Song of the day: #39 Pharoah Sanders – "Ore-Se-Rere"

My plan to blog more was slightly thwarted by travel: i'm in New England at the moment, and internet access has been a bit sporadic, so i've been doing analogue stuff like reading books and playing piano. Crazy, i know.

Anyway, i've been working out this Pharoah Sanders piece, which is tremendous fun. It's kind of a palate cleanser in the middle of the parent LP Elevation, a joyful 5-minute respite from the crazed overblown reed and piano soloing surrounding it (which, don't get me wrong, is also great). i've been listening to an ever-increasing amount of brilliant avant-garde 60s/70s jazz recently, and while some of it can sound like a challenge at first, i reckon this track could easily find its way to many people's hearts without too much difficulty. Nigerian jùjú highlife is for lovers.

(Originally from Daniel, whose radio show i've probably recommended you before, and for good reason.)

mp3: Pharoah Sanders – "Ore-Se-Rere (Nigerian Juju Highlife)"

Song of the day: #38 Bruza – "What U Waitin For"

What's Bruza up to these days? i hope he's still performing, but i'm not that in touch with the grime scene so i dunno really. But let's hope that, if he's decided to stop, he's become a motivational speaker or something, because this tune is seriously like the abstract concept of positive thinking did a load of uppers and then went round a club vigorously pumping everyone by the hand making them feel better.

With such a likeable MC, loads of lyrical gems, and of course his trademark interjections of "YEEEAAHHHHH!" and "YA GET MEEEE!" i actually don't see how it's possible not to be cheered up by this.

If i had to pick my three favourite lines, i'd probably go for:

• "put your balls in it!"
• "The feeling of success can be spine-chillin'/ people talk about they want the ice (YEEEAAHHHHH!)/ but they spend too much time chillin'/ watching someone else do what they wanna do while they're chillin'"
• and of course the amazing bit towards the end where he talks about how he hasn't eaten anything all day "...oh, apart from me cereal!"

So here's a toast to Bruza for getting me through many a crap day. Cheers mate!

mp3: Bruza – "What U Waitin For"

Song of the day: #37 Isaiah Toothtaker – "Intruder"

i alluded to Song(s) of the Year in my Jacques Greene post the other day, and this is another of my definite contenders. i keep returning to "Intruder" over and over.


Apart from just being a great record, part of what's so fun about "Intruder" is just how many layers of détournement have gone into making it what it is. In case anyone doesn't know the provenance of the music in this song, here's a brief memeology.

First there was Antoine Dodson, who went viral in July last year after a shit-talking interview with his local TV station in which he warned his sister Kelly's attempted rapist what was coming to him.


Then The Gregory Brothers, apparently a country/soul group but pretty much known for their novelty "Auto-Tune the News" series of YouTube videos, caught wind of the musical cadences of Antoine's voice (and what Wikipedia calls his "flamboyant delivery") and autotuned parts of his and his Kelly's interview and exposition from the news anchor, into an R&B song, "Bed Intruder Song".


This went even more viral, getting to number 89 in the Billboard charts on iTunes downloads alone and racking up, so far, 86 million YouTube hits. Détourne 1: from bad news story to pop smash.¹ Then other performers started to do their own versions, 2,500 of them by this time last year, ranging from rubbish (the singer out of Paramore and someone from kiddy-punks New Found Glory; the human sigh that is Dane Cook) to ace (Afua's bass-based snippet; the shamisen arrangement). Then there's this brilliant version by the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University Marching Band. Détourne 2: from pop smash to parade-ground anthem.


It was probably inevitable that there'd end up being a rap interpolation of the theme, but we're lucky that it was done by someone with the skills of Isaiah Toothtaker and Wavves drummer Jacob Safari, who produced "Intruder", and that they recognised that the marching band's huge, powerful version was the best (to sample, or otherwise), and furthermore that all the song lacked was a tonne of skittering drum machines and an MC as charismatic as he is casually menacing.

Toothtaker's repurposing of the song as a snitches-get-stitches warning is détourne 3, from light-hearted YouTube meme (albeit excellently done) back to urgent street-level threat. This is only emphasised by an excellent split-screen video, in which Toothtaker's performance to camera is mixed with a creepy animation of a clenching and unclenching hand, and scenes of shootouts, car accidents, fist fights and bits of Mark Hejnar's 1996 film Affliction² (particularly Turbo Tom's eye-gouging, and hilariously unhinged gun nut Full Force Frank) edited together by experimental filmmaker Walter Gross. And the cycle is complete, with the salvaging of something concretely decent from a shifting sea of memetics. It'd be interesting to know if Antoine Dodson, who was able to move his family out of the projects from his share of the "Bed Intruder Song" proceeds, has heard this, and if so what he made of it.

