Songs for Bud (Kenny)

I'm not an Olivia fan either, and Cousin Pam is just too much. That leaves Bud/Kenny. Unless I can find a better picture of Cockroach.

Cal Tjader - "Fried Bananas"


Fania All Stars 3 - "Busamba"


Joe Bataan - "Muchacho Ordinaire"

Songs for Vanessa

For the sake of completeness. Not that I'm going to include Sandra or Alvin.

Calypso King & the Soul Investigators - "Greasy Pork"


Dennis Coffey Trio - "Hair & Grits"

Songs for Rudy

We'll have to go back to Vanessa later - for now, I can picture Rudy going APESHIT for congos and cowbell.

Universal Robot Band - "Barely Breaking Even"


Kaos - "My Reputation"

Songs for Denise

Does Denise Huxtable like Herbie Mann? Nobody could have guessed she'd like Peter Frampton, so MAYBE.

Herbie Mann - Yardbird Suite (St Etienne treatment)


Herbie Mann & Stereolab - One Note Samba

Songs for Theo

A cover, a remix, an old chestnut:

the S&Cake - from the Plum set of covers


Air - "Sexy Boy" (Bertrand Burgalat remix)


Issac Hayes - "Ike's Rap II"

Songs I Managed to Listen to Today

There's basically two times through the day that I pay any attention to music: (i) the five or ten minutes it takes to haul my ass to and from the office, and (ii) at the actual office, depending on how busy the day goes. Which means to say I've got 10-20 minutes to give anything a good listen. There's always music at home, but if I gotta choose, you know I gots to watch THE COSBY KIDS ON OPRAH. That's not even a dilemma.

Here's where I am:
David Axelrod - "the Mental Traveller"

Did you know Paul McCartney owns a slew of Axelrod's publishing rights? That, on top of Buddy Holly's catalog. That guy has more money than Oprah.

Bobby Caldwell - "Open Your Eyes"


Smooth B - "I Want My Money Back"

There's nothing more wonderful than hearing someone rhyme about pie, meat, riding the bus and fighting a bull in a span of twenty seconds.

Some Items of Interest From the Past Year

A few choice things from 2007 around our abode:



1. Civic Pride - I found a new feeling in my stomach and it wasn't from breakfast at the Tomahawk. When they unveiled the Olympic mascots, I had to do a double-take to make sure I wasn't on vacation somewhere else.

2. Speaking of which, we went out of town numerous times, and as it turns out, Beard Papa was a common theme. From Hong Kong, back home, to San Francisco, we were hooked. Not that there weren't other awesome things that happened on those trips....

3. Culinary Feats - Two meals of note: (i) while there's no shortage of good restaurants in town, there's only a handful that elevate it to an artform: the tasting menu at Gastropod achieves that in bounds; and (ii) the delicacy of Shanghainese cuisine is often lost at most places, but dinner at Ye Shanghai in Hong Kong certainly found it.

4. Speaking of Hong Kong, this was one of my favorite finds from the year - Masabumi Yokoi's entry for the Uniqlo t-shirt contest.


5. Other Clutter: I did so amazingly well for toys this year, I feel (almost) guilty. I got the Labbit for Christmas, and went down to the mothership and picked up this Bossy Bear for under $20 (yay for parity!)


6. Comics: The year saw a whole slew of Chris Ware output, but I was really feelin' Misery Loves Comedy. Sure, it was a re-print of all the old Schizos, along with some other stuff I had already, but this was probably the best anthology since the Newgarden book from the year before. Didn't see the Clowes strip in the Times, sorry. Didn't feel Tomine's Shortcomings as much as the next Asian-N. American, sorry (it was interesting, but not as interesting as some thought). Can't read French, thus didn't get the new Michel Rabagliati, sorry. Didn't read the Pascal, either, sorry. (The NYorker cover beside is also one of my faves of the year, though that might be due to shotty memory than anything else)

7. Muzak: The more I grow dependent on my i-Toons, the less certain I am as to what the heck came out in the past year. This problem compounds itself the further I end up in this crazy mp3 blog world: what's old is new again, and back-catalog is as current as new release. Thus, a quick scan of my hard drive would probably yield a 3:2 ratio of music from 30 years ago to tracks released in 2007. Worse: my free time can't keep up to the sheer glut of files on my hard drive, and there's not nearly enough free space on that thing either; I might have listened to that Ronson album intently for a couple of days, only to burn the thing to CD and never pick up on it again.

