The Not-Pop Jukebox

As I was casting about for a song to post today, I listened to néGar and her self-titled EP released January 2nd of this year. Handily, i found her interesting enough to share. You can listen to the whole EP for yourself at her Band Camp profile but I thought I'd include a song here to give you a taste. You can also download A Woman there for free, if you like what you hear. That one was way too sad and slow for me to post here so I've chosen to go with the much-angrier Faceless, Nameless, as it's the only one that was readily-available for including. If you only pick one song to listen to, though, I'd go with Off the Ground. I think that one does a much better job of showing the strength of her voice and her emotions. If you want to read more about her, try her official web site as well. You know I'm too lazy to write up a bio for you all but her roots stretch from Tehran to Toronto.

As a reward for being patient with me while I was yet again out of town, I offer you two swingin' takes on Old McDonald today. I was actually looking to see if the new Ladysmith Black Mambazo take on the song (from their new album "Songs From a Zulu Farm") had made it to Grooveshark yet. It hasn't, but these two should tide you over until it does. Ella scats in her typical, devil-may-care-about-the-lyrics style and Elvis, well, Elvis Presley threatens the farm animals if they misbehave. Apparently, he was hungry when they recorded this. I don't know, Chicken Fricassee sounds pretty good right about now to me, too. It must be time for lunch.

I promise not to take another week off any time in the near future, my dears. I hope you had a lovely time as well and I will get back to my regularly scheduled twenty songs a month in February. Anyone have a request?

I thought we could keep with the dancing theme but go a very different direction with it today. And so I offer you the cajun/reggae/bluegrass jam band Leftover Salmon and their ever-so-fun Dance on Your Head. If you like this one try Funky Mountain Fogdown and Zombie Breakdown which you can, of course, find on Grooveshark.

We need some dance music in here, so say I. (I must apologize for the brevity of my posts recently but I'm on vacation so you're mostly just getting songs and a little note but I couldn't leave you all entirely!) And so for a cheery, bouncy, "world beat" sort of song lets turn to Fatboy Slim whose music is unevenly danceable. Jin Go La Ba most definitely is, however. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

While their self-produced first album has been out for a couple of years, Friendly Fires is still pop music. Indeed, that's what they do and they make no apologies for it. Neither should they, in truth. They bring enough energy to their songs to make anyone get up and dance, one at a time. As a whole album they're a little...relentless for me but I have to admit that I quite like White Diamonds. And so I'm willing to admit it to you, lest you somehow managed to miss them at the height of their indie popularity (though they're still touring and apparently were working on another album months ago, according to the rarely-updated Friendly Fires web site). Okay, I admit it: I just wanted to listen to it again. I can't help it. It's fun.

Ages ago (well, two and half years or so) I posted about one of my favorite songs but didn't give you a way to see or hear any of the versions to which I linked. That's just silly. And so today I bring you not only a playlist of some of them but a video of Bobby Darin singing the song that made me sit up and notice him. I'd heard his silly pop songs but his take on Blue Skies made me realize what a vocal powerhouse he really was and I've adored his take on some crooner classics that Sinatra and the rest of the Rat Pack couldn't pull off half as well. (Compare Sinatra's version below with Bobby Darin's and let me know if you agree!)

Enjoy Ella Fitzgerald's Blue Skies, too, done with her usual ease and humor. I wonder if she an Bobby Darin ever sang together? If they did I can't find proof but I'd adore being proven wrong. By the way, the sound on this video is a little flat, not just Mr. Darin. Grooveshark didn't have him performing the song, though. If you want to see the very best part, skip to 1:30. That fifteen seconds proves that he owns the song, no matter how much I adore Ella and Frank and the rest. Notice how Eva Cassidy screws up the lyrics and Benny Goodman did away with them altogether.

