Ritz Barbershop Quartet

You haven't lived until you've heard Elmer Fudd sing his barbershop quartet favorites, haha. This is one of my favorite songs to sing along to... it requires a little extra concentration for your pronounciation when it switches to Elmer Fudd mode though!

"Elmer Fudd Medley" [ buy Swingin' on a Star ]

I just bought a bunch of songs earlier tonight - I'll do a runthrough of some of the ones I purchased sometime in the next few days...

Bluegrass Student Union

I think I'll post some acapella / barbershop quartet type stuff for the next few posts. Dunno why (well, I do know why - I just stumbled across them while listening to my song collection and said to myself, "self, you ought to do a special on these."). It's probably got something to do with all that harmonization or something. *shrug* Me, all I can really do is just sing off-key in the shower (which I don't do, to avoid deafening my family), or sing off-key in the car (which I do, since it's just me).

I think I'd like to do something like a barbershop quartet though... I don't really have a full range or fine control though, but heck, it'd be neat to try. Maybe. If earplugs for everybody else were issued ahead of time, then definitely.

For today, it's the Bluegrass Student Union and their song "The Auctioneer".

Sometimes when I think of how fast auctioneers can talk, I think of the guy who used to do the old Micro Machines commercials... wonder whatever happened to that guy?

Been a few days

Well, it's been a few days, but I've got a few songs I couldn't get out of my head in the meantime. Hmph. That's my lame way of saying that once again, I've been busy. Maybe I'l just start making up exaggerations for why I haven't been posting, like this:

NOW THAT I'M BACK FROM MY TRIP TO PLUTO... I've had some songs and miscellanea from a few other musicblogs stuck in my head the past few days. First off, from Your Pal Doug's latest mix, I've had a few stuck in my head, most especially "Workin' At The Carwash Blues", "Alvin's All-Star Chipmunk Band", "Perpetuum Mobile", and last but DEFINITELY not least "Wenn ich vergnügt bin, muß ich singen" (which is probably the one song I can't stop thinking about).

Next up, after watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, I found that several musicblogs had posted the song sung by Björk. Now, I'm not a big fan of Björk (she tends to put me to sleep), but I'll still post the Björk song here... except it's not The Björk Song! Well, it is "The Björk Song", but not the one she sang at the Olympics. Not even sung by Björk at all! This one is actually more of a love song about Björk, from the ol' Brunching Shuttlecocks comedy site. The site isn't being updated anymore from the looks of things, but the song is still up (which is good because it was the first thing I thought of when I saw the Olympic performance)! Björk Björk Björk! There, that makes it 10.

The posting of the Björk song from the performance seems to have caught labels' attention regarding musicblogs (on a related note, I've decided not to post the link to my personal internet radio station - see last post for details). Part of it has been like some bad soap-opera / intarweb drama with Warner Brothers seemingly trying to astroturf an album via musicblogs. Check The Fotu Hut (yes, I know it's "The Tofu Hut" but the typo was too good to pass up, haha) for some insightful thoughts on the whole issue.

Oh! Reading about the number of visitors different musicblogs get remind me: welcome to all the visitors now heading over from mp3blogs.org! Maybe our average number of visitors a day will go over 50 now! I bet most of that is me refeshing the page to see if anybody commented or just on my way through to check out the site usage stats, hahaha...

On the heels of the Hulk Hogan songs posted the other day come this mp3 from Garth (you might remember him from the Listeners' Choice post a few days back) - this one's Macho Man Randy Savage totally dissing on Hulk Hogan while attempting to rap - very chucklearious!

"Be A Man" - Macho Man Randy Savage [ buy Be A Man ]

Last off, a free download from amazon.com - a hard song to sing until they tell you how to sing it during the song: "Mairzy Dotes" - Eric Nagler [ buy Improvise With Eric Nagler ]

I really need to get myself to a used cd store and find something different to post from the bargain bin or something, heh.

Hulk Hogan / Internet Radio Station?

Quick post before I go off to bed for the night... just poked around until I found something I had that was pretty random, and these two fit that criteria, I'd say... not much to say about them, other than I can see why Hulk Hogan's singing career never really took off...

