This video is so amazing that I put it online myself. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present you with the amazing-ness of Gerry Woo.
CHECK OUT THIS MOTHERFUCKER'S DANCE MOVES FOR CHRISSAKES!!!
Plus, duh, he's an Azn Brothah!!!
Sometimes I feel incredibly old. This is in fact, such a common gripe on my blog that I should probably change my URL to BrokenOldMan.blogspot.com.
The first entry would look like this:
J/K!
:D
What I mean to say of course, is that my buddy Brian invited me to go see this band Celebration play, and he sent me a link to a track they did that was remixed by Holy Fuck:
Knowing nothing about either band I did some serious internet searching, which means I followed the below time-honored mathematical formula:
IF NOT [myspace.com/bandname],
THEN [myspace.com/bandnamerocks],
OR, FAILING THAT, [myspace.com/bandnamebandname],
OR, RARELY, [myspace.com/therealbandname]
This research yielded the fact that the band is from Baltimore and the remixers are Canadian. My reaction was basically "seriously? Am I literally listening to a Canadian electro-revival act remix a rock song by a band from Baltimore? Shouldn't this song be on the cover of the Fader right now?"
I mean, I guess the song is pretty good, but I feel like all these types of songs basically all sound exactly the same, with a few exceptions. It all comes down to people basically going "hey, have you heard the [Canadian Dance] remix of [Not Canadian Rock Song]? Check it out!"
Also, check it out!
Klaxons - Atlantis (Crystal Castles RMX)
Wolfmother - Woman (MSTRKRFT RMX)
I mean, this video from Holy Fuck's myspace is pretty exciting. Bearded guys twiddling nobs and bobbing their headz! (or, as it will be referred to from now on, BGTNBTHZZZ)
Anyways, ugh. I was trying to download more tracks by Holy Fuck, but apparently on Limewire, the only song/artist that exists with the word "fuck" in it is Tenacious D.
1. She had Amazon sex with Dolph Lundgren.
2. She covered songs by the Pretenders, the Normal, Iggy Pop, Roxy Music, and Joy Division.
3.If you ignore her she will literally bitchslap you.
4. She's worked with Wally Badarou, Sly & Robbie, Arnold Schwarzenegger (though her dialogue consisted primarily of "YAAAHH!!!"s), Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Trevor Horn, Nile Rodgers, and Christopher Walken.
5. She begins her concerts in a giant gorilla costume. (One Man Show is VHS only, son!)
6. Feel Up (Larry Levan Mix)
Happy thanksgiving, here's a mix I did, to accompany the record check I did on Turntable Lab...
Live From The Anus Factory
A mix that is neither live nor from the Anus Factory
*bonus-town!
LCD - North American Scum (Onastic Dub)
Paul McCartney - Temporary Secretary (Radio Slave Mix)
2 things...
I'll be on the radio with DJ Elhaam tonight from 9-10 PM... tune in online!
Also, this is nothing short of brilliant, a lip dub of Harvey Danger's Flagpole Sitta, from my new favorite video site vimeo:
UPDATE~
There's also an homage to this from some Frenchos for Weezer's "Sweater Song."
Back when I was working at Turntable Lab with Kyle, we would often listen to literally anything besides what the store would sell, in direct opposition to the "only listen to what the store sells" policy. This is how we both got hooked on the Zombies, and why we would listen to stuff like Terry Gross' interview with Iggy Pop.
One day Kyle threw on something from his iPod which was someone calling WFMU, which ended up being one of my favorite things I've ever heard. If you have ever met a music snob or record nerd you will know exactly who this type of guy is.
Recently I forced Kyle to email the file to me so I could listen to it again... I also played the beginning of it for Michna when I was at his house this weekend and we ended up listening to the whole half-hour of it. Prank caller or real? You be the judge...
WFMU Caller (snippet)
WFMU Caller (full version)
update: this is a new link to the full file, not cut off at the end like the old one was
*bonus! Jay Black "One Night Affair" via Kyle
*double bonus! The caller's (AKA "Charles Martin, the Music Scholar") Top 5 tracks of all time!
This Friday is my last night at my weekly spot I've had for the last 3-4 years. It kind of sucks, because while I've often bitched about it, it also is a well-paying gig and sometimes affords me the luxury of literally playing the dumbest records of all time.
Gone forever are the opportunity to play the following mixes!
Bob Sinclar into OMC
Yes into Cutting Crew into Asia
Salt N Pepa into Color Me Badd into the Divinyls
Soft Cel into Peter Cetera
Literally anything that will mix with "Centerfield"
So, to bid farewell, here's a party pack...
Vig Bar Smash Hits! (Stuffit required)
Includes 6 white people anathemic anthems!
...And! Even though I usually tell my friends to not come because it's so douchey, this Friday I'm inviting all my friends, and will honor all their requests! I foresee now that I will probably be playing the best Modest Mouse song, the best Jam song, and, let's face it, I'll probably end up playing "Centerfield" anyways.