¹ Although the questionable power relations of affluent white New York hipsters bolstering their rep off the back of the sincere anger of a wronged black housing project resident didn't go unnoticed. NYU music professor Jason King told NPR, "It has a really good hook, but it's problematic, too. There's a way in which the aesthetics of black poverty—the way they talk and they speak and they look — sort of becomes this fodder for humor without any interest in the context of the conditions in which people actually live", while comedian/Onion web editor Baratunde Thurston elaborated that "As the remix took off, I became increasingly uncomfortable with its separation from the underlying situation. A woman was sexually assaulted and her brother was rightfully upset. People online seemed to be laughing at him and not with him (because he wasn't laughing), as Dodson fulfilled multiple stereotypes in one short news segment. Watching the wider Web jump on this meme, all but forgetting why Dodson was upset, seemed like a form of ‘class tourism.’ Folks with no exposure to the projects could dip their toes into YouTube and get a taste."
² Worth a watch if you're into mental underground/transgressive culture, but probably only once.

Song of the day: #36 Sweet Female Attitude – "Flowers"

Attended a Noah's Ark-themed fancy dress party in Leeds on Friday, dressed as Noah himself (this basically entailed wearing a removal company delivery blanket from the back of a car, a belt made from plaited twine and some awful open-toed sandals, with shorts and t-shirt beneath for modesty). At one point i needed to go to the shops and had to debate with myself whether to go in full costume and risk either looking like a weird religious cultist, or possibly catch a furious beatdown if misinterpreted as taking the piss out of religious garb; or take off the robe and risk looking like the kind of man who wears open-toed sandals. Eventually i decided that bad style was preferable to possibly inciting a religious riot through comical misunderstanding, and left the robe behind. Still don't know if i made the right choice.

Anyway, the party was going pretty well and i kept the costume on for what i consider a heroically long time. Later on, about 30 people all seemed to turn up at once, most of whom weren't making any attempt to wear a costume, and the vibe started shifting from "Noah's Ark theme" to "regular house party with a fucking weird guy standing around wearing a sack". It was like Keith Richards in the 70s getting a complete change of blood or something. i finally bailed after most of the animals removed their face paint and i started getting the stinkeye from more people who had arrived and who apparently had no idea there even was a fancy dress theme.


But anyway, i digress a bit. Part of the crew-of-30 that arrived later included one guy who took to the decks, threw out all the Serious Bro Music For Serious Bro Parties soundtrack (= drum'n'bass, pretty much) that had prevailed before (a welcome relief for me, cuz honestly that shit bores me beyond death) and instead starting throwing on wedding party anthems like Hall & Oates' "Maneater" and Bobby Brown's "Two Can Play at That Game". One thing he dropped early on in his set was today's SOTD. i'm pretty sure when this came out i found it pretty annoying, but hearing it again i'd forgotten what a good pop record it is, despite the duo behind it doing that annoying thing where their artist name is taken from their obvious musical or personal 'selling point' (c.f. Gangstagrass; Drums and Tuba; Buke and Gass; every shit dance troupe or boy/girl group on Britain's Got Talent).

i've always liked the skipping rhythm patterns of UK garage and the way that they manage to be swinging yet urgent at the same time, added to which "Flowers"' technique of micro-cut vocal samples only seems to have got more relevant over time. Basically, a great pop tune. And, pleasingly, it turns out Sweet Female Attitude were from Stockport! Result. Now, if you'll excuse me a contrived Bill Brysonesque ending, i'ma go and listen to last.fm's UK garage station for more turn-of-the-millennium action.

Song of the day: #35 Jacques Greene – "Another Girl"

House producer Jacques Greene's been getting a lot of play recently for some Radiohead remixes he did. Can't front, Thom Yorke's obviously got some good taste. Because Radiohead remixes still have a bit too much Radiohead in there for my taste, i prefer the 20-year-old Canadian's original stuff, and "Another Girl" is a sublime highlight.