There's not a heck of a lot I remember from the past year of music. I recall Radiohead did something, didn't they? That girl from Rilo Kiley showed up in pictures everywhere (not nearly as many as Cat Power though), and I even liked that album a lot too. I tried extra-hard to give rock n' roll a chance this year, and recall that I liked a slew of albums (Sea and Cake, etc) - heck, I even liked that Liars track that Brian posted on his Facebook a whole bunch. I think I remember that.

But more than anything, if my current playlist is any indication, 2007 seemed to be a good year for hip hop. (I didn't think the Pharoahe Monch got enough hype, and thus here's that gah-gah-gah re-working of "Welcome to the Terrordome"; I'd post something from the Top Shelf comp or the Y Society or Ohmega Watts albums, but there's enough blogs out there that have covered them already:

)

New Portishead, Hell Freezes Over

By now I'm sure you've all seen the videos of the new Portishead songs, so I'll spare you the details, but does anyone remember or know why the heck P-head would've recorded this French version of "Only You"?

Burned My Oven Mitts Get Some Polysporin

Here I go gummin' 'bout Sammy P and a new book of photos finds its way to my door. Comes with an accompanying EP of electronic tracks that burn. Order from Press pop dot com.

Get Yr Ovenmitts Here's Some Heatrocks

I. Startin' From the Middle Ground
It's not like it was the first mix CD, or even the best, but there was something about Andy Smith's first Document mix that seemed to grab everyone. It was probably the first time I'd heard kitsch (Tom Jones) so obviously paired and emphasized within a mix without it seeming jokey, and probably the first time I'd ever seen a cover of a dj set (Smith covers the venerable "Wheels of Steel" set). When Smith played the Republik later that summer, dropping "St. Peppers" into his set seemed revelatory; few djs in Calgary up to that point would drop something so glaringly outside of the normal rare groove/hip hop/acid jazz set (though most obviously could have, it just didn't seem to happen). Now it'd be weird without it.

Jay used to play the hell out of the Spencer Davis segue into Love Unlimited from this mix, but the Jungle Brothers/Jeru intro grabbed me to no end.

Jungle Brothers - "How Ya Want It We Got It" (Native Tongues remix): Oh yeah! Of the three Native Tongue heavyweights, the Jungle Brothers just don't generate the same excitement. De La's rhymes are perhaps more catchy, and Tribe's beats perhaps more influential, and thus the Jungle Brothers nestled in third. This track came well after the Native Tongues had lost their collegiate charm, but man, is it still comforting to hear them on one track.


De La Soul - "Intro" (from Stakes is High): The Jungle Brothers track always reminded me of this De La song, which I prefer. It's the first time that De La had sounded so bleak and weary to me, and the intro emphasized this the most.


Jeru the Damaja - "Come Clean" (from the Sun Rises in the East): I'm not sure what the beef with the Fugees was all about (none of them seem to have fared very well, outside of Wyclef's obvious commercial success), and the falling out with Primo didn't seem to help. For what it's worth, I really liked "Black Cowboys."


II. From Way Out
I'm digging on the new electro stuff coming out; in particular, the Flying Lotus tracks I've heard grab me. It makes perfect sense that it finds a home on Warp, though I prefer it to the mainstays of that label (Boards of Canada, Autechre, etc), mostly because, at the time Warp had glutted in excess, the records seemed largely exercises in output.

Flying Lotus - "Dance Floor Stalker": I guess this guy comes from the Coltrane lineage. It's not overly apparent, in that I don't get overwhelmed the same way. But it rumbles the kidneys, which is good.


Sam Prekop - "Sewing Machine": The Flying Lotus track also reminded me a lot of this early solo Prekop track that found its way onto the Two Gentlemen EP. At the time, I had anticipated Prekop's first solo album to be more of the electronic stuff, rather than how organic it actually came out to be (it's all good). Prekop's fun with samplers carries over onto the S&C track on the Reach the Rock soundtrack.


III. And Back To the Front...

Love Unlimited Orchestra - "Theme from the Together Brothers": The track that appears on the Andy Smith mix is from the Together Brothers soundtrack, which seems to be harder to find than not (the Love Unlimited releases always seem less ubiquitous than the Barry White albums, for whatever reason). But the title theme itself shows up regularly on various compilations, best-ofs, etc., and is just as r-e-d-h-o-t.


Ohmega Watts - "The Platypus Strut": How does Ohmega Watts go unnoticed? Dude's albums have been so heavy they're giving me a hernia tear in the sack-ro-ill-iac. The new album, Watts Happening, is no disappointment, and this track is just ass-boggling.