We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Broadcast...

Okay, taking a break from musty historical review, here are some hip-hop body-poppers for your listening pleasure.

I've spun these songs so much in the last few days, I'm sure my dog and my neighbors are thoroughly sick of them, but damn...talk about catchy. The Notorious B.I.G. hook in the Busta song has been looping in my brain almost continuously for the last 36 hours. Both songs are produced by Clipse, or Clinton Sparks, or the Re-Up Crew or whatever the fuck they're called. I haven't really cared enough to parse which identity is responsible for what, but I know they're more or less the same people. It doesn't really matter. Just download and enjoy.

Busta Rhymes with Rah Digga and Spliff Star - Untouchable

Clipse - One Thing

1910

1910

Jack Johnson knocks the crap out of whiteboy favorite Jim Jeffries. Race riots ensue.

Japan annexes Korea.

The Vatican introduces a compulsory oath against modernism, to be taken by all priests upon ordination.

Mexican Revolution!

born: Akira Kurosawa, Jean Genet

died: Tolstoy, Mark Twain

Charles Ives - Piano Sonata #2, Concord, Mass. 1840-1860

Claude Debussy - Préludes, 2é livre

1909

1909

NYC: Manhattan Bridge opens.

Ernest Shakleton finds magnetic South Pole.

Teddy Roosevelt's presidential term ends. He immediately leaves for African safari.

U.S. Navy builds base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

born: James Mason, Errol Flynn, Malcolm Lowry

died: Geronimo

Anton Webern - Sechs stuecke fuer grosses Orchester, op. 6

Rachmaninov - Concerto for Piano & Orchestra #3 in D minor, op. 30

1908

1908

THE TUNGUSKA EVENT!
(the above photograph is not actually the Tunguska impact, but Castle Bravo, a 1954 United States nuclear bomb test of comparable magnitude)

Mother's Day observed for the first time in the U.S.

First major commercial discovery of oil in the Middle East.

Winston Churchill ordained as a Druid. (not kidding)

Henry Ford first produces his "Model T"

Chicago Cubs win their last World Series ever.

Harry Bensley begins his trip around the world, wearing an iron mask and wheeling an empty baby carriage.

Some kind of "feminist" allows chicks to compete in the Olympic Games for the first time.

born: Jimmy Stewart, Tex Avery, Rex Harrison, Louis L'Amour, Buddy Ebsen, Bette Davis,

died: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Charles Ives - Three Places in New England
I. The "St. Gaudens" in Boston Common (Col. Shaw and his Colored Regiment)
II. Putnam's Camp, Redding, Connecticut
III. 'The Housatonic at Stockbridge
(written 1908; never actually performed until 1930)

Anton Webern - Passacaglia

Len Spencer - Arkansas Traveler

1907

May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979

1907

Oklahoma! (The state, not the play)

First and, to this date, only train robbery in Sweden.

Bubonic Plague outbreak in San Francisco.

Hoover vacuum cleaner invented.

born: Caesar Romero, W.H. Auden, Zarah Leander, Katherine Hepburn, John Wayne, Barbara Stanwyck.

died: Edvard Grieg, Huysmans

Béla Bartók - Suite #2 for small orchestra, op. 4, sz. 34

Claude Debussy - Préludes, 1é livre

1906

1906

San Francisco earthquake!

Otherwise, pretty boring year, except for Teddy Roosevelt: 1) he dedicates the United States' first national monument: Devil's Tower, 2) he receives the Nobel Peace Prize for his intervention in the Russo-Japanese War, and 3) he becomes the first sitting U.S. President to take a diplomatic trip outside the United States (to Cuba).

born: Robert E. Howard, Lon Chaney Jr., Bugsy Siegel, Samuel Beckett, Kurt Godel, Billy Wilder, Dmitri Shostakovich, Luchino Visconti, Otto Preminger

died: Henryk Ibsen

Charles Ives - Central Park in the Dark (my favorite Charles Ives piece; even if you've been taking a pass on most of the classical/modern composer stuff I've been posting, you shouldn't miss out on this one.)

Claude Debussy - Iberia

1905

1905
(thanks to Einstein, it is our most recent Annus mirabilis)

Debut of Mata Hari

Ex-Governor of Idaho, Frank Steunenberg assassinated by labor union.

Brooklyn Public Library system bans Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.

born: Tex Ritter, Ayn Rand, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Howard Hughes

died: Jules Verne

Béla Bartók - Suite #1 for full orchestra, op. 3, sz. 3

John Taylor - Medley of Old-Time Reels

1904

Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 destroys more than 1500 buildings. Death toll: 1

1904

Atrocity-happy Japanese people return to the scene of previous massacres to start the Russo-Japanese War for shits and giggles.

Oh yeah, Belgian atrocities in the Congo. Big year for atrocity.