The kind of murky, subaquatic synths that have been voguish lately combine with an ace late-90s UK garage rhythm that's as funky as it is propulsive, and best of all the whole thing's topped with the kind of anthemic looped soul-ish vocals that sorta recall the breakbeat hardcore era building to a euphoric climax. Antoin, who put me on to this, has already called it as song of the year, and while i've got a few possible candidates for that title so far, "Another Girl" is definitely up there.

Song of the day: #34 Xrin Arms – "Xr World"

Been meaning to do a post about Xrin Arms (pron. "You're in Arms" or i guess "Urine Arms", if you like) for ages now, and the release of a new video for "Xr World", the first track to be released off his long-awaited Human Hallucinogen album, seems like a good time.

Xrin is the one-man project/alias of Anthony Vincent, originally from California but more often found spreading his caffeinated gospel all over the States on tour. He's also found the time to release over a dozen albums in the last few years, whether solo as Xrin Arms and Goldz Field, together with frequent collaborator p.Wrecks, or part of the group Heavy Barrelz with Wrecks and Guttah Face.


Perhaps the most surprising aspect of XA for the uninitiated is his wildly contrasting musical styles: basically, you're either going to get swaggering, gritty hip-hop or ferocious, balls-out, electronic-inflected grindcore/digital rock, both of them topped off with Anthony's unmistakeable self-harmonising singing style. (i'm sure i've seen him explain the seemingly unusual mix of styles by saying it's like having two kids and loving them both equally, but i've forgotten where i saw this.)

Anyway, if "Xr World" is anything to go by, Human Hallucinogen seems like it's going to be great. An inscrutably beshaded Xrin drops rhymes to camera over a claustrophobic beat as slow and heavy as a hijacked steamroller. The accompanying p.Wrecks-edited video has unsettling images of desert skulls, cockfights, grainy porn slivers, crosses, sinister clowns and vomiting, which i think you'll agree is all you really need from a music video.

Song of the day: #33 Rakoth – "Fear (Wasn't in the Design)"

Gallopy ridiculous Russian Lord of the Rings/Robin Hood forest metal. Too many amazing/terrible bits to enumerate. You'll have to pick your own favourite.

Song of the day: #31 Rufus Harley – "Acknowledgement (A Love Supreme)"

"i think this is the first time I've ever seen a brother playing bagpipes and wearing a kilt!" exclaims someone in the comments. Rufus Harley was the first jazz musician to adopt the Highland bagpipes as his instrument of choice. Here he plays a great version of Coltrane's "Acknowledgement" off the classic album A Love Supreme, interpolating a little bit of "Greensleeves" along the way (and why not). This 1987 performance is from a live DVD of Harley and the Sun Ra Arkestra (which i haven't got, but would very much like to see).



Working as a Philadelphia maintenance man, the young Harley became fascinated with the bagpipes after watching JFK's funeral procession, but couldn't find anywhere in town that had any to sell him. Eventually he had to travel to New York, where he found a set in a Jewish pawn shop. Apparently he used to practice piping in his apartment to his neighbours' great ire, but when the cops turned up after noise complaints, he would quickly stash the pipes away out of sight and ask the officers, "do I look like I'm Irish or Scottish to you?" He also played with Sonny Rollins, Laurie Anderson and The Roots, among others.

Song of the day: #30 Pete Seeger & the Weavers – "Solidarity Forever"

Song of the Day #30 is for #j30. Good luck and solidarity to all strikers and protesters today.

Song of the day: #29 Aurist – "Dekindling"

The first artist to get two Song of the Day posts was also the subject of the very first Song of the Day post with his remix of Shawnna's "RPM". He is, of course, Aurist, and this time the track is "Dekindling", the lead track from his newest album Not Here, which if you were reading yesterday, you'll know was put out by Amoebic Industries Unltd. (basically the corresponding label to this blog).


Anyway, here's the first video from Not Here, for the lead track "Dekindling", as created by one Cory Stephens (http://twitter.com/outmouth), and i really like it. The visuals mostly consist of old amusement park footage (primarily a three-bend water slide, teacup and flying boat/spaceship¹ ride) which, estimating from the film stock and the clothing styles of the people in it, i'd say probably dates from somewhere in the mid '60s–mid '70s period, tho i could just as well be completely wrong about that.² At the same time, the footage flickers and distorts in time with "Dekindling"'s pounding pulse, creating image warps that are equally gorgeous and eerie.

