All Quiet on the Weston Front

Randy Weston - African Cookbook

Randy Weston - Congolese Children

You know that CD you have because you borrowed it from someone six or seven years ago and then stopped hanging out with them so much? This is one of those CDs. (If you're reading this, you know who you are. E-mail me and we'll hang out and I'll give you your Randy Weston back.)

Brooklyn-born Randy Weston was an occasional student of Thelonious Monk's, which shows in their (very) slightly similar style. And like a lot of black folks--especially black artists--in the 60s, Weston developed a great hunger to develop a rootsier identity and heritage for America's diasporic Africans, and started introducing overtly African and Caribbean colors into his playing. In the early part of the decade, he traveled to Africa for the first time, making two extended trips to Nigeria; shortly after returning from the second, he recorded this wonderful but obscure album. Well, obscure at the time. In 1964, he somehow could interest no serious record company in it, and it was only released by the tiny Bakton label (whoever they are, I've never heard of them). It didn't see wider release until eight years later, when it was reissued by Atlantic.

It's hard to say why no one wanted to put it out at the time of its creation. It's not like jazz with an African flavor was a bizarre animal by that point, and it's not 'difficult' music (in the sense that some people argue Albert Ayler is 'difficult'). In fact, these songs are played with humor and intensity, and are all hugely accessible (the short, joyous "Congolese Children" in particular). So...fluke of fate? Who knows.

Randy Weston - piano
Ray Copeland - trumpet
Booker Ervin - tenor sax
Vishnu Wood - bass
Lenny McBrowne - drums
Big Black - vocals on "Congolese Children"

Music that will perhaps surprise some friends to hear I dig a lot. Or not, if you know me well.

I don't like to call anything in my life a 'guilty pleasure.' If I enjoy something, it is, self-evidently, awesome. I don't see much percentage in being abashed about the things I enjoy. There are, however, some songs that I don't expect to like, songs that surprise me. Droney, disco-esque girly electroclash? That sounds like my definition of pure hell on Earth, I admit, and yet... I like Peaches a whole lot. These are songs that make me glad I still have the capacity to surprise myself.



Yummy Bingham feat. Jadakiss - Come Get It

It took me a few weeks to get around to listening to this track, which I jacked from Adoru. But I was hooked fucking instantly, and now I simply cannot stop listening to it. It's kinda like what if Destiny's Child was actually awesome, and didn't make me throw up in my mouth a little bit every time I hear their music.

I'd never heard of Yummy Bingham, and no hip-hop head I know has either. Apparently, she's mostly a songwriter/ghostwriter type, and has written stuff for Amerie and Mary J. Blige (again, barf). And every day I become just a little more accepting of Jadakiss on the mic. The real credit for this track is probably due to producer Just Blaze, who can be a little uneven. But he's totally on top of his game with this one.

This Yummy might have been up-and-coming for a second there, but as it looks like her website hasn't been updated in almost half a year, maybe she's simply receded into the murk of pop music never-never land. Who knows? Check it out though.



Kelis - Milkshake

The only radio I listen to is the BBC in the morning, so sometimes--okay, always--I am woefully behind the times in terms of pop music, but I still caught this one on the first bounce. I was introduced to it while eating lunch in the Haitian joint over on Glenwood Road. I hadn't heard anything that sounded quite like it before, so at first I thought it was an islands thing. I asked some Haitian employees of mine about this new Haitian sensation who sang that song about milkshakes, and they all looked at me like I'd gone bonkers. I eventually managed to tease out of them that the song was by someone named Kelis, and she was in fact from Harlem. Also, she's really hot and married to Olu Dara's kid Nas?

