The Not-Pop Jukebox

It's not often you get the chance to post such a modern song as covered as Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa. Yet the Vampire Weekend song appears to have captured the imaginations of all sorts of people. I love the Hot Chip cover with Peter Gabriel, if only for the sardonic observation that "it feels so unnatural to sing your own name". I've posted the cover from The Very Best already but for this list I've added the original, a Lykke Li cover (dreadful sound quality and all), and a couple of remixes to entertain you as well. I couldn't get the Banjo or Freakout version to play on Grooveshark but you can listen to it at various places around the interwebs. In the meantime, have a listen to some of the various takes folks have had on Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa. Let me know which you like best. I'm still voting for The Very Best.

I was burning (again) some CDs that never made it onto my (year-old) computer (because I'm lazy) when I found "The Best of Booker T & the MGs". Naturally, I popped it in and started ripping. As I waited, I perused the song titles and realized that Booker T was a food fanatic. Most people know the MGs for their funky version of Green Onions, as do I, but miss songs like Soul Stuffing and My Sweet Potato. On this post-Thanksgiving day, with stuffing and sweet potato left overs wilting in the fridge, enjoy these Hammond-filled food songs. Don't miss Burnt Biscuits, even if you don't want to eat them.

Three years ago, I pleaded for help in finding a song called Man of My Dreams. As that's all I knew about it I wasn't too surprised to get no response. But I finally did find the song a couple of months ago and then completely forgot to share it with you. Honestly, I can't believe this woman never caught on with quirky DJs.

But enough of that! You want the song. Well, fine, here it is if you're going to be that way about it.

Thanks to javrsmith and his great input on my Cover Songs Rock! page I have a wacky treat that you folks can be thankful for today, should you need one. He pointed out that the Manfred Mann hit Blinded by the Light was a Bruce Springsteen cover song. You know what that mean: you get to hear them both.

I've never been a fan of Bruce Springsteen's performances and his original demonstrates exactly why. He sounds like he's got a mouth full of mashed potatoes when he's singing this one. He does, however, avoid the "douche" mispronunciation that made the Manfred Mann version so notorious. I threw in a little goofy thing from Lil Wayne and a bonus treat from The Roots titled Blinded by the Light (No Douche Here). I'm almost afraid to see what search terms bring people to this post, but you can't write about the song without noting the terrible sound of the chorus in the most famous version.

Regardless of any unrelated words that may have snuck into the cover version (it's "deuce", if you're curious), the lyrics are actually quite entertaining. Mr. Springsteen was having a good time playing with English when he wrote this one. Beware badly-labeled tracks, by the way. As far as I can tell, ELO, The Steve Miller Band, and Foreigner never recorded this one or, if they did, they sound exactly like Manfred Mann's Earth Band.

As ever, Frank Zappa offers some purely practical advice for those of you who need it. Okay, it's not really practical at all, but it's a hysterical song that's cheering me up on this, the first really crappy week of winter here in the Frozen North. If you need some cheering up, or just want a good laugh with some good music, have a listen to Don't Eat the Yellow Snow. In particular, enjoy the sound effects for the snow cones at the end.

Due to a familial disagreement over the artist who performed Walk the Dinosaur. It turned out we were both wrong, but that led me to listen to more Was (Not Was) and to my discovery that I'd missed some fabulously bizarre music 'way back when. Leading the pack of strangeness was this William Shatner-esque spoken word tune called I Feel Better than James Brown. Who wouldn't be made curious by a title like that?

Apparently, I should have paid more attention to the dinosaur-loving crew, but I had them confused with Dinosaur, Jr. Mea culpa. I could have been giggling at CIA guys in bikinis and tuxedoed dolphins for years. If you, too, missed the goofiness of "Are You Okay?" I suggest trying In K-Mart Wardrobe as a follow-up song. I'm calling it 80s music because it's got that vibe, though the album was released in 1990. Hey, that means the songs were written in the 80s, right?

As a rule, I don't listen much to remixes. Most of them take a song I may like or at least not hate and chop it into annoying little bits. In the case of N.E.R.D.'s Rock Star, however, I heard the Jason Nevins Remix Edit first (yes, while playing Burnout Paradise). It quickly became a family favorite, good for dancing in the car on cross-town trips. Who said family sing-a-longs have to be cheesy?

But I finally tracked down the original album version of Rock Star. To my shock, it was awful. The tempo dragged and the charm and anger of the remix was totally lacking! I'll spare you the actual N.E.R.D. version and share the remix. Hopefully it will help you get moving for a great Saturday night.