The whole thing also seems to tap into a weird not-nostalgia – can it be nostalgia if you weren't actually there? – that i suspect a lot of us have for those periods of history immediately before we were born or became aware of the world, a time that seems just slightly out of reach. It reminds me of being six and at Disney World, but also a childhood trip to Granada Studios to see one of those films where the seats rock you around in sync with the cinema screen (i think it was some riff on the recently-released Honey I Shrunk the Kids) where the film actually melted and strange molten plastic globules butterflied across the screen and they had to call the whole thing off and halt the bucking rows of seats and bring up the house lights and offer us all refunds, as well as – somehow – most of late 20th-century America.³ Needless to say, this all also works brilliantly as an accompaniment to the track.

This seemingly incredible ability to stimulate weird associations within my psyche that i didn't even realise i had is all the more remarkable when you consider that this is only Cory's third music video.⁴ Definitely going to be checking for his future work.

¹ What do you even call this ride? i'm pretty much just guessing.
² Not being by any means an expert in either film stock or fashion. There's something of the Mad Men era about it, tho.
³ Also the early work of Scottish post-rock group Mogwai, tho why this would be i have no explanation at all.
⁴ Though he does shoot and edit footage for an arts/entertainment web show for his local news.

Song of the day: #28 Tim Fite – "Money Back"

Tim Fite is not happy. Why? Because he wants his motherfucking goddamn shit-ass money back, of course.


Lawd knows why this song has a mere 327 YouTube views, it's been cracking me up at intervals for a while now.

Wiki says Tim is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist based in BK, that he used to be a member of a hip-hop duo called Little-L and One Track Mike, that he's pro-sampling and -giving away albums for free, and that he's put out like nine of the aforesaid albums since 2004, which seems quite impressive (i mean, unless the rest are really bad or something. i'm gonna have to check more of them out). Actually, he seems really quite unnervingly prolific in general.

"Money Back"'s parent album, Under the Table Tennis, is one of those you can get free from his website, which is pretty much just his name rendered in the form of a website.

mp3: Tim Fite – "Money Back"

Song of the day: #27 Invincible – "Sledgehammer"

This is that proverbial "real shit" we're always hearing about.

Here, across two packed, intricate verses, Detroit native Invincible shouts out everyone from dead homies Dilla and D12's Proof to "Strange Fruit" writer Abel Meeropol and murdered Black Panther deputy chair Fred Hampton, paraphrases a Frantz Fanon line, and claims to actually be Peter Gabriel at least a year or two before Lil B was running the "women want to sleep with me because i look like [prominent, unlikely public figure]" meme squarely into the ground.





Sorry if everybody else already knows about Invincible (who i really should have heard of before now; tho i suspect most people probably don't), and thanks to Dan Sonorous/Omnific Beats from 30KB for putting me onto her.

Song of the day: #26 Deaf School – "What a Way to End It All"

Remembered this tune after a recent conversation with Pip, and it's a bit of a cracker. Much more rinky-dink and ukulele-based than i remember, but this actually fits really well. Turns out the song's about someone unconvincingly threatening to kill himself, and his hesitance to actually go through with it is nicely reflected in the tune's refusal to ape Len Cohen or Tindersticks or bloody Morrissey or whoever; in fact, the bouncy music-hall energy and the knowing backing vocals repeating the title phrase seem to reinforce the would-be suicide's reluctance.



This crappy bluescreen video represents the best quality sound version of the song on YouTube, unfortunately.

Deaf School are often called the second-most important band in Liverpool's history (after possibly the most overrated band in music's history), credited with basically rejuvenating the entire city's music scene in the mid-70s during its post-Merseybeat drought. Another cool thing about them is that guitarist "Cliff Hanger" is actually Clive Langer, who went on to be an much-in-demand producer (for the likes of Dexy's, Madness, Morrissey¹ etc.) and also wrote the music for legitimately one of my favourite ever songs, "Shipbuilding", with Elvis Costello.

¹ Christ, twice in one post. What a state of affairs.

Song of the day: #25 Kazuki Tomokawa – "彼方"

Been catching up on some 2010 stuff i didn't have time to check out in the year, and this extraordinary track was one of them, as part of Oh Yes, By All Means' ever-excellent mixes.

