The Not-Pop Jukebox

I've never posted anything from Flight of the Conchords. That's because they were dreadfully popular for a time, even appearing on The Simpsons. But the trick here is that they aren't a pop act, regardless of having had their own HBO series and BBC radio show.

If you've not listened to the gents from New Zealand, I urge you to do so. They're a comedy team rather than a musical act, one that happens to perform songs. Since I don't have cable and don't live in London I'd not really heard of the famous duo until I somehow ended up with Doggy Bounce, extended to almost a minute and a half. I had been considering posting that here but being so short I thought it needed another song for back-up.

I almost got kicked out of the public library when I began listening to more of the Flight of the Conchords catalog. Of all of their songs, though, the Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros gave me the loudest guffaw so I thought I'd post it here. If you've a favorite track please do share it in the comments. If you've not heard much from them, try Albi the Racist Dragon as well.

I suppose Loves Me Like a Rock would make a good Mother's Day song rather than posting it on some random day at the end of September, but I've been writing about love songs for days now and am sad that this one can't be included. It's such a bouncy, happy tune and Paul Simon has such a way with lyrics. The gospel group The Dixie Hummingbirds provided the background vocals for the Loves Me Like a Rock, if you're curious.

The song was a huge hit in 1973 but you don't really hear it anywhere these days if you don't own it. I thought someone ought to remedy that and who better than me to do so (and who the heck else would I ask)? For a gorgeous sunny day at the very beginning of fall this cheery song seemed just the thing.

Four years before Elvis whined about "crying all the time" in 1956, Big Mama Thornton recorded the original Hound Dog. The original lyrics were a mite more to the point. Rather than denying friendship, she was telling her man that he could wag his tail all he wanted but he was done poppin' in for dinner, so to speak.

To be fair, it wasn't Elvis or his handlers that changed the lyrics for the song. Between the two recordings Freddie Bell and the Bellboys came along and made the song more suitable for a male vocalist. That was the version Elvis Presley covered a year later.

But the point is that Big Mama Thornton came first and made Hound Dog a hit. And yet so few people know what I think was the best version of the song. I hope you'll give it a listen )and let me know what you think).

As I've never seen Borat, I'd completely missed out on Fanfare Ciocarlia's very loose and wonderfully wacky interpretation of Born to Be Wild. Suffice it to say that only the two times they actually lapse into the immediately-recognizable title line would give you a hint what they were playing. It's bouncy, fun, and wild, perfect for a Saturday evening. And when they come around to the Born to Be Wild line you can even sing along!

When I posted Bootie Wonderland the other day I thought I'd previously posted Freak-a-Zoid because we sing it all of the time around my house. As noted, when I went to link to the post it was nowhere to be found.

For this freaky Friday night, we need a song steeped in the best and worst of the 80s. We've got your stereotypical geek, computer graphics that owe quite a bit to Weird Science, and a lot of doing the robot. Honestly, could you ask for a more effective time machine? All you need is Anthony Michael Hall and Molly Ringwald to make it complete. C'mon and wind me up!

The other day I posted two songs about a mysterious “she” who wanted only to dance. I asked you to pick the winner in that epic battle between Don Henley and Keb’ Mo’. I have a pair of late entrant to that contest, my dears. The Blues Brothers tapped my on my metaphorical shoulder this morning and threw their black hats onto the stage with All She Wants to Do Is Rock. As the contest is tied a zero all, I thought it wouldn’t affect the results much to allow the entry. Then I thought I'd include the guy who had the original hit in 1949 so I let Wynonie Harris into the competition, too.

I’m still curious to know about this woman who seems to really get around and sounds like as big a music fan as I am. She was in Chicago with the Blues Brothers, somewhere in South America with Don Henley, and out in LA with Keb’ Mo’. Who could she be? Any suggestions, names of other songs about her, or votes on which of the songs was done best are welcome…unless you say Carmen Sandiego. That’s just not funny.

I've been a fan of BB King for many years and always thought of Every Day I Have the Blues as his song. Yet I was listening away and bumped into Count Basie and Joe Williams rocking the heck out of the song. It turns out they had a big hit with it the same year that BB King recorded his first popular version--1955. I still love the many BB King takes on the track but the one I've included below absolutely knocked off my bobby socks. Maybe it's the horns, maybe it's the tempo, maybe I'm just a sucker for Count Basie, I don't know. But I do know that I have a new favorite version of Every Day I Have the Blues. It's a blues standard so there are plenty more where that came from, of course. But I've listened to a lot of them and I still nominate Joe Williams as my favorite singer of the song. Dissenting opinions?

