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Friday Influences Thread 09.04.09


Stackabones

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What has influenced you in the past ... or since the last FIT?

 

*

 

A friend of mine gave me a punk rock mix a couple of weeks ago and I've been tripping down memory lane listening to some music I haven't heard or thought about in years. One band that I'd always heard about, but never heard, was Shonen Knife. Youtube to the rescue! Fun tunes, absurd and silly lyrics, great energy, solid hooks.

 

I just love the simple riff in this one. It is so direct and infectious.

[YOUTUBE]astKY3mmDVI[/YOUTUBE]

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Shonen Knife!! Fun.

 

So I've been laying tile, etc. in my wife's new salon on my day's off "work". Busting my ass getting sore and dirty and my mind kept returning to this totally infectious Baskin & Robbins commercial. You know the one. Ice cream and cake to the ice cream and cake!!! Like a weird mashup of Trio (Da Da Da) and some mutant Asian hip hop monsters from Uranus. I love it God help me... and yes, it is influencing me. Really!!! God help me. Is it the adhesive fumes?

 

[YOUTUBE]dy_WqicWcHg[/YOUTUBE]

 

 

But my mind doesn't only go to these strange places when forced into servitude. It hit me that there is no definitive version of Eden Ahbez's haunting Nature Boy. Eden Ahbez, as the legend goes, lived on the streets of LA. He wanted Nat King Cole to sing his song. Nature Boy. Dirty, beaten, a little crazy, Ahbez makes it int o Capitol records and gets to Cole, tattered notebook in hand.

 

Nat King sings it and...

 

Thing is, I don't particularly like Coles version. I don't like anyone's version. I have always loved the song an it's message. But each version, Sinatra, Cole, jazz interpretations, even Massive Attack and Bowie ( a seemingly winning combination) didn't do it for me.

 

Then I saw Moulin Rouge. John Leguizamo (certainly no singer) playing Toulouse Lautrec briefly sang it and that's the version that has been in my head since I was a kid. One I made up for the soundtrack of my mind. The song is heartbreaking to me...

 

There was a boy

A very strange enchanted boy

They say he wandered very far, very far

Over land and sea

A little shy

And sad of eye

But very wise

Was he

 

And then one day

A magic day he passed my way

And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings

This he said to me

"The greatest thing

You'll ever learn

Is just to love

And be loved

In return"

 

 

[YOUTUBE]qwL67X2lRV0[/YOUTUBE]

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I picked up Willie Nelson's tribute to Cindy Walker, and I'm loving her work. This first one I came to through Ray Charles' country albums. I never bothered to look up the writer, but I've been playing this one for years:

 

You Don't Know Me:

 

This next one was on the Willie album; never heard the original. The second verse kills me, with the line "Does she still close her eyes when she dances?" Not a really moving recording, but a great song.

 

Not that I Care:

 

She did a bunch of writing for Bob Wills, and cranked out a lot of pap, I'm sure, but her gems are fantastic. Listening to her is a reminder that the goal is simplicity. A reminder I need often.

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It is so direct and infectious.

 

like the clap :D

 

I got the new Black Crowes album that came out this week, Before the Frost. This is the one they did at Levon Helms house. It was only $10 for the disc at the store and comes with a digital download for, Until the Freeze. You can also pick up Before the Frost for $4 on Amazon.com and it still comes with Until the Freeze. Thats 20 songs of goodness.

Before the frost tends to be more rocking but covers alot of ground. Until the Freeze is very acoustic and has a good bit of Levon playing fiddle.

 

The first night I heard it, particularly Until the Freeze, I liked it so much I couldnt didnt go to sleep until after 5 am. Work for 9 am. That sucked but at least I had something good to listen to on the way in.