This one's from Around the World in 80 Minutes pt. 1, and represents Japan. "Singer, author, actor, painter, drinker, raconteur [and] bike-race tipster" Kazuki Tomokawa is apparently known for performances so wild he has snapped all his guitar strings in a single song. Indeed, the intensity of both the guitar playing and, especially, the vocal on "彼方" borders on the frightening. The closest useful comparison i could think of is when you first hear Black Francis lividly howling over the acoustic guitars on "Vamos" and suspect he might be genuinely disturbed. Although even in that case, i had more of an idea what Francis was talking about. The fact that i don't speak Japanese and therefore have no idea what Tomokawa's saying may well enhance the tension/urgency in his delivery. It sounds at times like he's trying to vomit out one of his lungs.

The title seems to transliterate as "hira" and mean "there, yonder, in that location, in a specific place", but that's from an internet translation engine and could therefore be balls.

Also, it seems both Tomokawa's music and he himself have recently made appearances in the films of Takashi Miike, so i suppose some people might recognise it from those. Not me, tho, as i'm terrible at having seen films and have only seen Audition, Visitor Q and maybe The Happiness of the Katakuris (i literally can't remember about that one).

mp3: Kazuki Tomokawa – "彼方" 

Song of the day: #24 Ben Butler & Mousepad – "Super Motion"

Originally wrote this preview of my pal Joe's new act for Never Enough Notes, where there's a Soundcloud player with more material and so on. This tune's deffo my favourite BB&MP tune tho, at least at the moment. Some of the greatest awkwardfunk i've heard in years.

Ben Butler and Mouse Pad is the new project of Joe Howe (previously known as Germlin, or one half of gay against you), in which cardboard castles and adult hyperactivity disorders take a backseat to freeform synthesizer solos and extremely geometric pullovers.

Joe's long-standing synth fascination shines through, but this time there's much more of an emphasis on playing. It's still dancefloor-friendly but more reined-in and richly melodic than before, recalling the warm ooze of the Weather Report or Zappa's Waka/Jawaka and Grand Wazoo albums, as well as a sense of pushing synth sounds as far as they'll go that's akin to the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (another stated influence). Or, as one last.fm user neatly describes them, "like Prince and Stevie Wonder on your favourite arcade machine".

As well as the laudably unfashionable likes of prog and jazz fusion, BB&MP identify with the Scandinavian skweee scene, and have released one side of a 7" named "Future Tent" on the genre's spiritual home, Norway's Dødpop label. As well as that record, there's a mini-album of "Future Tent" remixes by the likes of oMMM, The Niallist and Tangles, and a 5-track compilation of early stuff named, fittingly, Early.

So far, gigs have been largely conducted in Europe, but North American audiences will soon be able to get their first taste of BB&MP in the flesh, as they play 22 dates across the US in January and February in  support of indie stalwarts Deerhoof. Any of our transatlantic readers would be well advised to take a look.

28 Jan 2011 US San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall
29 Jan 2011 US Los Angeles, CA – Echoplex
01 Feb 2011 US Austin, TX – Mohawk
02 Feb 2011 US Dallas, TX – Palladium Showroom
03 Feb 2011 US Memphis, TN – The Hi Tone
04 Feb 2011 US Nashville, TN – Mercy Lounge
05 Feb 2011 US Athens, GA – 40 Watt
06 Feb 2011 US Raleigh, NC – King’s
07 Feb 2011 US Washington, DC – 9:30 Club
08 Feb 2011 US Brooklyn, NY – Ridgewood Masonic Temple
10 Feb 2011 US Cambridge, MA – Middle East
11 Feb 2011 US Philadelphia, PA – Theatre of Living Arts
12 Feb 2011 US Pittsburgh, PA – Altar
14 Feb 2011 US Pontiac, MI – The Crofoot Ballroom
15 Feb 2011 US Chicago, IL – Bottom Lounge
16 Feb 2011 US Madison, WI – High Noon Saloon
17 Feb 2011 US Minneapolis, MN – Triple Rock Social Club
18 Feb 2011 US Iowa City, IA – Blue Moose
19 Feb 2011 US Omaha, NE – Waiting Room
21 Feb 2011 US Denver, CO – The Marquis
25 Feb 2011 US Seattle, WA – Neumo’s
26 Feb 2011 US Portland, OR – Holocene

mp3: Ben Butler & Mousepad – "Super Motion"

Song of the day: #23 Prolapse – "Deanshanger"

Do you remember the 1980s?
I was there too...

Tory government, strikes, riots in the street, papal visit and now a Royal wedding to boot. Yep, at the moment, comparisons of the 2010s to the 1980s are just serving to confirm the cliché that clichés are clichés because they're true, in that they're both clichéd and true.

