Tag: two tune tuesday

One of the things I like best about where I work is that there’s a ton of music around, because Lawrence has its own Conservatory. I go to stuff all the time; a few weeks ago I caught a lecture/performance of Cuban music and since then have been poking around, asking people like my parents (who cha cha cha’d their way into marriage, as it were, & are Xavier Cugat fans).

A tiny detail: Tito Puente wasn’t himself Cuban but Puerto Rican, but the music he popularized (but didn’t invent) was Afro-Cuban. Benny More was known as the “Sinatra of Cuba” and there’s a cool book about him called Wildman of Rhythm: The Life and Music of Benny Moré.

Maybe not entirely forgotten, but highly neglected: The Polecats song is just charming as hell, and I can’t think of another song that has the word “oscillator” in it. Fine Early Geekage Period. The Hoodoo Gurus actually had a couple of other tracks people might remember – notably “Bittersweet” – but this was always my favorite, mostly for the yes yes yes yes i’m impressed bit.

Prototypes is a new band; I have no idea where I found them. Air is from the late 90s, Les Rita Mitsouko were around in the late ’80s, when this track – and the video – got play in plenty of clubs (at least the ones I went to).

You may as well start off the year right, so here’s Rufus. Apparently he’s someone people either hear & love or hear & think “What?” For me, it was all about the Gap commercial, back in the day. I’m one of those people, who will probably always prefer the first record for it’s lovely vaudevillian richness.

The tracks are mostly in chronological order:

• Foolish Love from the eponymous Rufus Wainwright (which has that lyric of all lyrics, “so the day noah’s ark / floats down Park / my eyes will be / simply glazed over”)
• Greek Song from Poses (when I’m not paying attention, & he hits that first “All” of “all the pearls of China” I just cry. It’s pathetic, but it’s true.)
  
• Beautiful Child from Want One (the song Radiohead should cover, or Rufus should perform with Thom Yorke).
  
• The One You Love from Want Two (let’s fuck this art party, indeed.)
  
• Between My Legs from Release the Stars (all i can say is : i can’t fa a a aa aaaaaake it; the voiceover is from I, Claudius)
  
• & an older soundtrack song, Instant Pleasure, which he didn’t write but – well, just listen & you’ll understand why Rufus fans still want to hear it live.

There are so many more I love, songs that make me cry or laugh out loud. He is absolutely, a million percent great to see live.

Thank you, Rufus. & Long live Rufus.

… with some groovy, celebratory tracks of yesteryear:

I was listening to NPR’s listeners’ picks for the best songs of 2009 when I was reminded of that Metric track “Sick Muse.” Minutes later, an ad for Hennessy came on featuring The Cardigans’ “Lovefool” which has long been a favorite of mine. In fact, First Band on the Moon is a great little collection of songs (including the most bizarre cover of “Iron Man” imaginable).

So here they are, together. They make nice bookends, no?

= just what everyone wants: class-conscious christmas songs. Vive la révolution & Joyeux Noël!
(I’m pretty sure Rufus gets an award for using the word “mensch” in a christmas song.)

I discovered “The Headphonist” while watching one of my death shows, and it was an instant ‘need to know what that is’ feeling, having spent most of my life walking around cities and towns and well, everywhere, with headphones on & usually blasting.

I have a weakness for great rhythm, or a great weakness for any rhythm, so I went & poked around for other songs of theirs, and liked a lot of them. But it was when I was discovered they were a Mexican band that had covered Wall of Voodoo’s “Mexican Radio” that they made me laugh out loud: Gen X grows up & buys a clue, as it were.

What I’ve found in introducing people to Shriekback over the years is that you either you get them or you don’t. You could describe them as amphibious, maybe, or as something like geek funk. Most of you probably (only) know “Nemesis” — which was recently re-mixed — or you might know the lead, Barry Andrews, as that guy who was in XTC at the very beginning but was gone by the 3rd XTC album; Shriekback is where he went next. Here’s a recent interview with him talking about those days & about a bunch of other things. There’s some cool live footage on YouTube, too – here’s “All Lined Up” which was a WLIR favorite back in the day. (Check out the bass that’s got FACT written on it. Loved that. & Yes, Dave Allen was the bass player for Gang of Four, too.)

If any of you were also fans, you might be surprised to hear that there was a video for “Despite Dense Weed” – the first song they ever recorded, & which was only ever on a Y Records compilation called The Birth of the Y (which had a Diamanda Galas track, too).

& Yes, I saw them a bunch of times live, too. I learned the word scapula from Barry Andrews, because he signed over mine on the t-shirt I was wearing. I met Stewart Copeland that day too, but that was incidental & hardly very important to a Shriekback fan.

It was only a year or so later that I had shaved my head and wore an old priest’s cassock a lot; I think of it as my first (of many) monk phases. I found the cassock in my family’s basement, which means it was probably an altar boy robe once worn by one of my brothers.

If you like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, here’s another band that’ll be right up your alley. It’s rare that I like female singers, but when I do, I really really do.

(h/t to my friend Hellione)