Anyway. I get the feeling that the pop landscape has been utterly saturated by this song in the last two years. Or maybe not; being blissfully ignorant of radio and MTV, I get to burn out on songs at my own pace. If it is indeed the case, however, that everyone's thoroughly sick of it by now, here's two other versions of the song:

Kelis feat. Lala and Rah Digga - Milkshake (basically the same song, with overdubbed raps)
Kelis feat. Pharrell & Pusha-T - Milkshake (Clipse remix) (a pretty broad--but catchy--reconstruction of the song, at times unrecognizable compared to the original)



Peaches - Lovertits

I think I first heard this on someone else's blog, I can't even remember who any more. It doesn't matter. What matters is that Peaches makes slutty electronic dance music that doesn't suck like a small but extremely massive astronomical object. Her kind of weird future-throwback disco-punk reminded me of Blondie at first, with less brains and charm but more punch and stylish nymphomania. It's pretty chilly stuff--sympathies with the Stones' "Emotional Rescue" have also been invoked, not unjustly--but some days that really hits the spot, you know?



Pink - Trouble

Pink is really not the kind of thing I normally find myself listening to (evidence in this post to the contrary), and I find her not a little creepy looking. But of all those types of diva-ish young chick singers, I find her the most interesting, largely because of how different her voice is from the willowy, charmless, yodeling norm. Hers is a big voice, a forceful voice, a fat girl's voice...coming from a tiny girl's body, and this track tweaks her sound just right. It doesn't hurt that this song and the album it's from are mostly co-written and co-performed by Tim Armstrong, the guitarist, singer and punk-auteur from Operation Ivy and Rancid. And actually it almost sounds more like Pink guesting on a Rancid track than the other way around. The rest of the album is pretty crappy, but I'm still pretty attached to this song.

The Great Drunk (Driving) Post of 2006

I really like this song. It is, however, unforgiveably unseasonable by now (despite the blustering NYC snowstorms), and posting Christmas music in the middle of February will only encourage friends and strangers to send strange exploding packages to my home. So, let's get this clear: this is not a post about Christmas music. It's a post about a whale! No, I mean it's a post about drinking and driving songs.

The Youngsters--also known as the Preludes, and then as the Tempters--were a minor R&B group on the west coast in the late 50s. They had a fairly big local hit with their first recording as the Youngsters ("Shattered Dreams") in 1956, and then later in the year they recorded this terrific slice of Christmas anti-cheer as the b-side to their genuine R&B hit "Dreamy Eyes," which was subsequently covered by numerous b-list R&B acts. Like a lot of similar groups, they dissolved not long afterwards, however, due to their little label folding; most members fled to other, similar west coast bands like the Shields.

You don't hear this song on the radio too often. Or, well, ever. Maybe because humorous songs about drinking and driving during the holidays just rub folks the wrong way? Whatever, it's a wonderful song.

The Youngsters - Christmas in Jail



1983 was a year when British Oi! music still had legs as something other than a vehicle for white supremacist doggerel. Sadly, that wouldn't hold out much longer (or not so sadly; it's a pretty limited genre), but this album still has a few gems on it, most notably this cute little paean to the titular activity. The only lyrics I can ever remember from this song are "Knocking em back, have another one, drinking and driving is so much fun." That may be all the lyrics in the song, who knows. The anthemic qualities of Oi! were a bit of a double-edged sword.

The Business - Drinking and Driving



The Maddox Brothers & Rose wrote some of the most raucous, fun, energetic country music you are likely to ever hear. This song's a little uncharacteristically melancholy, though. Actually, now that I've uploaded and I'm thinking about it, I don't think there's any reference to booze at all. It's just a song about careless drivers running over little kids on the street. They're not drunk, they're just assholes I guess.

The Maddox Brothers & Rose - Careless Driver



It was the whiskey punching my commonlaw wife in the face (not me)!

Jerry Lee Lewis - It Was the Whiskey Talkin' (Not Me)



Hey, it's everybody's favorite screaming black guy! Is there still anyone who hasn't heard and learned to love Screamin' Jay Hawkins? God, I hope not. If so, perhaps this post will remedy that shameful state of affairs.

Screamin' Jay Hawkins - Baptize Me in Wine



The picture says it all. (It better; I'm running out of time here, I gotta go home and start cooking dinner!)

Merle Haggard - Wine Takes Me Away



Yeah, whoo, is that he time? Jesus. Anyway as a parting gift I decided to use the photograph of Gram Parsons that most makes him look like a retarded child. Enjoy!

