Salı 3 Eki 2006, 19:51

Yep, a while ago i was bored so i made you a mix which i just discovered is still available! How ace is megaupload?! Very ace. Anyway, in the spirit of free music, here's some more of it: 1 more hour of music, mp3s in folder zipped as, er, .zip file, and i'd be surprised to find out that any of it could be streamed on last.fm radio, so there might be something new for you in there, who knows. Sorry about the bulk, for you none-broadband types, but then again, if you don't have broadband, not getting this tape is probably the least of yr worries.

Tracks'n'notes
1. Superqueens - "Cut!" (1:55)
Poetry/spoken word duo from Salford, ancestral home of one mark e. smith. Really excellent lyricism. Sort of reminds me a bit of john cooper clarke, especially this one time i saw him on a boat supporting the fall.

2. Shooby Taylor & Johnny Cash - Folsom Prison Blues (2:39)
The Human Horn meets The Man in Black as inimitably bonkers former NY postal worker (see also bingo gazingo - it must be a combination of that city and that job, i think) Shooby Taylor duets with Johnny Cash on a version of "Folsom Prison Blues". Well, "duets" in the sense of, he does his mentalist amphetamine scat over the record regardless of what Johnny's actually doing.

"Despite Taylor's reputation for absurdity, only about a quarter of these recordings seem irredeemably clownish. Taylor is most ridiculous when scatting over vocals (e.g., Johnny Cash, Shirley Caesar, Charley Pride, Elvis). He respects Dexter Gordon while expressing implicit contempt for Johnny Cash. He lets Dexter take 32 bars but won't leave Cash alone for a single verse. Sometimes Shooby steps on the song, and sometimes the song retaliates. This is Taylor at his most deluded and unintentionally comical, though his joy is infectious. He's a dominant character. He lumberjacks his way through the forest, clearing all in his path." Irwin Chusid

3. Sparklehorse - Wish You Were Here (6:58)
This is what covers that outstrip the originals was invented for. You know the urban myth about how no use was discovered for Teflon until, like, 17 years after its creation? Yeh, well that's kind of how i feel about "Wish You Were Here". Sparklehorse get hold of it, and somehow it makes sense. Also thom yorke does backing vocals on this track down a telephone line, which aggrieves me mildly because even though he's hardly on it, it always means the bastard cover gets attributed to radiohead. who it's not by. at all. still, i suppose people are still confusing "OK Computer" with pink floyd.

4. Men's Recovery Project - In Khartoum (2:12)
MRP were a very odd band indeed. Sam McPheeters from born against and Neil Burke from sinking body combined with a rotating cast of 90s Seattle/Olympia underground luminaries (kathleen hanna, Joe Preston, etc.) to create hundreds of songs with very short attention spans, very little resemblence to one another, very little indication they'd even produced by the same band, and an enormous amount of anarchic wit and intelligence applied with this brilliant sort of clever/stupid dynamic they had perfected. This one is from their Middle East concept album, Bolides Over Basra. Oddly touching.

5. Yoko, Oh No! - Double Dingers (2:01)
Last time, i plugged both gay against you and one half of the aforesaid, germlin. i have no idea why i didn't also put on some Yoko (the other half of G.A.Y. if you didn't already know). This is one of his solo outings. This man is so analogue that when he wanted bleeps, he did them himself. Ace.

6. The Temple City Kazoo Orchestra - Kazooed On Klassics (2:01)
Extraordinarily and totally inexplicable '70s kazoo medley. Does exactly what it says on the tin, really.

7. Steve Bent - I'm Going To Spain (2:29)
A lot of people may be familiar with the fall's version of this song, but what might be unexpected to the casual listener (or the hardcore Fall fan, for that matter) is that MES actually manages to make the song more normal-sounding than it already was. The original is a very, very odd piece of music indeed. i can't currently find my copy of The Book of Heroic Failures to reprint what they have to say about Steve Bent, but as far as i remember he was something like an office clerk who wrote an enormous amount of very bad songs on the side, and he'd done something like 500, none of which got anywhere because they were basically all total rubbish. His admirable determination lead to "I'm Going to Spain" winding up on a Kenny Everett "Worst Records in the World" compilation in the 80s.
This song, as the title suggests, deals with Steve's methodical detailing of his forthcoming plans to go to Spain. Whether temporarily or permanently we are not told; of Steve's rationale we are mainly given that "Cousin Norman had a real fine time last year", perhaps implying a holiday; yet the lines "My mother cried on Sunday night / told me to take good care" and "The factory floor presented me / with some tapes of elton john" seem to hint at a more permanent departure. Musically and in his vocal delivery, Steve appears to be going for a kind of exotic David Bowie Spiders from Mars/glitter-spangled glam-rock exuberance, but this often finds itself at odds with his determination to maintain his everyday, working-class lyrical imagery. The tussle between the two summons rich bathos: witness the utterly horrible phased space-y cellos underpinning Steve's hope that "I can quickly learn the language, yeah"! Marvel at the totally unnecessary heavy reverb'n'delay smeared all over the first syllable of the word "pickle" in the line "But I hate them, yes I hate the cheese and pickle…"! Wonder what possessed Steve to scrutinise his sandwiches so harshly within such a context anyway! Yes, this song is hours of pure joy. If ever a record could be described as "a slow-motion car crash of excruciating pop", it would almost certainly be this one.