I've posted more than once about my love for Earth, Wind, & Fire and I could have sworn I'd posted Midnight Starr's Freakazoid, but alas I have not. I'll do that soon, but for the moment I wanted to share this mashup gem from DJ Earworm that combines Earth Wind & Fire's Boogie Wonderland with Freak-a-Zoid and something from Miss Kitten. The moment I heard it I knew I had to share it with you all.

I searched high and low to find a link from which you could download this song for free. Unfortunately, DJ Earworm's official site does not include the song (although you can find dozens of other great mashups there) and the only spots that had it were bit torrents filled with songs. If you know where I can get it, please do share. Until then, you can listen to it here!

UPDATE! A Plus D has kindly uploaded Bootie Wonderland and made it available to all. If you would like a copy head over to the Bootie Mashup site where you'll find plenty of others to download for free, as well. Thanks for the quick response, guys!

I was listening to The Little Old Lady from Pasadena today and I thought the song would make a great fourth installment of the Fast and Furious franchise. (They’re up to four, right? I’m not a fan of scantily-clad women fawning over guys with ugly cars, though the racing parts are fun to watch.) At any rate, picture big, tough Vin Diesel getting his butt kicked by a little old lady (in a bright red, super-stock Dodge). Of course, some intrigue would have to follow, saving the woman from threatening drug dealers who want her car or some such foolishness, but there the Beach Boys and this frail-looking lady would be in the midst of the underground racing scene.

Imagine the surprise on the faces of the guys who think themselves the manliest men because they can outrace each other in their aluminum cans when this lady breaks out a beast of a muscle car and slaughters them all. Now that I’d watch. Maybe she could give the young ladies standing around in hooker outfits a piece of her mind between runs, too. While I daydream about the movie of her life, have a listen to The Little Old Lady from Pasadena. I’m thinking Betty White…

You would think that two songs with such similar titles as All She Wants to Do Is Dance and She Just Wants to Dance would have a lot in common, lyrically. And yet Keb’ Mo’ understands that sometimes you just want to go out dancing, not get picked up by the frisky guys at the bar. Don Henley, on the other hand, follows up the title line with “and make romance.”

The songs actually tackle completely different topics. Keb’ Mo’ sings about a woman who has come out to enjoy herself while Mr. Henley talks about someone who’s fighting apparently in the midst of some guerrilla war in a drug-based economy who just wants to dance while her fellow revelers are actually running guns in the men's room.

That’s not the point of You Pick the Winner, though. The point is that you will inevitably like one of these songs more than the other. Leave me a comment voting for one or the other: classic 80s rock or the blues.

You never know where your musical explorations will lead you. Today mine took me to the 1950 and a wacky little hit called Rag Mop. Not only is it almost doo wop (but not quite) but they misspell rag and mop many times over the course of the song. Yet while I was deploring the silliness the song still got my toes a-tappin’. The Ames Brothers recorded the one that surprised me today but I also found versions from Lionel Hampton and Jimmy Dorsey who also apparently had big hits with the song. But it was the one from Ray Gelato Meets the Good Fellas that grabbed me for sheer bizarrity and use of Italian so I thought I'd include that one. You can find several at Grooveshark, of course.

It's high time I posted something mellowly funky, slightly electronic, and including a reference to "vibrat[ing] your sternum". Coincidentally, I happen to have just such a song: Keller Williams's Bazooka Speaker Funk. It's nice when these things come together, isn't it. I've been working on stuff that pays all day so you'll just have to settle for my brief introduction and the song, darlings. Have a lovely week and I'll be back later!

I've begun to think I should create a "coffee song" tag, I post about it so much. I can't help it: I collect songs about coffee and so often they tickle my musical funny bone. The two I've included today, Coffee Mug from The Descendants and Duncan Hills Coffee Jingle as re-imagined by Dethklok, demonstrate perfectly the dangers of too much coffee in one's diet...or the benefits, I suppose. They're both high-energy and goofy as all get out for bands generally considered pretty hardcore.