With that in mind, a revival of Prolapse's 1997 not-quite-anthem "Deanshanger" might well be in order. Formed "under a table" at the University of Leicester student union, Prolapse stated their intention of becoming "the most depressing band ever" and set about the task by mashing up krautrock rhythms, punk rock and massive swathes of brutalised grey shoegaze feedback, topped off by twin vocalists "Scottish" Mick Derrick (psychotic, Glaswegian) and Linda Steelyard (sarcastic, deadpan, English Rose) enacting fearsome psychodramas over the top.

The music... was crap
The claise¹... were crap
The hair... was crap
Everything... was crap

Opening with a blast of haze before a rhythm section like a wired descendent of "Yoo Doo Right" kicks in, layered with snaking guitar lines and – yes! – bagpipes, "Deanshanger"² then lays out a laundry list of grievances against the '80s, from a time approximately equidistant from their end and their 21st-century revival. The Royal Wedding "wasnae worth the paper it was written on". The papal visit "promised much but didn't deliver" (i'm always amused/baffled by this bit: just what were you expecting, Mick?)

Meanwhile, Steelyard (now a reporter for the Leicester Mercury) enacts the part of someone "trapped in a room" and fruitlessly trying to work out how to escape ("even if I could build a door, I couldn't reach the wood because my feet are strapped to the floor"), the wall of noise around her voice isolating her even further, her tone resigned. By the end she has given over to Stockholm syndrome ("well I feel quite at home here now...")

"I'm glad it's all over, wrapped up in a box and put under the bed," proclaims Derrick at the song's conclusion, but the circling spiral of drums and feedback loops after he's finished seem almost to acknowledge that it's not over, it's never over, and no matter how hard you shout it's only a matter of time before it's all back again.

mp3: Prolapse – "Deanshanger" [YSI]

¹ Whoever reviewed this in the NME at the time had never heard the word "claise", and proceeded to make a right tit of themselves when their quip about Prolapse condemning the "theatrical productions" of the 1980s rather undermined their knowing-condescension schtick.
² Lord knows, what, if any, connection all this has with the Northamptonshire village of Deanshanger.

Song of the day: #22 Your Infamous Harp – "Cock Lobster"

i can't decide if i find this song terrible or amazing, or somewhere in the middle, or veering dementedly between the two. i think the fact someone compared Your Infamous Harp to the horrible System of a Down in the comments made me flinch, and it does initially come off a tad wacky. But then again, the production's really good, the title's obviously amazing¹ , the lyrics have a certain silly wit,² and the song structure's appealingly inventive too.³

and i like the way the guy singer seems to be deliberately aping Fred Schneider in his semi-regular exclamations of "cock lobster!" Actually, having now listened a few times, i've decided this is actually pretty good.

¹ In fact, i only discovered it by Googling to see if anyone had actually written a song with this name yet.
² "i don't want no lobster from you/i think that's very, very rude/you have such harsh words/for being such a delicate food".
³ Such as the 6/8 switch at 1:10 and then back into driving 4/4 a few bars later.

Song of the day: #21 The Delgados – "Mr Blue Sky (Peel session)"

Happy bank holiday! The sun is out where i live in what must be a last-ditch push by the British summer to remind everyone it actually happened at all. So here's a suitably sunny song of the day, The Delgados' epic take on ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky", recorded in session for John Peel in 2002.

Here are the reasons this version is better than the original:

1. Emma Pollock sings it, not Jeff Lynne.
2. The Delgados version doesn make use of stupid Muppet Show backing vocals everywhere. See also:
3. The Delgados' use of a real string section. ELO might well be using a real string section as well, but crucially, even if it is, they make it sound like a tacky carnival ride backing track.
4. The Delgados do not have a stupid boxing ring bell at periodic intervals.
5. i can't hear any handclaps on the ELO version.
6. Slightly unfair given technological progression etc. etc. perhaps, but The Delgados' vocoder doesn't sound like it was knocked together by Willy Wonka on his lunch hour.
7. Again, Emma Pollock sings it, not Jeff Lynne.

It appears Lily Allen and The Decemberists have also covered the song, so i guess if i ever wished to gain a newfound respect for ELO, i would need only to listen to either of those versions.

mp3: The Delgados - "Mr Blue Sky (Peel session)"

Song of the day: #20 Rita Pavone – "My Name Is Potato"

Love this song. Love it.