8. Reverse - Stem the Slide (3:15)
There are no punk bands left who understand what a punk career path is. These days you get nice sturdy brand new instruments that can last you as long as you need, play in the odd cursory trendy bar for a couple of months until Drive Thru or Fat Wreck or… (probably some major these days, actually) whoever signs you up and the A&Rs move in and start talking enthusiastically about longevity and getting Scott Litt in for the radio mix and… oh, hello, green day! You can't imagine, say, good charlotte being really enthused about an MTV-safety-blanket-free career path where they had to just pick up whatever old jenky gear lying around that they could use to make a sound, knocking out three 7" singles and then having the balls to quit when they realised they'd said all they needed to say. But then again, Good Charlotte could never be a millionth as good as Stoke-on-Trent's (!) Reverse, eh.

9. The Bill Wells Octet Vs Future Pilot AKA - Chimps / No Funerals This Morning / Advert (3:57)
I don't know a lot about these guys, except that Sushil Dade (aka Future Pilot AKA) once turned down a world tour playing bass for kylie minogue because he had pupils to teach (he's a Glasgow driving instructor by day), and that Bill Wells is apparently some kind of outcast of the Scottish jazz scene, as unlikely as that sounds (the bill wells Octet was reduced down to The Bill Wells Trio after this, apparently because the other five were in some way afear'd to be associated with Mr Wells, for some reason). I think those things alone should make you want to hear this.

10. Raymond and Peter - Some Day I Will Kill You (0:43)
Maniacal interlude from neighbourhood psychopaths Raymond Huffman and Peter Haskett.

11. Aesop Rock - Fishtales (3:52)
In which underground San Francisco comic artist with yen to design fish-shaped skate deck teams up with underground New York rapper to create comic book/7" combo - and matching 'skating fisherman' video - featuring an old angler constantly searching for the one that got away. It's another of Aesop's genius "misunderstood loner with big plans" tales; if you knowno regrets, you could kind of think of "Fishtales" as "No Regrets" Part II. Except it has a better beat.

12. Gay Against You - super-copain (2:14)
In spite of my no-repeat policy, had to put g.a.y. on this tape as well because:
* since last time, i got their studio album;
* it's totally great;
* this particular track sounds like ttc but if they'd been brought up in Perth, which makes it sheer genius.

13. Messer Banzani - Germany (Is Not The Home Of Reggae) (3:49)
In which Banzani makes an extremely convincing case for why Germany should not be considered the 'riddimless man of Europe', directly addressing all those who doubt reggae's Germanic potential with constructive and indisputable points like "people say this music comes only from Jamaica / Germans can't play that wid dem sweet, sweet pullover / Why do these silly Teutonics start coming in from the cold?" Well, why not?

14. MF Grimm - Watch Out! (3:07)
From the first disc of Grimm's new magnum opus American Hunger (hip-hop's first ever triple album) comes a cautionary tale about those who snitch on their friends to the police. What with the content of this song and the other swipes dotted throughout the album, it's hard not to imagine this could be directed at mf doom; however, i reckon since it's explicitly about grassing to the police, this one isn't actually targetted at him. Amazing beat, anyway.

15. Cardiacs - A Horses Tail (3:47)
No idea why i didn't put them in the last one. The Cardiacs are what pop sounds like in about 2075. Heads still ain't ready. This song was by Random Jon Poole who has a new band, The God Damn Whores, which may well be good. Ecstatic, jerky, anthemic, Ritalin pop magic.

16. Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band - Candle Mambo (3:24)
I get kind of frustrated with Beefheart's generalised lack of melodies. Then he goes and suckerpunches me with the achingly lovely likes of this, from Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller). "When i'm dancing with my love, the shadows flicker up above, up above the shadows do the candle mambo…"

17. Miles Davis - Bitches Brew (1:30)
Face it, we all want the kudos of listening to jazz, especially on last.fm where the cool is written down for all to see in our statistics. But how many of us can be bothered dealing with jazz's vastly inflated song lengths day-in and day-out? Now, there's a solution! The album Bring me the Head of Miles Davis condenses down four albums' worth of the titular luminary so each song endures only 90 seconds! All the stat-power, so much less listening time. Jazz to go. Bang! and the length's gone!

18. Half Man Half Biscuit - Irk The Purists (1:51)
And, while we're on the subject…

19. Camp Blackfoot - It Was Too Bad For Marie Antoinette, And Now It's Gonna Be Too Bad For You! (2:40)
Wow, this is really really really boshing. Every time i hear it i am afraid that the guitarist is actually about to play my face, probably with a bandsaw. Also, i love a good historically-grounded threat.

20. Weasel Walter - Bohemian Rhapsody (5:04)
If the original had been produced like this, it would have deserved its place on all those "Cash-in of the Millennium" box sets.

you can get it you can get it here here here here

so i think i talk a pretty good fight. whadda you think, then?
tom/xxx

edit > re-upped by request, changed all the links to the new version. all comments welcome. three tracks are now last.fm streamable: In Khartoum, Candle Mambo and Bohemian Rhapsody (Miles Davis don't count cuz last plays the original version). keep going, last.fm…