I've been writing about love songs all day and I really needed something mean...or at least loud. Neither of these is long enough to really hold up a post on its own but together they rocked me right out of my lovey-dovey mood and got me jammin'. I hope they entertain you as much as they did me.

A whole new musical world opened up before me this evening when, on the recommendation of clockworkkitten, I pulled up a list of songs by My Robot Friend. Was it the reincarnation of early Devo? Was it an electro dream of a song that didn't rely solely on ten minutes of repetition? Was it really a song about Walt Whitman, the sort of geek music that makes me squee like a little girl? Why yes, it was all of those things and more. But I gush. Instead I shall share with you a little sample of the robo-goodness that is My Robot Friend. For all that it's two minutes and change long, I Am the Robot seems too short for a whole post, perhaps because of its abrupt ending. Thus I'm adding Dial 0 to sweeten the pot. Geek out, my friends!

It hasn’t been all that long since my recent post about Firewater but I had to share again. Since we got our greedy fingers on the album “The Golden Hour” my family has been dancing around and singing, “Hey, Borneo” at inappropriate moments. In my last post I included the last track on the disc—Three-Legged Dog—but I hadn’t yet heard the first. Suffice it to say that it immediately went on my mp3 player and I intend, when my convertible gets out of the shop, to share Borneo with half the residents in town. You can say you heard it here first. (Unless, that is, you’ve already heard it but don’t tell anyone if that’s the case, okay? We wouldn’t want folks to think I’m behind the curve.)

I hereby nominate Borneo as the most fun war protest song since Alice's Restaurant. It doesn't include circles and arrows on the back of each one or a Group W bench but it also doesn't last eighteen-plus minutes. There's a trade-off for everything, you know. At any rate, take a listen and judge for yourself. It's actually better than the Draft Dodger Rag, I swear!

Until I went looking for a version of this song to post, I'd never heard it performed by a male vocalist. Sure, I'd heard The Andrews Sisters (whose performance of this one is remarkably soulless, I think) and I own a terrific recording by Deanne Bogard, but, though I know the slang isn't as gender-specific as it may sound, I never thought of a man singing it. As Grooveshark didn't have the version I do, I listened to a few others. I like this one the best of my choices there, in part because of the boogie woogie piano at the beginning, a little demonstration of the eight to the bar in question. I still like the title, though. It conjures all sorts of naughty images.

The problem with writing about awesome DJs (and yes, there are still guys around who get that the music is worthless if you can't keep the beat) is that they don't have songs. The music lives in the performance and you aren't going to go down and buy a CD from DJ Fly at Tower Records any time soon. Actually, I might buy this song if it were available. This video gives you both parts of the equation: creative music and slick performance. It throws in a little of Danny Elfman's Batman theme as awesome sauce, as well.

In the annals of cover bands who remake songs into a new genre, Pomplamoose has sealed its place by combining a word that almost means grapefruit in French with a semi-twee, lovely voice. Sorry, pamplemousse is one of my favorite words. The moment I saw the name I knew I had to have a listen. To my delight, their sound trumps even the clever name.

The duo has a following on YouTube where they follow a "what you see is what you get" philosophy. Nataly Dawn is actually singing and Jack Conte is actually performing right in front of you (well, they were when the camera was rolling, anyway). They leave enough of a song's original sound that you can immediately identify it and the genre in which it was originally recorded but things go in a whole new direction. I debated as I listened which song to choose, so many of them made me smile. My indecisiveness ended I came upon their cover of Earth, Wind, & Fire's September. For your Saturday listening pleasure, I include both the original and Pomplamousse's inspired cover. Viva la cover songs!

I wrote a post about following the breadcrumb trail from Shemekia Copeland to Black Cat Bone but I never have posted a song from that rockin' blues woman. It seems like today wants something rousing. For your enjoyment this fine Friday evening (or whatever time it may be) have a horn-filled romp that asks, "Who Stole My Radio?" Having had to ask myself this question before, I know her pain.

Okay, in my case someone really did steal my radio. But I think we can all sympathize with her real question, which is, "Who stole all of the good music that people used to play on the radio and replaced with this pap that doesn't move me?" I presume she hasn't gotten an answer to that question outside of Tower of Power's Rhythm & Business. in general it seems to be "record companies". But then you realize that she's got a contract so how bad could the music industry really be?