*bonus! Here's the old manager Joel on his last night working the Vig... yep, he's skanking on the bar to Madness:
When I was on tour with the Flesh and Ted Leo & the Pharmacists in Europe, we did a bunch of driving. Most of Europe is basically beautiful country. The driver for Ted Leo was this British guy named Ben, who was the illest guy in existence. He's like this late 30s/early 40s guy who has been around good music his entire life, has been to every big concert of the last 20 years, has amazing stories about Sting lending his private jet to Rod Stewart and Ron Wood (punchline: someone carves "STRING IS A CUNT" into the armrests of his captain's chair) and Bono asking Captain Beefheart to collaborate on an album with him (punchline: handwritten note that reads "Dear Bongo. I don't think so. [no signature]").
Aside from being the coolest guy on rock tour, he's also a surly, funny British guy who says "fucking cunt" to modify every noun and adjective there is. Normally I equate soccer-hooligan-esque (pardon me, football enthusiast) British guys with people who wait on line to get into McSorley's -- terrifying and from another world. But Ben is supernice, always fired up, and always has a good story onhand. This all combines to make him the perfect driver, plus he's responsible and can flex the intimidating side of his Britishness if need be (with sketchy promoters, locals who want to mess with the band, etc).
Also, he's in a joke Oi band called Hard Skin:
The thing with this band is that apparently they're somewhat well-known in the UK scene... we were joking about them with some locals and they were like "wait... Hard Skin?" They have a CD out with such inspirational titles as "We Are The Wankers" and "Bunch of Pissed Up Cunts." Damn! I can't believe I didn't burn that CD while we were in Europe... I'm going to try to get some because it is basically the ultimate in feel-good music.
Oh yeah, that shirt that Ben is wearing in the top picture? The front looks like this:
And the back looks like this:
(2nd picture taken through a window, which is why he looks like Jesus)
Here's 2 songs that I wish I had on my iPod when we were driving for hours by the unchanging German landscape:
Ultravox "Herr X" (12" Mix)
Kraftwerk Elektro Kardiogramm (Live)
Ron's nephew Bill Hardy has taken on the impressive and enviable task of re-issuing all of Ron's old edits to vinyl. There's already a few bootlegs of his stuff floating around, like the "Peaches and Prunes" edit on Automan and the Music Box series, which I'm pretty sure are out of print.
According to Bill's site, there are 3 volumes of the Muzic Box Classics out right now, the most recent one featuring edits of "Let No Man..." and a super-long version of the Dells' "No Way Back". There's no mail order on the site unfortunately but if you email Bill he's super-nice and you can order the records directly from him.
There's also a brief but interesting article of Ron at Chicago House DJ, that also lists a bunch of his favorite songs.
Donnie - The It (Ron Hardy mix)
The Dells - No Way Back (Ron Hardy edit)
*bonus - Eli's post on Frankie Knuckles... with a link for "Welcome to the Pleasuredome"!
In song and in dance I express myself as
a member of a higher community,
I have forgotten how to walk and speak
I am on the way toward flying into the air, dancing.
My very gestures express enchantment.
I feel myself a god, supernatural sounds emanate from me,
I walk about enchanted
in ecstasy like the gods I saw walking in my dreams!
I am no longer an artist, I have become a work of art.
YESSSSS
Clearly, I still love the dong out of ABBA. Here are the girls hearing the playback for "Dancing Queen" in the studio for the first time. No, it's not the one where Anna-Frid starts crying because it's the most beautiful thing she's ever heard, but still, there's alternate lyrics!
That gigantic Swede next to the girls is ABBA's accountant, who explains elsewhere in the documentary that ABBA got taxed the shit out of because the Swedish tax is like 40% or something preposterous like that. Not that they're really hurting for money, I heard someone literally offered them 1 million dollars to do a reunion and Benny & Bjorn were like "meh."
Meanwhile, Anna-Frid and Agnetha were probably like "did you say a million? Like 1 with 6 zeros after it?"
As far as I'm concerned there are only 2 good Minor Threat songs, and only 1 good Fugorzi song.
Fugazi - Waiting Room
Watch a live version of Good Guys (Don't Wear White)
Watch a bored teenager montage edit, cut to Salad Days. Actually, the guy who made these videos kinda makes me think. I've often wondered if it would have made any difference if YouTube and all this other internet stuff had been around when I was a bored-ass 17 year old. I'm like "oh man I totally would have made rad videos and been able to get all these people to see them!" But then when I watch the other videos this guy made I'm reminded of the fact that, regardless of what decade you grew up in, if you're an awkward, gangly, glasses-wearing, pockmark-ridden teenager, having a camera and YouTube is not going to alleviate that.