I've had Skankin' to the Beat stuck in my head all morning. Pleasurable thought that has been, it did force me to consider how slang from one fan base can confuse people in general. These days, skank is used as a noun or an adjective, describing a girl you might end up paying for her time, if you will, rather than the noun or verb to describe a particular dance with which ska fans are quite familiar (whether or not they know the name). And so to me this song may be about dancing and ska music in general while someone unfamiliar with term may come away with a very different idea of the song's intent.

And so I refer you to the How to Skank video at YouTube and Skankin' to the Beat as practice music. Note the subtle "history of ska" lesson hidden in the video. How many of you have skanked and didn't even know it?

I don't really have a reason for picking these songs except that I noticed today that I had two very different tracks named Whistling in the Dark, one from Firewater and one from They Might Be Giants. If you've ever read any of my meanderings here you know I immediately headed out to find more. Naturally I thought of you all and your deep-seated desire to find more music. I can't promise you'll enjoy all of these versions of Whistling in the Dark, but I'm willing to bet you haven't heard them all before. You may not want to hear some of them ever again, but at least you know how many different directions people can take a simple phrase.

I managed to resist inflicting my favorite band of bygone days for months, now. I think it's time for a little Oingo Boingo break, my dears. On your behalves I've been listening to a bunch of their stuff to decide just which song you shouldn't miss from their rather extensive catalog. I've settled on Pain, in part because they could have written it last week and used the very same lyrics.

Technically this isn't 80s music, as it was on their last album and released in 1994. But regardless of the decade-bleed over and the fact that they started doing their crazy thing in the 70s they'll always be an 80s band to me. That's when they did what I believe to be the best of their work.

"Boingo" was a darker album than most of the earlier work, not so much in subject but in tone. The music itself has a more minor, creepy feel to it. But that didn't stop it from being a fantastic set of songs. I could have sworn I'd posted Pedestrian Wolves but I don't see it anywhere. I'll rectify that in the near future, if you think you can take it. In the meantime, have some Pain.

I must confess that my not-pop snobbery extends to television. Except for House I don't watch network TV nor do I have cable. And so I missed the episode of So You Think You Can Dance that apparently introduced millions of people to Róisín Murphy and Ramalama (Bang Bang). I have to say that, if this is the sort of wacky thing they're playing on television these days, I might be missing out on some good stuff.

Nah. I trust that the same sort of tripe still fills the airwaves, as it does on the radio. I was working on something else entirely when I happened up on Ramalama and I cranked it up for some quality family dance time. I find that my obscure explorations bring me such gems without resorting to actually following trends, thank goodness.

It turns out that most of Róisín Murphy's stuff is not particularly to my taste. She's like a less-obsessive Lady Gaga, but one who was around for a few years before the latter released her first single. But this one, this one made me boogie. That's good enough for me!

I've posted about Instant Funk before but as I was writing about K-Tel Records today I recalled my favorite of their songs. It dates back to the disco/funk era when songs all seemed to be long and include portions in parentheses.

I hadn't heard I Got My Mind Made Up for years and was half-afraid I would hate it upon listening to it again. Never fear, it's as cheesy and funky as it every was. At least I now recall why "say what?" was such a part of our vocabulary when my siblings and I were eight or so.

Now all you need for the weekend is a disco ball, one of those floors that light up in squares, and some leisure suits. Please refrain from posting any pictures, guys. I saw enough of that when I was a kid. Enjoy!

It's been too long since I branched out into other genres. So to help you get ready for the weekend, enjoy a funk salsa sort of thing from Mo' Horizons. Drum'n Boogaloo gives you a little big of everything: oversampling, what is clearly a drum machine in the background, some funky-gunky bass, and a bit of tasty horn work. if you've got your headphones on you even get a little stereo action from the vocals. That ought to be enough to get your hips moving into Friday night!

For today, I'd like to show you the difference between a musician and her band performing live and someone who has a good voice but would rather sing over recordings of herself (or simply isn't brave enough to do so). That's right, I'm contrasting the darling of the Netherlands, Caro Emerald, with the darling of the club scene, Lady Gaga performing Bad Romance

It may be my preference for swing and horns talking, but I have to say that the bouncy cover that Caro Emerald and her guys perform is a whole lot more fun for me. In truth, I tried to find a live version of Bad Romance in which Lady Gaga didn't sing over the track. There was a great one from the Ellen DeGeneres show (well, the first few minutes were acoustic Gaga with piano), but the embedding had been disabled. The concert videos are uniformly Lady Gaga trying too damned hard.

While this isn't a "You Pick the Winner" episode, I would like to hear from you folks what you think of these ladies.

Fall has finally caught up with us, here in what they call the Northland. In fact, we're doing autumn in a day and apparently will head straight to winter tonight. When I see Your Thing Is a Drag, I think that's what winter ought to know. Leave us alone, sub-zero temperatures and blizzards!