 

Here is them on Letterman earlier this week doing one off of Before the Frost

[YOUTUBE][/YOUTUBE]

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my band has asked that i go back to some of my more punkish roots, as lately i've been listening to a lot more "soft" music and end up writing material in that vein. this tune has convinced me that i have to learn to pick, which is something i have no idea how to do, it's the Zac Brown Band's It's Not Ok, which is much better on the album but still cool here:

 

[YOUTUBE][/YOUTUBE]

 

Fortunately for them, I'm going to see Motorhead with Reverend Horton Heat and Nashville {censored} on sunday, so i've been listening to a lot more of this:

 

[YOUTUBE][/YOUTUBE]

 

and am feeling the energy pour on in my guitar playing again, after a long spat with slow songs sparked largely by my purchase of a telecaster last month. time to learn to make that baby scream.

 

i love's me some DBT.

 

the asian girl bands, man, i spent 3 months on a couch in Beijing a few years back, went out every night, they have a KICK ASS punk scene over there, serious rock music, and there is a whole sub-genre of girl-bands writing catchy, fast rock music with pseudo-english lyrics. it's about as far as you can get from j-pop, and it's definitely worth checking out.

 

this is taiwanese, they were Awesome live:

http://www.myspace.com/bbbomb

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They only put out one real album (Colossal Youth, on Rough Trade, which followed a cassette only quasi-demo release), but they ended up being one of those bands that folks just didn't forget...

 

[YOUTUBE]FOvdMIZkCCA[/YOUTUBE]

 

[YOUTUBE]Zn8H9XSgOOI[/YOUTUBE]

 

[YOUTUBE]0s0nHuLXb0s[/YOUTUBE]

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Young Marble Giants was one of those bands I knew about for years before I could finally get a chance to listen to them. I first learned about them through a book called The Unknown Legends of Rock and Roll, but Colossal Youth was already out of print by then.

 

Domino Records re-issued it in 2007 as part of a 3-disc set consisting of their entire recorded output: Colossal Youth, two eps, a lot of demos, and their Peel Session. Personally, I find listening to all three discs in one sitting to be overkill, but it was nice to finally hear them after all those years. They didn't disappoint either.

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Yeah... the Colossal Youth album pretty much covers the essentials... but you know how it is with a beloved band with only one album... people go looking for every little thing.

 

I haven't heard that collection but I hope it doesn't do one of my least favorite CD re-release tricks and put multiple versions of the same song on the same disc -- worse yet, put them back to back. (I guess I can tolerate single disc packages that have a few alternate tracks on them -- but that is one good reason why I almost never listen to the actual discs themselves. I hate hearing the same song twice in a row unless I'm really drilled into peeling something apart. I guess the people who put the albums together think you're going to want to listen to one version after another to compare and contrast but, in my experience, after you've done that once or twice, there's really no need.)

 

 

But back to the band... I loved them for their extremely minimal approach. I was listening to a lot of early punk (which was a very different and far less cookie-cutter, packaged, codified, stamped out product then, very much all over the map but generally pretty loud and snotty :D ) and YMG were perfect for, you should pardon the expression, chilling out.

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I haven't heard that collection but I hope it doesn't do one of my
least
favorite CD re-release tricks and put multiple versions of the same song on the same disc -- worse yet, put them back to back. (I guess I can tolerate single disc packages that have a few alternate tracks on them -- but that is one good reason why I almost never listen to the actual
discs
themselves. I
hate
hearing the same song twice in a row unless I'm
really
drilled into peeling something apart. I guess the people who put the albums together think you're going to want to listen to one version after another to compare and contrast but, in my experience, after you've done that once or twice, there's really no need.)

 

 

I feel the same way. Fortunately, in this case, the original album gets its own stand alone disc in that set.

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Loved the J-Pop Stack.

 

And Chicken Monkey - thanks for the Jerry Wallace.

What a great, classy singer!

 

ZwwhmQwS0fg

 

While we're in L'age d'or, here's the biggest clavioline & trombone song of all time.

Kenny Burrell on lead guitar.

 

K8OfHAM-J2k

 

It's also the greatest movie song ever, AFAIC.

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