The Not-Pop Jukebox

I think we deserve something weird for a Wednesday, this last day of November as yet another holiday season creeps up to bite us in the behind. Thankfully, I've got Mr. Gnome for you all today. No, that's not a pet name for someone who wears a pointy hat, it's a pair of folks who'd released whole albums full of strange. Most of their songs are relatively slow but who wants a pokey polka?

Not Mr. Gnome, that's for sure. Enjoy this wild bit of strange and send me some suggestions for other wacky songs that I can post, Wednesday or any day. Who doesn't need a little weird in their lives?

Way back at the beginning, here at the NPJ, I added a slew of wonderful songs with unstable widgets that left you unable to enjoy them should you wish to explore the archives. That's why I do these "Jukebox Roots" posts: to fix those old dogs by teaching them new, Grooveshark tricks. Today I thought I'd carry on my recent paean to Martin Sexton when he does what he does best with a re-post of Diggin' Me. This was the very first song of his that I heard and one that I still love. You can read what I thought about it (and still do) on that old post. For today, I'm just going to let you enjoy the song. Don't miss the fantastic trumpet impression that slew me upon first hearing.

When last I posted about Mexican Institute of Sound it was to share a great song and to note that there would be more coming. That was almost a year ago and I have yet to actually fulfill that promise. So for this gorgeous, sunny day I wanted to give you something ridiculously happy. Thus, I've selected La La La with its semi-electro flavor, its rockin', bouncin', horn-saturated, relentless cheer. Listen to the end for a bit of Mario, as well. That'd be the Italian plumber, not some guy named Mario playing an instrument or singing or anything. All in all, La La La is a terrific bit of goofy fun, just right for springing you out of your winter doldrums. (And, for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, it's a great little ditty for a lovely late Spring day.) And no, the song I wanted to post a year ago still hasn't popped up on Grooveshark. But I'll keep watch and if I see it somewhere I do promise to share. In the meantime, do let me know what you think of them, darlings.

Just about everyone who knows anything about Zydeco knows the name Clifton Chenier. A lot of folks don't realize that he had a son who has continued the rollicking zydeco tradition. The son's name is CJ and he just released a new album about six weeks ago. I'd like to post one of those tracks, namely the title track of the CD, "Can't Sit Down", but none of them show up anywhere to embed right now.

As it's Black Friday, the official start of the holiday season, I thought I could kill two birds with one stone today with Zydeco Christmas. This song gives you great zydeco, a taste of CJ Chenier's sound, and a much more fun holiday task than fighting bloodthirsty crowds trying to save 27% on a thing they don't even need. Make some gumbo, dance around the kitchen, and enjoy this blast of zydeco flavor. If and when I get my digital fingers on the new album I'll definitely share.

It's Turkey Day, here in the US. What goes better with turkey than mashed potatoes? And so let's have fifteen songs about mashed potatoes, from James Brown, The Ventures, DeeDee Sharp, and plenty more. Sorry, folks, that's all I'm going to say about them. Have a listen and let me know which made you get up and do the mashed potato.

What goes better with US Turkey Day than electro-pop from Barcelona? That's right: nothing. And so on this Thanksgiving Eve lets all enjoy a little invasion from The Pinker Tones who just happen to coincidentally fit that description.

While I toyed with posting some other of their tunes I decided to go with Invaders because of the the chorus: "We are the band from outer Spain." I thought that might give you darlings as much of a smile as it did me. Have a listen to this one and, if you enjoy it and its harmonica loop, wander over to the Pinker Tones page on Grooveshark for album after album of the good stuff.

Sometimes you end up with music you probably would have missed but for silly coincidences. In searching for something else to do with left-handedness I happened upon Lefties Soul Connection. Naturally, that meant I had to listen.

Now, the LSC is billed as a Dutch funk band, which I suppose they are. But most of their songs are more organ and snare than bass guitar, which slides them a lot closer to jazz in my book. There is, however, Doin' the Thing. They released the song in 2002 as their first single and I've not heard them beat it yet, though I'm still working my way through their albums.

So late this Tuesday evening please accept a funky Dutch instrumental that at least should get your toes tapping if not your booty shaking. If you're a fan of Lefties Soul Connection, give me a recommendation. Thus far I'm quite liking the "Hutspot" album but not much else. I still say they sound more like Booker T and the MGs than Wild Cherry but I'd be open to being proven wrong.

Like seemingly everyone in the English-speaking world, Cee-Lo Green’s Fuck You took my world by storm. I’ve got several mashups and all of them make me smile, but none more than dj BC’s version with Wings and The Supremes. That’s partly because I don’t particularly care for Paul McCartney’s voice and when he whines, “I loooooove you,” Cee-Lo Green responds, “F you!”