"Hulkster's Back"
"I Want To Be A Hulkamaniac" - Hulk Hogan

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I used to run a small internet radio station off a spare computer I have on my home network - I got it back up and running recently, and I was thinking of putting a link for it up on here, but a) I don't know if anybody would really listen to it, and b) with the royalty rates I'd have to pay, I don't know if it'd be worth it. What say you? Then you'd get 24/7 listening to the songs in my library (except when the power goes out or my network goes down, of course, haha :P), and depending on listenership I may do a live show once a week or something, similar to Dr Demento. Hmm... anyways, why not leave me some feedback in the comments with what you think? I'd never want to put up affiliate links for the amazon.com album links on here (since I'm providing more of a service as a hobby and don't want to profit), but if I do set up an internet radio station on here I may do that to help defray the royalty fees. Or maybe I won't get caught! But then again, I am running a musicblog here, posting songs up every day or two... I laugh in the face of danger! Ha! Ha! Ehh...

Yeah, leave some feedback. I'm still thinking this one over.

Musicblogging at work (continued), and finding new tunes!

In her last post, Megs was posting about some songs she purchased because she learned all about them from another musicblog - here's two songs whose albums I purchased because of musicblogging as well...

Yeah, so it's more Brazillian music, but I love how the instrumentation matches the song. For a while, all I'd really listen to were "Homenagem A Mongo" and this... these two particular songs are the culprits for me wanting sambas, haha.

"Os Orixás" - Trio Mocotó [ buy Samba Rock ]

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I never really listened to Ben Folds, and even after hearing this particular song I still don't, mostly because the rest of his material doesn't compare! I knew of The Flaming Lips via their octophonic (yes, 8 speakers are needed) album "Zaireeka", and I had investigated a few of their other songs on the iTunes Music Store, but other than that I wasn't really interested in them very much. Their music seemed much too experimental for me to enjoy.

That said, when you combine the oddball lyrics of The Flaming Lips with Ben Folds' piano playing, and add a lounge backup band in there, you get laid-back stuff like this that can't really be created any other way I can think of. Now if only Ben Folds did more songs like this...

"She Don't Use Jelly" - Ben Folds Five [ buy Lounge-A-Palooza ]

I think that's actually the best song on that particular album... the other ones aren't too bad, but they're not in the same league.

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I've added a new link over on the right, over by the link to the songs on the iTunes Music Store - if you're using iTunes, why not check out MusicMobs? You upload your iTunes library to their servers, and it'll chart how many times you've listened to each particular artist and various things like that, but it will also recommend artists to you based on what you tend to listen to the most! It's interesting to check out... you can see my profile on there to see what I've got. Yes, I probably do listen to Vanilla Ice a bit more than I really should.

A similar service is Audioscrobbler, where you'd leave a program running in the background and it would report each song you listened to to their servers where it would chart things on the fly. I have a profile on there as well, but it's been a while since I've used it... they were having some server problems a few months back and wouldn't give you any recommendations, but I believe they've fixed those now. In any case, both services allow you to browse around and see what else people who have similar taste in music like that you might not regularly listen to.

Too popular for my bandwidth / Musicblogging at work!

We're starting too get too many downloads here, so I'll either be cutting back on how long I leave songs up or looking for a new place to upload to. Or both. Or just post REALLY UNPOPULAR SONGS. Or just not "The Mighty Quinn". It's evidently much too good a song, but not too good for me.

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Spoilt Victorian Child is my new favorite musicblog. Of my many favorites, even though defeats the purpose of using the phrase "my favorite". I'll come in again. Amongst my favorite weaponry...
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I can't remember from what blog I picked up Sondre Lerche's You Know So Well , but whoever it was, thank you. I just bought the album, further proving that musicblogging works! I can be a little dense with music, as much as I like it; it can take a while for a song or artist to really sink their claws in me personally, even though I can pronounce snap judgments with the best of 'em. Sondre Lerche bowled me over and I can't stop listening. I like to play Faces Down back to back with Jump's Between The Dim and The Dark. Or my 2002 Dockstreet bootleg of Jump.
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And now, the random song:
Kasahara Hiroko - Sora E (to the Sky) Offline until Friday, sorry!