NYC: Longacre Square renamed Times Square, on behalf of the New York Times. It is used for the first time as a now-traditional mecca on New Year's Eve.

First underground subway in NYC opens (IRT line).

Fire on the steamship General Slocum in the East River kills 1000, mostly children. My great-grandfather receives citation from the mayor for diving in and pulling drowning kids out of the water. Until 9/11, it is the worst disaster in NYC history.

Peter Pan premieres on the stage in London.

born: Cary Grant, Glenn Miller, Robert Oppenheimer, Fats Waller, Count Basie, Jacques Tourneur

died: Anton Chekov

Alessandro Moreschi - Oremus Pro Pontifice / Crucifixus (Get it right here, folks! The only existing sound recording of a real live castrato! Ever wonder what they actually sounded like? As it turns out, they--or Moreschi, at least--sounded a lot like a member of Monty Python impersonating a woman.)

Anton Webern - Im Sommerwind

Arnold Schoenberg - Pelleas und Melisande, op. 5

Claude Debussy - Masques (tres vif et fantasque)

I've Grown Accustomed to My Bourbon

(All the songs in one 57mb ZIP folder, and a few more that I forgot to upload as single files, like John Coltrane and Paul Quinichette's "Vodka". I can't remember what the rest were)

Peppermint Harris - I Got Loaded

Possibly my favorite song about being drunk, this was the one big hit of Harris' career when it came out in 1951, and led to him cutting a slew of other, highly similar booze songs, none of which were a tenth as good as this. Harris was a protege of Lightnin' Hopkins in his (Harris') early years, and legendarily cut some early singles in an ad hoc studio in a Texas whorehouse. Not this song though.

Louis Jordan - What's the Use of Getting Sober (When You're Gonna Get Drunk Again)

This was Jordan's first #1 hit, going all the way to the top of the Harlem Hit Parade in 1942. Have I mentioned yet how much I like Louis Jordan? Not surprising, he's almost un-unlikeable. In a catalogue jam-packed with catchy and charismatic songs, this one stands out as one of the catchiest and most charming.

Maddox Brothers & Rose - Hangover Blues

It might be evident, or it might not, that I started making this post the day after my birthday party on Friday. Coming to work that next morning? Wow, that really, really sucked.

Miles Davis - Straight, No Chaser

I gave someone "Straight, No Chaser" as a clue in Charades once and people acted like it was a crazy, obscure saying. I guess nobody orders a 'chaser' in bars any more. But the saying's still around, isn't it?

Neil Diamond - Red Red Wine

It's high time I started posting some Neil Diamond. What? Fuck you, Neil Diamond can be pretty awesome.

Nick Cave - Rye Whiskey

Blah blah. I'm getting a little tired of Nick Cave. He's one of those singers whose schtick is so potent and so monotonously unyielding that he's easy to tire of. I burn out on him on a fairly regular basis, but then I go back and listen to Live Seeds and my enthusiasm for him is rejuvenated for at least a few more weeks.

Otis Redding - Champagne and Wine

One of the less-popular and less frequently replayed Otis Redding songs, but that gives it the virtue of freshness. Not that there's anything dated or unfresh about Otis, but if I tried to calculate the number of times I've heard "These Arms of Mine", I'd probably need to use scientific notation to save space.

The Lushes - Drunken Guitar

One of the awesomer tracks from the Las Vegas Grind comilations of 60s garage and novelty-garage songs. You can download all six compilations in their entirety here: Vols. 1 & 2 - Vols. 3 & 4 - Vols. 5 & 6

Zarah Leander - Det Började Med Ett Glas Champagne

Hey, ever wonder what kind of record collection Hitler had? I mean, aside from being a huge Wagner fanboy. I can tell you one thing: lots and lots of Zarah Leander records. The Swedish actress and chanteuse became the #1 film star of the Third Reich by default when Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo fled Europe for the sun and democracy of Los Angeles. Check out this post on the WFMU blog if you feel you need to download a whole album's worth of Leander songs. I did. Pretty neat stuff.

Also, one thing I discovered when making this post is that doing a google image search for "DRUNK" is really not going to take you good places. The first hit was from some place called hotdrunkmoms.com

1902

1902

Second Boer War.

First movie theatre in the U.S. opens in Los Angeles.

Mount Pelée erupts in Martinique, annihilating almost all of the 36,000 residents of the town of Saint-Pierre.

Antikythera Mechanism discovered.

Teddy Roosevelt becomes first American president to ride in a car.

born: John Steinbeck, Max Ophüls, Meyer Lansky, Khomeini

died: Emile Zola

Joseph Natus - The Fatal Rose of Red

Yeah, just one file today. (How many songs from 1902 do YOU have?) On the plus side, this is the first appearance, in my chronological program, of actual pop music. Really, really old pop music, but still.