But that pettiness isn’t the only reason I’ve nominated it for Mashup of the Month (that’s MotM for short, by the way). If just so happens that I enjoy the clever juxtaposition of a sappy love song, the resignedly-bitter Diana Ross, and a vehemently happy post-breakup rant. It’s like a whole, crappy relationship in compressed form, but a lot more fun.

You can, naturally, download Silly Fuck Songs for free from the official dj BC web site. While you're there have a look around. You can pick up whole albums worth of mashed-up goodness including his holiday compilations!

You likely don't know that I can't stand Oreo cookies so you may not find it as odd as I do that Lonnie Mack's Oreo Cookie Blues delights me as much as it does. If you're a fan of the over-sweetened bundles of fattening goo, you might find this one even more entertaining than I do.

None of that is to say that Oreo Cookie Blues isn't a fantastic song. It is. Heck, it made me want an Oreo and I hate the things. Well, okay, it didn't but Lonnie Mack's in great, bluesy form here so you can enjoy the talent and the imagery without tying it to a particular dessert.

I can't help but wonder if he recorded the song at Nabisco's behest, seeing as he so prominently mentions both the brand and the product name. Even if he didn't, I'd have found a way to use the song in commercials by now if I were the food giant. What, you don't think they have Google alerts for this sort of thing? At any rate, I'll have something more substantive and less cookie-oriented for you all tomorrow. Happy Friday!

While I love Fatboy Slim (in all his many incarnations) He sometimes suffers from that age-old illness of not knowing when to end a song. Such is the case with Ya Mama, which bangs hard then, instead of ending, takes a squidgy break and then starts all over again for another couple of minutes.

Today I discovered an improvement: a fantastic motion capture video from Nathan Mauger on Vimeo. It's synchronized perfectly with the music but only uses the first half of the song so you don't start to wonder if Fatboy Slim will ever reach the end. In truth, I would have watched another two and a half minutes of the video so he could have used the full thing.

Today, enjoy them together and, if you like what you hear and I haven't scared you off, have a listen to the whole song. Let me know what you think of either or both.

For no apparent reason, of late my post from mid-2009 of the 8½ Souvenirs cover of Sharp Dressed Man has been getting steady attention. It’s been a while so I presumed that I had posted a list of covers and chosen to feature that one.

Imagine my dismay when I looked at the post only to find that I’d not included the ten or more other covers of Sharp Dressed Man floating around the music world. And so today I rectify that with a dozen more, including the ZZ Top original and a great reimagining from Chrome Division.

The song appears to have captured the imagination of the country and western world, as well. That strikes me as a bit odd, perhaps because the image I have of a sharp-dressed country star involved ironed blue jeans and cowboy boots. Tack on the highly-entertaining cover from Ministry and you get to wondering what a conglomeration of these "sharp-dressed" men would look like.

Don't miss the wacky Dragonette version while you're listening. I finished up with a version in a language I can't identify so if any of you can tell me from where Ryhtivaliohumppa came I'd love it. And don't forget to hit that 8½ Souvenirs cover while you're at it.

In the interests of trying out alternative players, I bring you today Tuba Skinny and their album "Garbage Man". It's essentially what you would get if Squirrel Nut Zippers played a little more Dixieland. That means plenty of oom-pah tube and a lot of zesty horns and strings. If you only pick one to enjoy, make it the first track, Broken Hearted Blues about which the band seems awfully happy, or Minor Drag which isn't.

You can buy the tracks directly from the site, a buck apiece or $10 for the dozen. Let me know what you think. Share whether the player works, as well. It's pretty nifty.

I get a fair number of tracks posted on Soundcloud and I thought I'd post a trial today with the player to see how they work. To make it more fun, I've chosen a great mashup of The Beatles and Daft Punk by the aptly named Daft Beatles that he's titled Eleanoraround the World. In case that name is unclear it's Eleanor Rigby versus Around the World. For someone that professes not to be a big Beatles fan I do seem to be drawn to mashes of them. Perhaps that simply means the Fab Four need some updating? Let me know what you think. As ever with my mashup posts, you can download this one for free from the Soundcloud page linked below.

Daft Punk Vs The Beatles - 'Eleanoround The World' - THE ORIGINAL @daftbeatles MASH UP by DAFT BEATLES

'Tis perhaps a bit unkind to pick Wargasm for Veterans' Day here in the US but I've had the song in the head all day and it is tangentially appropriate, yes? L7 stands as one of the few successful, all-female, hardcore punk bands. I still think "Bricks Are Heavy" was their best album, though, 'way back in 1992. If you like the sound of Wargasm take a listen to songs like Fast and Frightening from "Smell the Magic", the album they released the year before. You can find a whole pile of L7 at Grooveshark.