I've never actually seen the anime this song is from, Romeo's Blue Skies (or Romeo No Aoi Sora) but I got this song somehow. It's interesting in that it's a waltz and very nearly a polka... not at all your typical anime opening number. But it's sweet and you can dance to it!

Bat-Sambas

First off, a song that was one of my favorites to listen to for a long time. The other songs on this particular album are pretty catchy to listen to as well, roughly similar in style, and just plain fun to listen to... I think I can pin most of the blame for me liking Brazillian music to this particular album.

"Homenagem A Mongo" - Som Tres [ buy Samba Soul 70! ]

I think I'll post a few more songs similar to that over the next few days... I've also been working on the next virtual mix cd to post: "Music To Getaway By". Think of good songs you'd see in movie chase sequences!

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The other day I was editing another picture that Megs once drew of me ages ago, and since I was bored I animated the hand so the final result looked like this:



That reminded me more of the Batusi than Pulp Fiction (mostly due to me never seeing Pulp Fiction...). So, when I was originally searching for pages about the Batusi to show a friend of mine, I came across this site: Batman & Robin Play Their Favorites - from the looks of things I think they're a dj duo from the Netherlands. They even have their a bat-sampler on their site!

So, to continue with the bat-songs...

"Evil Plot to Blow Up Batman" - Neal Hefti [ buy Batman Theme & 19 Other Bat Songs ]
How can you resist an album with a title like that??

"I Whupped Batman's Ass" - Wesley Willis [ buy Greatest Hits ]
I once started singing "I Whupped Batman's Ass" for a friend of mine while he was driving down the road, and he almost had to pull off to the side he was laughing so hard he began to cry! If you don't know who Wesley Willis is or you've never heard one of his songs, then that's probably a good thing. If you still want to know who he is, then imagine a 300 lb schizophrenic man who used to make a living playing songs on street corners with a Casio keyboard's demo mode - about all the songs had the same tune, just different lyrics... most of the time. http://www.monzy.org/wesley/ says it better than I can (and also has a Wesley Willis song generator at the bottom of the page), and MTV has a few more details of him as well as the news of his death almost a year ago.

Hayley Westenra

"I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free." - Red, The Shawshank Redemption

That's how this song makes me feel. Since it's a recent release, no full version of this song, just the excerpt off of the official webpage...

realaudio excerpt: "Pokarekare Ana" - Hayley Westenra [ buy Pure ]

Listeners' Choice!

A few days back I made a post asking for entries for a listeners' choice post, where you guys out there get to pick what you want to showcase on Radio KRUD - here's the results!

"Cool Waves" - Spiritualized [ buy Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space ]
Garth writes in: "Spiritualized combines indie-style rock with a bit of gospel. It's a testament to their talent and creativity that they make such a seemingly mismatched combination work, and work well. Like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, they like to build up to a climax over the course of a song. The selection here, "Cool Waves", starts off with a simple tune and a
spare arrangement, and builds to a powerful finish backed by a choir. It's from their album "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space", and all-around excellent album. The title track, a sort of fugue built from interlocking vocal parts, is also highly recommended."

(I agree, the song is like a choir + string / wind ensemble + a hint of rock, and it's very relaxing... the song gradually builds up, and then gently lets you back down.)

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Next, three songs from Evelyn:
"Carolina Girls" - Chairmen Of The Board [ buy Beach Music Anthology ]
Evelyn is a big fan of shag (beach) music, and I can fully imagine myself listening to this while crusing down those straightaway roads to the beach. It's rather peppy. It makes me think of somebody taking only half of the E Street Band (the sound isn't as full as in Springsteen's songs) and giving them some Prozac! Either that, or Boz Scaggs' backup band.

"Come Undone" - Cravin' Melon [ buy Squeeze Me ]
Since Evelyn is from the Carolinas, she's also decided to provide us with this rocking song from South Carolina band Cravin' Melon. Not that bad of a tune. You can definitely tell they're a southern band by their style.

