of really catchy songs. The reprise of Ugliest Part is a classic. It's the kind of song that you sneak onto mix tapes for friends at the very end.
Frank Zappa - Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance / What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body (reprise) (mp3 format) (2.4 mb)

I'll balance this out with another Frank of reknown.

Frank Sinatra - On The Road To Mandalay (mp3 format) (1.4 mb)

I was reminded of this song while reading Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the comic book, which is fantastic and should bear no relation to the movie). Volumn two, Issue Three is titled And The Dawn Comes Up Like Thunder, which is the strange ending line in this song. Sinatra gives it such a strange gusto everytime he comes to it, it really stands out as memorable. It's a strange song, period; it's much more flexible and all over the place than most of the standards he sang. The song is from Come Fly With Me (link to amazon.com), one of his many theme albums on the Capitol label. If you have any interest in Sinatra, start out with the Capitol albums. I know you want to hear "My Way". Buy the song on i-tunes, but don't buy his later albums. The Capitol albums are class all the way through for the most part, and arguably his best years singing.

OK, that's it for me this time. I'm just glad this sort of thing is legal up here in the fabled Canadas. For now.

"Hello and Welcome" / "Remastering"

Hello and welcome to radioKRUD - I suppose it's best to provide a quick intro as for what drove me to do my own musicblogging...

I had been reading my friends' list on LiveJournal, and one of the particular people whose journal I followed had been posting a song or three every few days. I downloaded each song she posted, adding them to a particular playlist of just the songs she had posted, and after a while I noticed that I really grew to like most of the songs I had found out about from her. I'd buy the albums of some of the bands she had posted songs from, and started keeping an eye out for more material from many of the artists. Eventually I got around to asking her one day where she found out about these songs, and one of her sources she pointed me towards was The Tofu Hut. I started to poke around and realized that I myself did a little bit of musicblogging occasionally since I liked to post various songs in my own journal and type up a short blurb about each - I just tried to share different types of songs I myself enjoyed, hoping that it might help others find new artists that they'd enjoy as well.

At the same time that I was discovering other musicblogs, soul sides posted a brief article titled (get this) "So You Want to Start an Audioblog"! What serendipity! I was toying with the idea of starting my own musicblog, and here was the kick in the butt to get me started. I'll be joined shortly by two of my friends who were also keen on sharing other songs that they happened to enjoy as well, so there ought to be a diverse selection of tunes coming through here in due time. radioKRUD is going to be going under some fixing up over the next few days as well as we finish getting things straightened out over here, so bear with us.

So, now that that's out of the way, on to the songs! Today I'd like to make a case against remastering - for the most part, remastering is a good thing! It helps songs sound cleaner (to me, at least - others with ears more golden than mine may take offense at the slightest bit of sound-sanitizing), etc etc. Well, recently I'd taken to listening to old Frank Zappa tunes - most notably his "Crusing with Ruben & the Jets"... Zappa was heavily influenced by old doo-wop music, and I myself tend to prefer his songs like this or his instrumentals over some of his more raunchier material, but I digress...

As you can see on the album's page on amazon.com, the cd's recieved rather mixed reviews. In the time that I listened to the songs from the album, they were all recorded from the original vinyl version. Eventually I couldn't stand it any longer and wanted to get my hands on a copy of the album so I'd have a better quality version of "Jelly Roll Gum Drop", and was I dismayed to hear that the cd remastered version of the song sounded sloppy, as if the Mothers were out of sync and recording in a tile room with all the echo. I suppose that I'll eventually get used to it, but it's going to take a while. While the remaster was done and approved by FZ himself, I personally think he missed the mark with it as the quality of the material in the remastered version has gone greatly downhill. All I can say is it's a good thing I kept the mp3s ripped from the original album! I'll let you decide for yourself which sounds better...

"Jelly Roll Gum Drop" (album version) - Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention
"Jelly Roll Gum Drop" (cd version) - Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention

Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments... thanks again!