Unexpectedly, Harry Connick, Jr. went with a sort of ragtime version of this song and skipped the vocals as well. I think that was an excellent choice on his part, the Michael Buble of the 90s though he was. And Bing is still way too sad for the lyrics. I tossed in a violin and piano instrumental, as well. (I'd no sooner posted this than I realized that I'd already posted an even longer list of Blue Skies versions about a year ago. Apparently winter makes me want to hear this song.>

I promised weeks ago that I would post this song. That's because Pedestrian Wolves is a major earworm for me. I don't know if it's because the concept of pedestrian wolves and suburban lions just caught my imagination or because, like so much of Danny Elfman's music, it's just so darned interesting. Consider the lyrics:

And I like you just like you are
And I love you, kind of, just like you are
And I love you like a sticky piece of cotton candy

I'm not even sure what that means but it keeps me playing the song. Listen until you get past the discordant intro because the music if far deeper than you'd guess from the (admittedly) unattractive beginning.

I'm going on vacation starting tomorrow so posts are going to be a bit sparse and short for the rest of the month. I hope you enjoy what I do find, however. I'll be back in February with something a bit meatier.

When I linked the other day to my post about Shake Your Blank I realized that I'd left off of that list one of my favorite songs: Taj Mahal's Shake That Thing. Naturally, I thought I'd better remedy that. And so for a lazy Sunday afternoon have some classic piano blues to carry you through. I promise I'll never get "sick and tired of telling you how to shake that thing," my dears. But I do have fun hearing Taj complain about it.

I haven't done a "best of 2010" post because, well, I didn't feel like it and you know how I feel about doing something because everyone expects it, don't you? But I do want to make sure I keep posting some of the best stuff I happened upon from last year so we're zooming all of the way to last year in the time line today. That's because this song kills me. Smells Like Rockin' Robin takes your basic 50s pop song (as done by the Jackson 5, no less) and puts it under a remarkably cheered-up Kurt Cobain. I don't like Nirvana, as many of you already undoubtedly know, but if they sounded more like this I just might. But I couldn't possibly post it at the height of its popularity six or seven months ago.

As ever, with the mashups I post, you can download this one for free from its creator Mark Vidler at Go Home Productions where you'll find plenty of other tasty treats to keep you entertained.

I promised something less than 20 years old for today after my recent spate of songs that nearly qualify as oldies now. To that end, I've been listening to Tapes 'n Tapes today trying to pick out just the right song for you. But in truth part of the reason I like them is that they make me think of The Violent Femmes with an updated indie sound. In part it's the voice of Josh Grier and in part it's the similar feel of songs like Insistor. Yet that song comes from the 2005 release "The Loon". Ta da! Promise kept.

As they're from (relatively) nearby Minneapolis I can hold out hope that they may play in town, some day, though they're on tour now and going everywhere but here, it seems. Perhaps they're at that horrible Twin Cities level of popularity that means most venues here are too small to play but they can't quite justify the cost of booking the big one. To that end, I'm promoting their popularity to see if I can't get them to come around Fargo. C'mon guys, we're right up the road!

Now that I've made my plea, enjoy Insistor and let me know if you don't think they sound a lot like a modern-day version of the Femmes.

Hands up, everyone who remembers the C&C Music Factory! Oh, please, put your hands down, I can't see you. It was just a figure of speech. But today I've decided to share a song I heard plenty, back at the cusp of the 1990s. I seem to be trapped in 1990 lately, but I'm going to share just one more. I always thought this song sounded like someone had kidnapped Ice-T and trapped him in a club somewhere. Upon listening to it again, well, it still sounds like that to me. I'm trying this new iframe thing so please do let me know if the video isn't working. In theory The NPJ is becoming "mobile device friendly" so hopefully you can all check in with me from your phones and tablets, thus allowing you to play any song for your friends and family and share the wondrous nature of my...okay, I can't even finish that sentence. Enjoy the song and I'll try for something a little less than 20 years old for tomorrow.

Let's get moving, people! It's far too quiet in here. I know precisely what you need: some massive boogie-woogie. Thankfully Dr. John has produced just that with Mac's Boogie and I've got it right here for you. Now get up, people, shake off those staring-at-the-screen doldrums and shake your groove thing. Heck, shake your tail feathers! You know you can't just sit around, hoping that the Internet will feed you your fun. Make sure your boss is out of earshot and crank this baby up, boys and girls. It's good fun for a Tuesday afternoon and sure to shake up your routine if nothing else. You can never get enough piano boogie, can you?