The video's been posted up around the internets a few times, but usually in the context of animation fanboys on some "hey, this song is shitty, but look at the amazing video by animation pioneer Guido Manuli!" tip. Well they're wrong, all wrong. The video is of incidental interest, and mainly cuz of how adorable Rita Pavone is serenading an imaginary potato, rather than the decent but rather standard animation, in which the potato dances around a bit, tunnels into and out of the ground, fires off a pair of six-shooters, swallows a shovelful of dirt for no apparent reason, and then repeats the whole thing for a second time before zooming off in a rocket. Better are the psychedelic flying 3D letters – "Potato", of course – and Rita's completely un-self-conscious and wonderful dancing at 2:18.

Really, the charm of this 1977 novelty not-quite-hit is increased by how unlikely it is to even exist. i have no idea why someone thought it would be a good idea to write a song about being (named after) a vegetable, but the fact that they did is somehow very encouraging. Probably the best thing about it is how much joy and passion Rita puts into singing such an obviously ridiculous piece. She attacks it as if her life depends on it, and by the time the stunt key change kicks in at 3:00, she sounds like she might actually explode with excitement.

mp3: Rita Pavone – "My Name Is Potato"

Song of the day: #19 Walt Solek – "Who Stole the Keeshka?"

Kishka (sometimes kishke, kiszka or keeshka) is a Slavic-originating term for various types of sausage or intestine stuffed filled with meat and/or meal, and popular among Eastern Europeans, Ashkenazi Jews and diaspora communities of both.

Its several types include kaszanka, a black pudding-esque concoction involving a pig's intestine filled with pig's blood and barley. Sometimes liver is used as a filling; sometimes buckwheat, ground potatoes (as in Greater Bialystok kiszka) or other grains are subsituted for the barley. Paprika is frequently added for flavour. Ashkenazic Jewish kishke obeys kashrut restrictions by using beef intestines (or sometimes, an edible synthetic substitute) filled with matzo meal, rendered fat (schmaltz) and spices. So-called "false kishka" is actually helzel, chicken neck-skin stuffed with a flour-based mix. Finally, believe it or not, there's such a thing as vegetarian kishka.

Someone has stolen Polish-American lyricist, composer, and Clown Prince of Polka Walt Solek's kishka, and, though he might not look it, he is extremely unhappy about this. Intending to secure the return of his intestine-based feast through song, he penned "Who Stole the Keeshka?" (as it was originally spelt), which has since become a minor polka standard to the extent that it is often credited as "Polish traditional" rather than to Solek (lyrics) and polka promoter and musician Walter Dana. It has been recorded by numerous groups including Grammy-winning polka artist Frankie Yankovic, polka revivalists Brave Combo, and dependably dreadful musical comedian "Weird Al" Yankovic.

The song veers oddly and abruptly between the mournful verses bemoaning the loss of the food, the slightly more optimistic questioning of the chorus, and the frankly balls-out, horn-filled joyous exuberance of the instrumental sections, also featuring some truly wild¹ tambourine-playing. This probably says something profound about the Polish-American experience, but search me if i know what it is.

Solek's anguished vocals really convey the pain of the lost blood sausage: it's actually quite surprising that someone can imbue the words "it was hanging on a rack" with so much emotion. After a while he moves from anger to the bargaining stage, offering up pretty much any of his other Polish delicacies in exchange for the kishka's return:

You can take my szynka
Take my fine kielbasa
You can take my [stewed]? czernina²
But gimme back that kishka

Happily, everything turns out ok for Walt: at the end of the song it turns out that it was in fact Yashil who stole the kishka, the big bastard. To his credit, he returns it to the rack, and Solek thanks him, just in time for another tambourine-soaked hoedown frenzy. He's lucky Walt's such a nice guy. i'd have considered giving him a fine kielbasa round the face, to be honest with you.

Walt Solek's records seem insanely hard to find nowadays. There's a couple on eBay, two records on Spotify for British/Scando readers, and that really is about it. For ages i've been trying to find a tune of his called "Old Whiskey Shoes Polka", which was used to great effect by Les Blank in his 1980 documentary short Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, so if anyone knows where i can get hold of a copy of that, hit me up and i will reward you with some Polish sausage or something. Word.

mp3: Walt Solek – "Who Stole the Keeshka?"

¹ And endearingly over-high in the mix, for that matter.
² Couldn't work out for sure what this says, though some research into Polish cuisine throws up czernina – duck blood soup – as probably the closest-sounding dish. Like the kiszka, it's also full of blood.