"Teenagers, Kick Our Butts" - Dar Williams [ buy End of the Summer ]
Finally, we have Dar Williams', Evelyn's favorite singer/songwriter, performing "Teenagers, Kick Our Butts". "She's been compared to Joni Mitchell and the like," says Evelyn - I'll have to take her word for it, as I haven't heard Joni Mitchell, at least not knowingly. :(

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"Sing, Sing, Sing" - Barrage [ official site ]
For the final submission, Todd brings us this track by Canadian group Barrage: "I changed my mind at least 3 times about which track to submit.  I love the whole album, and it's difficult to get an idea of Barrage's show from just one track.  But since I was a jazz band member in high school, this song gets a tiny boost over the rest. A violin version of a swing classic? Fantastic."

Oh. My. God. Big band jazz meets string ensemble. My jaw dropped when I started to hear this for the first time - I started listening before really reading the blurb Todd wrote, and when I heard the violins I was spellbound. If they ever come by this way on tour or something, I definitely need to see their show if the rest of their material is anywhere near that. Wow. That makes me think of T-Tauri, whose cover of The Saber Dance I downloaded back in the day off of mp3.com before the site changed ownership, except this isn't as rock-oriented as T-Tauri is.

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Well, that's that for today - if you've ever got something you just want to share, feel free to send it my way along with a quick blurb about the song if you'd like! Thanks to our submitters for this round - you've all got good taste in music. :D

Russian Techno

Another Krud Cred spotting!

"Tänne asti lukeneille palkkiona linkki Radio KRUD iin, josta löytyy maailman ehdottomasti ärsyttävin instrumentaalikappale (jos hyviä lottokappaleita ei lasketa) - Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass: "The Spanish Flea". Yeah, baby."

And here I was thinking that I'd be the only one to ever say "yeah baby" to Herb Alpert (besides Mrs. Herb Alpert, of course)! If anyone's able to translate that page, kindly do so in the comments if possible - I'd be interested in hearing what was said! :D

Continuing on with the international flavor brought to us by the last two KRUD Creds, here is some russian techno. I've got no idea about the details, but back in the heyday of Napster and free love filesharing, I thought to myself, "Self, you should search for the most random thing you can think of. Now what's the most random thing you can think of? ... I know! Russian techno!" At the very least it gave me some very random songs full of tetris playing and cursing, but this here being a family-oriented musicblog I'm not going to publish them - if you email me nicely then maybe I'll send it to you, haha. After I found these songs, I listened to them a few times, but the novelty soon wore off so I burnt them to a cd and they were forgotten until now!

Russian Techno

Also, I'd like to especially highlight this mashup, it's very addictive to listen to. Picture this:

"Toxic Shack" - Britney Spears + The B 52s [ more mashups by the same author ]

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Quick linkage before I sign off the air: check out Radio CRMW - they've got a pretty good 3-person musicblog going on over there, much like your favorite Radio KRUD!

It's narcissism time!

Tommorrow's my birthday, but we're going out and celebrating today, since Saturdays are the funnest. I'm also going to be posting extremely Megsian songs for the next few days. And I'm starting at the beginning.

The reason I love this musicblogging concept is because I like this personal style of music sharing. My friends and I in high school were mix tape fiends, forever making them and passing them around. It made sense, because CDs were expensive and we all loved music. I owe those friends my affection for Frank Zappa, The Who, Peter Gabriel era Genesis, and much much more.

But these mix tapes ended up getting me my first boyfriend. This charming young lad made the grave mistake of putting together a very special mix tape just for me, and put Crosby, Stills & Nash's Guinnevere on it. Now, me having green eyes and golden hair, I thought the song was meant for me. This may have been correct, or I could have just been indulging in typical self-centric teenager behavior. Anyway, the end result was that I thought he liked me, so I liked him, and he ended up liking me. And then dumping me 6 months later for (wait for it) a man.

First breakups are always harsh, so I'm lucky that I had something so utterly amusing to dwell on to keep me from becoming embittered. (We were still good friends for the rest of high school). My little sister and I even made up alternate words to Dion's Runaround Sue to further push the hilarity. Our version is Runaround STUE, with lines like "He took my love then ran around / with every single guy in town" and "Now people let me put you wise / Stue goes out with other guys!"

I mean, at least it wasn't Teenager in Love. OOOooh oooh, wah-oooh!