But leave it to Sharon Jones and those fabulous Dap-Kings to cheer me up about it all. Your Thing Is a Drag takes my winter blues and gives them some serious funk. How depressed can I be dancing around in my chair? For today, have some fun with them and spare me a moment of sympathy for the grey and impending wintery doom that brought this on in the first place.

I've been sitting on this one for a while, trying to decide if I really like You Can Sell Anything. In part my indecision is based in the kid- and stoner-friendly Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell (which I apparently haven't posted) for which Das Racist became so well known last year. Don't get me wrong, that one sticks in my head and is sung by my family often, but it does make it a bit more difficult to take them seriously.

Yet Das Racist has plenty of serious things to say, if you give them a chance. The other part of the reason I wasn't sure about posting You Can Sell Anything grew from the fact that I couldn't tell if I was surprised by the tone of the lyrics rather than liking the song itself. After due consideration, and having forgotten about this draft sitting around waiting to be posted, I thought I'd share the song and you can let me know what you think.

Honestly, I didn’t realize for years that Steppin’ Out with My Baby and Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails were two different songs. I blame that on the fact that you almost never hear them and that the former includes, as a line in the lyrics, the title of the latter. Well, that and Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails includes recurrent references to “stepping out”.

I had presumed that, in the great jazz and swing standard tradition, one was simply alternate lyrics to the other. How wrong I was! To be fair, both songs were written by Irving Berlin (for Easter Parade in 1948 and Top Hat in 1936, respectively) and, well, they do have those similarities that I already mentioned.

In reality, I love both of these songs. They drag me back to my bizarre misspent days cruising the reaches of newly-invented cable television for musicals that made me yearn for the life of the carefree, filthy rich in the Teens and Roaring Twenties, when getting dressed to the nines and spending an evening in a swanky hotel dancing to a big band and making witty conversation was de rigueur for any night of the week, at least if you believe Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby.

Back then, white tie was a step above wearing a mere tuxedo, which the beaux that filled my imagination would have done nigh nightly. Even with a tail coat, black tie is simply standard evening dress. A white bow tie used to mean a formal event, one for which only most rigid dress code would do for the men while women swirled about in peacock dresses. I blame Hollywood for my despising modern-day tuxes: for me, nothing but tails will do. Steppin’ Out with My Baby and Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails had a lot to do with it.

I'm forlorn that Grooveshark and YouTube don't have the Louis Armstrong version of Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails that I do. Rhapsody has it but it wouldn't play for me. If you're on MOG apparently they have a version. I highly recommend it. If you know where I can hear it on-line for free, please do share. And while you're here, let me know which song you like better.

There exists for me an entire range of songs that, when heard in crystal-clear digital format, confuse my nostalgia. Sugar, Sugar lands squarely in this set by virtue of having been included on a record that I’ve had since I was about seven (and that I still play, lo! these many years later).

I know the songs on that hunk of well-worn vinyl by heart, including every hiss, pop, and scratch-induced skip. I know exactly when Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini will stick and unconsciously head toward the turntable to give it a bump.

So when I hear songs like Purple People Eater, Winchester Cathedral, and, yes, Sugar, Sugar I fully expect those “flaws” to happen. It’s somewhere between disorienting and fascinating to hear these songs as they probably sounded the day I got that record. It’s fun to learn the verses that have been missing a few words my entire life!

And that, my dears, is why I am posting such a cutesy pop song of yore like Sugar, Sugar. I recently came in to a digital stash of such hoary old gems and I’ve been wallowing in Wierdsville. I thought you might like a little visit, yourselves. That and I’d love to hear the Cocktail Slippers cover this song.

In true Indie tradition, 1990s play passably well and write inventive lyrics. They don't do love songs, at least not in the way we normally think of them. They sound bitter and jaded, just like most of the rest of us, and say the sorts of things that many of us wish we could. That, and they threaten to stuff someone in the box where they keep their extra pair of socks.

So 1990s offer what, to me, sounds like a bunch of guys just having fun with being a band. They're not stunningly talented or wildly creative, but they're good fun. Have a listen to I Don't Even Know What That Is and maybe head over to Grooveshark to hear what appears to be the full 1990s catalog. I really should have posted Jingle Bells for Halloween. Happy Friday, all!

I've been sick for days and this is the first time I've really felt like listening to some good, old-fashioned rock and roll. That's exactly what you get from The Cocktail Slippers: your basic, hard-rockin' songs, light on insight and heavy on the down-and-dirty backbeat. What you also get is a Norwegian girl group that really kicks some butt, musically. Who'd have thunk it?

Check out The Cocktail Slippers' album "St. Valentine's Day Massacre" and enjoy their garage-band tribute to American doo wop. If you like Give It to Me try You Do Run for a taste of Motown turned hard core.