Also please someone get plastered and call me so I can enjoy the vicarious drunk.

Gram Parsons - Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down

A Buncha Short Fixes

So things are starting to slow down at work here, but it's still intermittently busy. And I can't really eat up the store's bandwidth uploading songs on this slow connection, so here I have for you some very good but very short tracks I was able to upload in the brief moments this morning when we had no customers. Slainte.

I've also decided to switch from Yousendit.com to Rapidshare for hosting, as pretty much a permanent thing from now on. This means fractionally more hassle in terms of downloading--you've got to wait about 30 seconds to download each file--but the files will stay up theoretically forever, so long as they don't go 30 consecutive days without a download. Yousendit expires the links after 7 days or 25 downloads, whichever comes first. I've been downloading from Rapidshare a lot lately, and I like it a lot better.

Sun Ra - A Foggy Day
A lot of the early Sun Ra singles are okay kind of R&B, nothing very special, but I've always had a huge soft spot for this one. Really, if Sun Ra's doing standards, it's hard to think of a song more SUN RA than "A Foggy Day". Even putting aside the canny mysteriousness of London fog... The British Museum gets a name-check? And the Age of Miracles? Geez, Sun Ra could've written that song.

Elvis Costello - A Drunken Man's Praise of Sobriety
It's true. With my new "I'm broke" emergency measures, I've had to stop buying booze, which is kind of a large expense for me. Now I'm down to the liquors I don't really like very much, vodka and I think maybe a little gin and one bottle of wine I'll probably drink tonight. Next week will probably be all singing, all dancing, all sober at the FMF homestead. Sadly. While sober I did get rather a lot of translating work done last night, though...

Matthew Shipp - Maze Hint
Pianist of the superb David S. Ware quartet. Some of his solo stuff is really iffy or actually even kind of lame, but this record's pretty okay, and I like this song a lot.

Redman - Beet Drop
Redman's brief, catchy riff on "The New Style" from the first Beastie Boys record (I think...I don't remember that record very well, even though it was my favorite album when I was 11 years old).

Bela Bartók - Arabian Song

Bob Dylan - London Calling
This one is courtesy of that rockin' apostle of Robert Bork known as Right Wing Bob. It's really just a single verse and chorus of the Clash tune, done as an intro to his show of 11/21/05 (I think). But kinda fun nevertheless.

Rah Digga - Harriet Thugman
A lot of chick rappers are really, really lame... basically supermodelly pop stars who can't rap. Rah Digga? Daaaaaaaamn. Harder than 95% of the guys rapping out there. Great voice, great rhymes, great production. Also kinda hot too; all in all, a lethal combination.

Mahalia Jackson - Keep Your Hand on the Plow (live)
Mahalia! Jesus, speaking of big, beautiful voices filled with soul and soulful authority. Mahalia will stop your sinning and send you to heaven. So listen to her. Listen!

Two of My Favorite Characters in the Whole Universe

Sun Ra and The Blues Project
Batman and Robin (1966)

Funny, since we were just all talking about this at work the other day, but WFMU's Beware of the Blog has just posted downloads of all twelve songs from the Sun Ra Batman record. Cool!

Oh, wait... Sun Ra Batman record, you ask? Why, yes. Here's the story:

In 1966, a toy company in Newark, New Jersey released a children's record called Batman and Robin to cash in on the popular Adam West TV series of the same name. The music on the LP was credited to "The Sensational Guitars of Dan and Dale," but in fact the band was one of the greatest uncredited session combos of all time, including the core of Sun Ra's Arkestra and Al Kooper's Blues Project. To keep the music licensing fees to a minimum, all the tracks were based on public domain items like Chopin's Polonaise Op. 53, the horn theme from Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony and the love theme from Romeo and Juliet, and generic rock riffs. It's all instrumental, with the exception of Robin's Theme.

It's not by any stretch of the imagination a classic Sun Ra record, or even in the top half of his discography, but it's manna for Sun Ra junkies like myself.

1. Batman's Theme
(you'll actually have to go to Beware of the Blog for the rest)