If I didn't tell you that Son of Dave is, quite literally, a one-man band you'd never guess it. Certainly songs like Shake Your Hips don't give it away. This great cover, as so many of his do, distills what can be an over-done song filled with flashy guitar solos and verbal eye-brow waggling into only as much as one man can play at a time. Well, in this case it's more like as much as three men because he's just that good.

Should you be ignorant of his secret identity, thought it's not actually a secret, I'll spill the beans, secure here in my evil lair. It's Benjamin Darvill, late of Crash Test Dummies and now, literally, on his own and singing the blues. If you want proof it's all him, have a gander at some of the videos of him performing live, including a great one of So Good, So Wrong. But before you go all of the way over to YouTube have a listen to Shake Your Hips right here!

In pursuit of something entirely different I bumped into The Jazz Butcher today. You know I couldn't resist a song title like Death Dentist and it's lucky for you I can't. The song is laugh-out-loud awesome, to coin a phrase. I may have nightmares of someone armed to the teeth with electric spikes and an endless supply of Novocaine tonight but in the meantime I'm loving the song.

You can see him here, complete with back-up singers. "He's coming to get you, na na na." Have a good time with it. If you have another deadly doctor song, especially one as creatively great as Death Dentist, please let me know.

It seems like I've blathered about the Pet Shop Boys half a dozen times, recently. Apparently there's an 80s revival going on and, with the heavy synth and...how do I say this?...less-than-manly voice fad that leads to a lot of similarities. And so I thought I'd share today an example of the sound that so many new bands call to mind. This is part excuse for my late obsession with comparing everyone to them and part just the posting of a song I really like. This one was something of a theme song among the folks with whom I ran in my late teens, there in the metropolitan stretch along I-80 between San Francisco and Sacramento. Enjoy and do let me know if you think my relating so many songs to this sound is off-base.

I bumped into a remix of Blood Orange today, for which I didn't particularly care, but I thought I'd check out the band after the glowing reviews of them on the page. I'm so glad I did. They're like slipping on a comfortable coat, instantly familiar and cozy. But as I listened to Forget It I found myself increasingly reminded of another song: Oingo Boingo's Not My Slave.

Now, it could be the singer's proclamations that "I'm not your savior, baby girl" but somehow the two seem to go together. Not My Slave is so energetic that I tend to think of it as fast while Forget It has more of a lushly mellow feel to it. But I listened to the two back-to-back and discovered that, tempo-wise, they're pretty close. Lyrically, they're two different animals, with Blood Orange getting stingy with their words while, as usual, Danny Elfman wants to tell you a story.

I don't know if Blood Orange intended it, but they have a sort of 80s vibe to them, like Depeche Mode covering The Pet Shop Boys covering The Cure. Maybe it's the vocalist's voice, maybe it's the sparse music, maybe it's the keyboards. I don't know. I do know that I immediately went out and bought Forget It. Let me know what you think: are to two a match or am I full of malarkey?

This post started out about a pair of very different songs that I have, both titled Shotgun. The first remains a family favorite: Southern Culture on the Skids's tribute to traditional wedding plans. "You cannot buy true love but you can shoot its ass."

The second is that old soul favorite, Jr Walker & the All Stars as adopted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. But when I went to get the two I found a pile of songs with just that one word title: Shotgun. Several are the same Motown jam, including a great instrumental version from Richard Elliot that for some reason reminds me of the old Tonight Show. Then there's a Limp Bizkit thing, for which I don't particularly care, a pile of 70s guitar and organ from Vanilla Fudge, a taste of ska from Less Than Jake, and the weirdest thing I've ever heard from Duran Duran.

I rounded out the list with a cover from Gov't Mule by the guy who inducted the song into said Hall of Fame, some creepy thing from Pete and the Pirates, and a classic from Lightning Hopkins about how he's going to take a shotgun after his woman because she's been fooling around with too many men. Yikes! To recover from those I finished with Bachman Turner Overdrive about riding shotgun. I suspect that one is mislabeled, as it cuts out abruptly at 54 seconds and several other BTO songs called Shotgun Rider appear on their list, but I can't be held responsible for other people's mistakes, can I? I can't except the Junior Walker ones I culled that were mistagged as Wilson Pickett and Booker T & the MGs, that is.

For those of you unfamiliar with the band Pink Martini, Hey Eugene is a completely misleading introduction.  It is, however, a great story song and one that half of the people I knew in college could have written so this is the one you're getting first.

Pink Martinis some closer to a small orchestra than an indie band.  They do a lot of songs in various languages including classics like Que Sera Sera, Tea for Two, and Bolero.  But just when you think you've got them comfortably pigeon-holed they come along with something wholly unexpected like Hey Eugene.

I'll post more from them but for today have a listen and let me know what you think.  Every time I listen to it I think of They Might Be Giants and their Your Racist Friend.  I wonder if the "you" in the song is named Eugene. Maybe I should made this a "Related or Not" post!