Crosby, Stills & Nash - Guinnevere 4:39 [buy Crosby, Stills & Nash]

Dion and the Belmonts - Runaround Sue 2:44 [buy The Best of Dion]

Krud Cred

I just did a quick search on "Radio KRUD" to see where we've been mentioned, and found this:

"Radio Krud is een nieuwe mp3blog die goed begint met Frank Zappa en het fantastische Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra."

My best guess at a translation: "Radio Krud is a new mp3blog with good beginnings with Frank Zappa and the fantastic Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra."

That gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling on the inside, hehehe... :D

Ok, I now return you to whatever in the world you were doing before I interrupted...

Herb Alpert & Mashups

Only one submission so far for the Radio KRUD public access weekend - guess nobody has any songs they'd like others to hear (hint: this is a great opportunity for people who have their own bands to promote their own songs!). Don't make me threaten to have a pledge drive! :P

Anyway, here's some songs that my friends would say that I'm famous for, since I seem to play them rather often...

I remember hearing "The Spanish Flea" for the first time when I saw the Mr. Nice flash animation - my dad saw it and said "Oh! That's Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass playing!" I hadn't heard of Herb Alpert before then, and ever since I've been driving my friends nuts with different versions of The Spanish Flea...

"The Spanish Flea" - Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass [ buy Definitive Hits ]

(I have to say, though, that of the 8375+ songs in my iTunes library, the version by Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 is at the very top based on number of times each song has been played. 53 times! Yes, I really think that song is That Catchy.)

Next is a Herb Alpert mashup (if you didn't know, a mashup is when someone takes usually the lyrics from one song and "mashes" it with the tune from another, kind of like DJ Dangermouse's mix of The Grey Album), using "Whipped Cream" by Herb Alpert + "By The Time I Get To Arizona" by Public Enemy. Who knows where I got this one, but after listening to it too many times now, whenever I hear the actual song "Whipped Cream" I start to wonder what happened to the lyrics.

"By The Time I Get To Arizona" (Herb Alpert / Public Enemy mashup)

whatta coicidink!

What a coincidence! I've been busy and it's MY birthday, too! Actually, mine isn't until this weekend, but Glenn and I do share the awesomest month to get born in.

So in honor of us both, the ONLY BIRTHDAY SONG I HAVE. GASP. OK, only birthday song I have on CD that I can rip up mp3 style.

The Monkees - Happy Birthday To You [If your name is Michael, get this ESPECIALLY.]

For my birthday, I'm going to be self-indulgent, to contrast with Glenn's hobbit style party. Heh. So I'll be posting ME songs for the next few days. I have quite the collection, oddly enough.

Listeners' Choice?

Been busy the past few days, and still going to be busy for the next few, and yesterday was my birthday (yay 22 years old!), so yeah, it's been busy all around, hahaha...

Don't fear, though, because I'm here to bring you a quick song to liven up this boring period of no updates from me! I originally found this song online and downloaded it on a whim - I'm kind of a sucker for foreign songs (especially ones from Brazil - we'll have more of those later), so when I saw this song I just wanted to hear it. I didn't give it a proper listen until today while cleaning my room it just came up in my playlist. It's not that bad, but I don't know where it's from, haha.

"Diabo No Corpo ("Devil in the Body") (feat Lenine)" - Pedro Abrunhosa

I haven't found anywhere to buy the cd yet, though. Shucks...

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As my birthday gift to you, I'm going to have a listeners' choice day here at Radio KRUD! I was thinking of this last week but never got a chance to post it (otherwise listeners' choice day would have been yesterday on my birthday, haha). Here's the details - you've got until this Saturday to email any mp3s you have or song names (and if I can get a hold of the song to post then I'll post it), along with a short blurb about each, and then this Sunday or Monday (depends when I get finished compiling it up) I'm going to be opening up the Radio KRUD station to you! I'll try to fit in as many songs as I can (webspace allowing), and depending how many submissions we get I may only get to do one from each listener, but (space allowing) I'll do as many as I can. Just think of it as getting your own musicblog for a day with none of the commitment, or better yet, public access day at Radio KRUD! :D

So what are you waiting for? Send me your favorites! Depending on response I might even make this some sort of semi-regular occurence.