Theresa Andersson

Swedish spunk Theresa Andersson is amazing .. heard this song on npr's "song of the day" and loved it- but had no idea that she was a one woman show! Is that an Ikea shoe rack she's using to hold her guitar pedals? Oh well- i guess she is Swedish! And i think that stool is also from Ikea. Two other things- one is (although i have a 'foot aversion') i think she also has very sexy dextrous feet- like a MONKEY. The second is - you never see guys doing this shtick - always girls (KT Tunstall , Laura veirs etc) .. because we can't multitask. Many of us can barely unitask. I cannot talk and write at the same time. My brother-in-law apparently cannot drive and talk at the same time. I cannot drive and change the track on my ipod at the same time- yet i do try. I'd like to see a fMRI of Theresa's brain when she's singing and got all 4 limbs playing different instruments. If only she had a tail!

npr version here (better audio quality)

New Music: "Little Joy"

If "The Strokes" were stuck in a time machine, and popped out in 1954 - in Hawaii - this would be the music they'd make. I've only heard snippets but can't get any of these tunes out of my head: true "earworms". The band consists of the Strokes' drummer, his girlfriend, and some other guy.


Album is out in a few weeks.

Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin) vs Alison Krauss" Who has the Most Beautiful Blonde Locks?

This album "Raising Sand" is incredible.. produced by T-Bone Burnett. Apparently people who meet T-Bone tell him "..I thought you were black".. to which he replies "I thought so too!".

Musical Noodlings

Recently been getting in to spirituals and gospel music ... Mahalia Jackson, "The Five (Original) Blind Boys of Alabama"- not those pretenders to the throne- " the 7 myopic black guys from Mississippi" . . I'm particularly fond of ye olde-testamente songs - like
"Go Down Moses (Let My People Go)" - this version by Louis Armstrong. Cute cartoon.

Also recently discovered the amazing "stride" pianist Willie "The Lion" Smith (1897-1973) . Actually his real name was William Herny Joseph Bonaparte Bertholoff. He was a Jewish-African-American musician from New York. (or should that be Jewish-American--African-American?). From the fantastic NPR podcast "Jazz Profiles" from June - (Never have i heard Yiddish sung like that!)

Just discovered the tune "Elijah Rock"... amazing and unusual harmonies, rhythms.

Tom Waits

I love Tom Waits. First thing i heard was a track from "Bone Machine"... unlike anything i had ever heard before- it's the only CD i ever bought twice! (lost it once). I then bought a few of his earlier albums- "Blue Valentines". The stuff over the last 5 years has been horrible carnival music.. but i love the new stuff... esp "Make it Rain" from the album "real Gone" (2004) .... esp the lyrics.

Make it Rain

She took all my money
and my best friend
You know the story
Here it comes again
I have no pride
I have no shame
You gotta make it rain
Make it rain!

Since you're gone
deep inside it hurts
I'm just another sad guest
on this dark earth

I want to believe
in the mercy of the world again
Make it rain, make it rain!

The nite's too quiet
Stretched out alone
I need the whip of thunder
and the wind's dark moan

I’m not Able, I'm just Cain
Open up the heavens
Make it rain!

I’m close to heaven
Crushed at the gate
They sharpen their knives
on my mistakes

What she done, you can't give it a name
You gotta make it rain
Make it rain, yeah!

Without her love
Withour your kiss
Hell can’t burn me
more than this
I’m burning up all this pain
Put out the fire
Make it rain!

I’m born to trouble
I’m born to fate
Inside a promise
I can’t escape
It’s the same old world
But nothing looks the same
Make it rain!
Make it rain!

Got to make it rain
Make it rain
You got to make it rain
Got to make it rain
You got to...

I stand alone here!
I stand alone here!
Sing it:
Make it rain!
Make it rain!

Death Cab for Cutie

I've just discovered these guys... apparently their name is an obscure 'Beatles' reference. Really love these songs:

I'll Follow You into The Dark: More of a love song than the video gives credit to!


A Lack of Color: starts off with a discussion about retinal image inversion! Sounds a little Elliot Smithy "ahhhhhooohhhhh" in bits. This video by the way is just someones own home production- what you get when you get songs from youtube! i think this makes things even more interesting- often more so than some crappy jiggling home video from a concert with really bad sound. Official Website here.

Madeleine Peyroux

Madeleine Peyroux - Don't Wait Too Long
Uploaded by Madeleine-Peyroux

I know this is a few years old- but i heard it again recently and remembered how much i loved it.... very 'Lady Day'. Must check out her latest stuff.

The Mesopotamians: They Might Be Giants

I haven't heard about these guys since "Dr Worm".. but this is bloody funny. They sound a lot like Cake i think.
There's a very obscure intertextural reference to a bad haircut that makes one of the Mesopotamians look like a "Mohenjo Daran".... this is funny as Mohenjo Daro was one of the city-states of the Indus Valley that independently developed 'civilization'. (From memory the Harappans were another). Got to love that ancient history! -my favourite book is one i bought when i was 21- the "Oxford History of the World". Here's a link to my previous entry on Gilgamesh.