Today I'm putting up extended mixes of 3 of my favorite 12s...
Electronic - Getting Away With It
This is Johnny Marr's side project after the Smiths broke up. Now technically on paper this is like the ultimate emo wet dream, aside from getting a Morrissey-gram:
Johnny Marr + Bernard Sumner + Neil Tennant should = complete devastation.
However, the album's production is mega-90s and the songs all kind of suck. But on this lead single, Tennant's fake Moz lyrics ("I've been walking in the rain just to get wet on purpose," etc) are pretty amusing, and the orchestration is arranged by Anne Dudley (who did stuff with Trevor Horn/AoN and Frankie Goes To Hollywood). The extended mix here I think fuses all the things Electronic were good at -- jangly guitars and an Hacienda-y house feel. Also, how did the Psychedelic Furs not sue the shit out of them for that chorus?
Spandau Ballet - Gold
OMG this song is like the ultimate in why mid-period Spandau Ballet are so fucking good. These dudes went from fake Joy Division to chunky white disco epics in about 3 years... If you've heard the Kings of Disco comp then you already know that the US remix of "Chant" is like a cinematic march into Armageddon, with a circus band at your side (a title that only "Tusk" can compete with). If that's the case, then "Gold" is what the circus master plays in his private tent 5 minutes before he leads the charge, cowering in self-doubt but realizing he needs to get it together. I once read something about this Olympic runner who was like "the 2 songs that get me pumped to run a race are 50's If I Can't and Des'ree's You Gotta Be," and I was like "gaaaaa'aaaay." If I was running a race, or for that matter about to enter the witness protection program, I would listen to "Gold." Always believe in your soul!-talking_loud_and_clear_s.jpg){kind=spacer}
OMD - Talking Loud and Clear
This song belongs in the "I only know about it because of my older sister" category. It's 1984-era OMD, right before "If You Leave" made them gigantic in the states. Everyone always goes on and on about how early OMD is the best ever (and of course they're right, the Peel Sessions CD is insano-vision), but their mid-period stuff is more polished, and in this case a lot weirder. The breakdown that comes in at around 3:00 is pretty magical. Like, unicorns magical. Also lyrically, "Talking Loud And Clear" expresses quite possibly the gayest and most sincere emotion I've ever heard in a pop song outside of Jonathan Richman. The lyrics are basically:
Let's go to the park and sit in the grass
Let's stare into each other eyes
Let's smile while doing so
Wheeeeeee!
Also, whimsy!
This weekend I went to the WFMU record fair. It's always comforting/haunting to see the usual suspects of aging, bald/balding, single, fetish-object obsessed weirdos freaks and geeks congregate under one roof to spend more time and money on records. Look at all these golems/smeagols -- not one female for as far as vision permits!
Yessss! I didn't really take any photos inside, because I was too busy "diggin in da crates," "keepin da art form alive," etc etc. I'm also not really into the endless crates of Beatles/Stones/Psych that every dealer in America seems compelled to bring to these things. I saw a J-card that read "Beard Rock" and another one that read "Unshaven Rock." Hilarious to someone, presumably? The whole time I was wandering around hypnotized like "where are the 12s?" Answer: they're always on the floor and the selection is not the greatest but I did finally get a copy of the boner-givingest record of all time:
Found a couple other joints but nothing really penis-shattering. I got another copy of my favorite Thompson Twins 12, this one with the dub version of "Lies" on it. I also got Nitzer Ebb's "Join In The Chant", which I heard like a million times in the last month! Cash played it at 205 a few weeks ago, then I heard it at Motherfucker on Halloween and when Lloyd was at my house he played pretty much that record and "I was Born This Way" to the exclusion of all else.
I'll leave you with my favorite new song on DFA; you can/should buy it here.
Second wave ska, playa-hatas! Obviously I'm aware of the fact that the only thing less cool than liking 2nd wave ska is liking 3rd wave ska. But you know what? The Specials were produced by Elvis Costello, The Selecter's song "Celebrate the Bullet" is rad, and so are the English Beat. Plus there's like 3 really good Madness songs too.
Aside from providing the music to the greatest racing sequence in cinematic history (starts at 2:45), the English Beat also wrote a bunch of perfect pop songs and were also... uh let's see here... well they were a racially integrated band? I guess that counts for something. They're like the Equals or Love! Plus after they broke up, the members split off to join one-hit wonders General Public, two-hit wonders Fine Young Cannibals, and no-hit wonders Big Audio Dynamite (well, no-hits after Ranking Roger joined them).
Anyways I was in a record store a year ago and the guy threw on "Mirror in the Bathroom" which was what totally re-ignited my "hey you know what? Ska is not always 100% terrible!" recollections. So I bought their Greatest Hits and found that I actually really like them. Here's a few tracks:
Mirror In The Bathroom
I Confess
Hands Off She's Mine (RMX)
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