I've had a nauseatingly productive day (sewed a whole little quilt, thank you very much!) and am out to be social tonight. Instead of trying to tie a song in to that I'm going to share a Devo song that gets stuck in my head regularly. Let's just say that Post Post-Modern Man stands for the useful technology that let me stitch that much together. It comes from the album "Smooth Noodle Maps" which is includes a few songs that I really like but which was panned by critics and Devo fans alike. Somehow, that comes as no surprise. Hopefully I won't be too hung over to post something fun tomorrow, too.

Do you know who rocks? Wanda Jackson, that's who. Forget Elvis: she did his schtick earlier and better. She was the original rockin' bad girl, as naughty as a mainstream female artist could get in those days. She started as a rockabilly hit and brought became the first real American rock star.

I chose Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad because, well, for some reason it reminded me of Sensico. I hope that she takes this in the silly spirit in which it was meant and not personally. I can just picture her tweeting things like the lyrics though I'm sure she'll hate the song.

The picture, by the way, is of a 1955 Olds Delta 88 although I'm not sure if it was this song or another in which Ms. Jackson asks to be picked up in one. I stole this one from Flickr. If you've missed out on Wanda Jackson, have a listen to a lot more of her work at Grooveshark, naturally. I particularly recommend her take on Riot in Cell Block #9 and Rip It Up.

Let's try some low-tech, accoustic-guitar-filled folk music for today. Todd Snider does some lovely work and I haven't shared a single bit of with you all yet. He's a little bluesy and a lot folky and writes a good song. I hate to leave it so short but I simply haven't time to delve today, dears. Let me share Good Fortune and leave you to it. If you're a fan the let me know what your favorite song is and I'll have a listen. Thanks!

I've had, for no discernible reason, that little beginning-French-class ditty Alouette stuck in my head all morning. And so I began to look for songs about birds. That means that I spent most of my posting time listening to increasingly-divergent songs because you get some pretty wacky search results when you do a really general term like "birds" or "flying" on Grooveshark. As an example I offer you Joe Satriani's The Mystical Potato Head Groove Thing which popped up in response to the latter. At least for this one I can see a reason: the album is entitled "Flying in a Blue Dream". Have some nice guitar work without the distraction any lyrics and I'll be back tomorrow with something perhaps a little more meaningful than a random result.

Once upon a time I listened to a lot of Minnie the Moocher. Then I got a record of Phil Alvin (the lead singer for The Blasters) performing with The Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Sun-Ra. I love people who are willing to sell me their bizarre vinyl.

But that was not my point. I wanted to tell you that apparently I completely missed the sequel to Minnie the Moocher. It's pretty rare that a song gets a sequel but, sheesh, Cab Calloway did both so I should have caught it. At any rate, on that album (although not this list because Grooveshark doesn't have it) was a song called Ballad of Smokey Joe which has been more commonly recorded as The Ghost of Smokey Joe, who happens to have been in love with poor Minnie.

But Smokey Joe seems to have gotten around a bit, to a doo-wop cafe, a southern-fried barbecue, and a Sixties girl group. And so I've included here seven songs about ol' Joe. If you only listen to one, make it Cab Calloway. I love his voice and this is such a great example of why. Oh, and did I mention that Smokey Joe's a coke-head? Even back in the 30s they knew it was bad for you.

Let's have something a little wacky, a little crazy, and a little sweet for the new year. Miss Li, or Linda Carlsson if you're not a fan of stage names, is one of those musicians who definitely has a "sound". I listened to a good whack of her stuff in a row this morning and I must admit after a while I could no longer tell when one song ended and another one started if I wasn't paying attention.

That does not by any means translate into a condemnation of that sound, however. I find Miss Li to be quirky and enjoyable, despite a voice that screamed "twee" at me when I first heard it. She turns that voice on its ear by being snarky and sassy in turns. Since I have a weakness for nonsense songs in general I thought I'd include Ba Ba Ba as a great example of a song that isn't about sheep.