Kings of Leon: Bucket

Kings of Leon - The Bucket

Crammed with vocal hooks, simple but compelling guitar lines and a gloriously throbbing wall of sound.

I love KOL .. remember exactly where i was when i 1st heard this song a few years ago ... entire album is incredible... but as always i like their old stuff better than their new stuff.

The Rapping Rabbi: Matisyahu

This guy is a bona-fide Yeshiva boy - and not a bad 'beatboxer'.. but i think the Jamaican accent is probably not authentic! Still, i think he's great!

Jesca Hoop: Tom Waits' Babysitter

Amazing voice, interesting melodies, incredible harmonies- website here.

Soil & Pimp Sessions: Japanese Jazz on Crystal Meth

These guys ("Soil and Pimp Sessions") are amazing- frenetic, kooky inspired Jazz. They've got the same manic energy as the old " Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra "from a decade ago- loved their version of "Hit the Road jack". Their lead singer was a flamboyant bald dude know appropriately enough as "Cleanhead Gimura" (RIP).

Louis Prima + Benny Goodman: why don't they make music like this anymore?

I discovered Louis Prima only recently and have downloaded (ahm.. bought) everything i can find. He still isn't regarded as a serious jazz singer / composer- but more of a lounge act along with his "straight-man" wife Keeley Smith- whose breasts appear to defy the laws of physics in this video. Cute nose-wiping shtick.

Louis' tune "Sing Sing Sing" was nicked 1 year later by Benny Goodman to become his signature tune. Benny i discovered decades ago - my grandfather had a thick double LP of his concert at Carnegie hall- this was the VERY first jazz i had ever heard...

Swing is Back! Hooray. Ms Auguilera is a good looking young woman.

The Most Amazing Song Ever

http://www.toolshed-media.com/ts/sufjan-stevens-casimir-pulaski-day.mp3

Casimir Pulaski was a Polish Count who ended up fighting in the American Revolutionary War.. what this has to do with Sufjan Steven's song about the death of his girlfriend remains a mystery to me... but nonetheless this song makes the hairs stick up on the back of my neck!

Golden rod and the 4-H stone
The things I brought you
When I found out you had cancer of the bone
Your father cried on the telephone
And he drove his car to the Navy yard
Just to prove that he was sorry
In the morning through the window shade
When the light pressed up against your shoulder blade
I could see what you were reading
Oh the glory that the lord has made
And the complications you could do without
When I kissed you on the mouth
Tuesday night at the bible study
We lift our hands and pray over your body
But nothing ever happens
I remember at Michael's house
In the living room when you kissed my neck
And I almost touched your blouse
In the morning at the top of the stairs
When your father found out what we did that night
And you told me you were scared
Oh the glory when you ran outside
With your shirt tucked in and your shoes untied
And you told me not to follow you
Sunday night when I cleaned the house I find the card where you wrote it out
With the pictures of your mother
On the floor at the great divide
With my shirt tucked in and my shoes untied
I am crying in the bathroom
In the morning when you finally go
And the nurse runs in with her head hung low
And the cardinal hits the window
In the morning in the winter shade
On the first of March on the holiday
I thought I saw you breathing
Oh the glory that the lord has made
And the complications when I see his face
In the morning in the window
Oh the glory when he took our place
But he took my shoulders and he shook my face
And he takes and he takes and he takes

Computer Camp Love

My god this is such a GREAT song.. bloody funny! The video is even funnier- esp those confused looking Norwegian school students and the guy with the monobrow.... i wonder if that's Ketil



I was so impressed- i emailed the band:


Hi DataRock....

You Guys Rock!

I've emailed a link to computer camp love to all my cool friends .
Keep up the good work! Maybe you'll be famous. Do the "Grease" people know you nicked their lyrics? You could be in BIG trouble.

RM

Hi!

no i don't think the grease people know. let's hope they never will...
anyway, thanks for your interest and support. hopefully we'll come to australia in january next year.

best ,

ketil

Isn't the internet amazing? You can hear a song, visit the band's website, watch the video and email the bass player and get a reply all within 6hours.

Eric Satie- Magritte's Bowlered Man?

Poor crazy Eric- he died a hermit - lived his last 25yrs in a tomb-like room with his umbrella collection and 7 velvet suits from his "velvet gentleman" period. (I think i may be on the verge of my next "velvet gentleman" period).... but what amazing music! http://hem.fyristorg.com/realpiano/wav/gymnop1.mp3

"Following a rather short adolescence, I became an ordinary young man, tolerable but no more. At that moment in my life I began to think and to write music. Oh yes.Wretched idea!... very wretched idea!It certainly was, for I lost no time in developing an unpleasant (original) originality, irrelevant, anti-French, unnatural, etc...Then life became so impossible for me that I resolved to retire to my estates and pass the rest of my days in an ivory tower - or one of some other (metallic) metal.That is why I acquired a taste for misanthropy; why I nurtured hypochondria; why I became the most (leaden-like) miserable of men. It distressed people to look at me - even through hall-marked gold eye-glasses. Oh yes.And all this happened to me because of music. That art has done me more harm that good, really: it has made me quarrel with people of quality, most honourable, more-than-distinguished, terribly genteel people.Let us pass on. I shall come back to this subject later." ES