Hey folks! Remember me? Sorry I haven't been posting. Not that I've been busy, I'm the most indolent cat I know, I've just been acquiring music far faster than I can process it. I've been struggling to find time to listen and tag and sort everything with which I've been filling my hard drive. And the iTunes playlists for future mixtapes I've been compiling for everyone I know have spiraled out of control.

So, with all this, I haven't had much calm space to sit down to think of things to share. And I'm still kind of dazed by this month's haul, so yeah, no real revelations today either. Just some songs I've been digging, going by ABCs. Which I guess is enough. For now.

Also, I'm trying out MediaFire for file sharing. Let me know if it sucks.

Letters A-M in one zip file



Alton Ellis - I Can't Stand It
Lately I've been going to the apartment of my friend Chris--who has more CDs than most New York record stores--and filling up a duffel with as many CDs as my back and shoulder can bear. One of the areas I attacked first was his old reggae stuff, and I wound up with fifty discs of Trojan Records goodness. This is one of my favorites.


Benny Spellman - If You Love Her
Can't think of anything to say, other than this is great and you're dumb if you don't like it.

Carmel - Rockin' On Suicide
So I just discovered these cats. They're sort of soul/jazz/lounge...I could keep adding slashes and genres but it probably isn't going to make any more sense until you listen to this, which has kind of a British big-band sound with a dash of early 80s punk attitude and a hot chick (i.e. Carmel) singing.


David Ruffin - Put a Little Love in Your Heart
A couple weeks back, was asking me one of his typical Mordicai questions, "You're making a shitty action movie and you have to pick a song to soundtrack that meet-cute scene where the camera slo-mo pans along the body of the super hot, super slutty romantic lead, probably sweaty and mostly unclothed...what song do you pick?" And I blurted out the first thing that came to mind, this song, which is probably the worst idea that's ever come out of my mouth (or not; I've had some doozies). But I love this song so much it seems to me the answer for most questions. It's one of those "instant happiness" tunes.

The Equals - Baby Come Back
Okay, so, Eddie Grant? The guy who sang the hilarious/awful/awesome "Electric Avenue"? Before he was that dude, he was the lead singer for the Equals, a Brit/Carib 60s mod rock quartet that only made a few songs, but the ones they did were catchy as hell. This song pings around in my head a lot.

Freddie McKay - So Long, Farewell
More Trojan reggae.


George Jones - Three's a Crowd
There are certain kinds of music that I'm really into, but that don't often find a way onto the mix CDs I make for one reason or another. Avant-garde jazz (too inaccessible), historical pre-war blues (too esoteric), death metal (hahahhaah, you listen to death metal?), &c. &c. Country is like that, only I don't really have a good reason for it. But I sure love this George Jones track. Hell, George Jones, period.

The Honeys - The One You Can't Have
This should be the title of my biography, should someone decide such a sallow pamphlet is even worth the keystrokes. Both for reasons of factual accuracy and because I can never get an earful of sixties girl groups. My appetite for the stuff is bottomless.

Iggy Pop - The Passenger (live)
Have you all heard that that kid who played Frodo in Lord of the Rings is going to play Iggy Pop in the new Iggy biopic?


Joe Tex - Be Cool (Willie is Dancing with a Sissy)
So you probably all know Joe Tex from Reservoir Dogs; he's the guy who sang "I Gotcha!", the song that's on when they're kicking the crap out of the cop. (I think; I haven't seen it since before Tarantino was a superstar.) He made some really funky soul albums in the sixties, but like a lot of dudes fell prey to the lure of disco in the 1970s, and this song comes from one of his more disco-ized records. Joe has just figured out that the girl his pal is dancing with is maybe probably a guy ("ain't no girl got an adam's apple like that!"), but he warns his other friends to KEEP QUIET. Why? Because some of those sissies pack razors. Don't spook the sissies man, they're like grizzly bears. Back away slowly and quietly!

Keith Richards - Please Please Me
This is just a drunken Keith Richards and an acoustic guitar doing a short Beatles cover. It's kind of like when you were a drunk teenager and passing a guitar around and playing songs with your friends and screwing up most of the song, except even plastered out of his skull Keith Richards is still 10,000 times more brilliant than any guy who ever came to your house to drink.

Lyle Ritz - Lulu's Back in Town
I'm usually pretty opposed to kitsch. Quirky ukelele jazz from the 1950s? Oh man, even on Bizarro world that can't be any good. But I picked up this Lyle Ritz record (How About Uke?) and I totally could not stop playing it. It has a loping, almost goofy sweetness that somehow falls short of being plastic and puerile (like lounge music) and is just disarming instead. It also sounds really familiar, and I suspect it (or something very much like it) has been used in a comedy I've seen recently (Arrested Development?)


Mahmoud Ahmed - Bemen sebeb letlash
This is from the Ethiopiques series of Ethiopian music compilations from the sixties and seventies, some of the discs of which are even too esoteric for me. But this stuff here is just right. Mahmoud Ahmed is supposedly the James Brown of Ethiopia. Which is really only true if you think James Brown makes crazy hypnotic snake-charmer groove music with a bunch of zombies. And most old Ethiopian music is like this too. What the fuck is in the water over there? Oh yeah, terrifying intestinal parasites.