poison to the mind

I know, I said January was going to be more regular with the updates, but then I start going to gigs six nights in a row and not having time to make mp3s to upload for you, let alone post about them…

So here’s a whopping big one to make up for it! The highlight of the last few weeks’ gigs was the first of two Jamie Lidell shows, where he enhanced his self-sampling steez with local live musicians (the second show was good too, but a relaxed arvo affair on a bowling green, rather than a dazzling *PERFORMANCE* on a stage). And of course, his album of last year featured the live musician skills of Chilly Gonzales, so in a tenuous link, here’s an example of Gonzo mixing pre-recorded music with performance, from a BBC Radio 1 Breezeblock set. Not only does he mostly eschew trendy “dance” musics, but he starts singing and playing along with the cheesefest as the set goes on. This is about 41mb, half an hour. I’d post a setlist, but it ruins the fun a bit. He’ll keep you posted, anyway.

Gonzales - Breezeblock mix

Buy:
You can get Gonzales’ ‘remix’ of Jamie’s “Multiply” as a ringtone or MP3 from Warp’s Bleep store. They’ve got loads of other Lidell stuff, have a search. Or get the whole Multiply album from Warpmart for a more submerged collabo style. I’ll plug Gonzo’s own records again here sometime when I do an all-Gonzales post with more MP3s from his 2003 Australian tour…

You’d want the first single from the pop-shattering team-up of Betty Boo and Alex James to be an instant pop classic, announcing itself all bold and flashy and making you grin like a loon with sheer delight, wouldn’t you? And even more so if it was self-titled?

Well, “Wigwam� by Wigwam isn’t so much of a declaration of arrival as a second track on side 2, written by the drummer. It’s good, it’s silly, it’s certainly fun, and it grows on you very well, but is this all we can hope for from the triumphant returns of Betty (DOIN’ THE DO! WHERE ARE YOU BABY?!) Boo, Alex (PARKLIFE! HANGING AROUND!) James and The (ROK DA HOUSE! HEY DJ I CAN’T DANCE TO THAT MUSIC YOU’RE PLAYING!) Beatmasters? Let’s hope not.

Wigwam – Wigwam

Buy:
Well, nothing yet, the single doesn’t come out ‘til March. But if you like this, do go and buy it, yeah? I’m still going to. If it gets released here. Ha ha, sigh.

You know what? Fuck Seal, and fuck “Killer”. I never gave a shit about it at the time, and listening to the copy of Dr. Adamski’s Musical Pharmacy that I bought for a dollar the other week shows that time has done nothing to widen my appreciation. BUT I now have a digital copy of “Space Jungle” HURRAH (7″ long-lost in one of several boxes in storage) and can listen to it on the train every day next week!

Adamski - Space Jungle

Buy:
I dunno, I can’t even find any Adam Sky stuff in print out here. Send him a hat or something if you like the track, but I realise I’m probably the entire fanbase for this record.

Do people remember when rapsploitation films were actually good? The ’80s were a bit dire with yer endless breakdance whatnots (nb: I have not seen any of these) and Tougher Than Leather and so on, but there was a brief golden age in the early ’90s with the House Party series doing fine young-teen comedy, New Jack City being a fun Scarface rip-off, Boyz-N-The-Hood fooling us all that both Singleton and Gooding were promising young talents, and of course the one-two punch of CB4 and Fear Of A Black Hat both trying to be the Rap Spinal Tap. Both are atrociously patchy, with enough decent gags between them for one only slightly lame comedy, but with good will, they’ll entertain a bunch of stoned uni students.

The best bits in CB4 are probably the slight filkings of actual rap hits to make the fictional group’s tracks. “Sweat Of My Balls” actually fumbles some of the lines from Kool G Rap’s “Talk Like Sex” in its efforts to be slightly different (’give you more than pussy-tickle devices’ is hardly an improvement on ‘give you more than battery-operated devices’), but you have to admit that ‘I fucked your sister, I fucked your cat / I woulda fucked your mom but the bitch was too fat’ has a charming directness that even NWA didn’t resort to until the second album. The version of Rapper’s Delight is completely pointless, obv, but at least the movie’s all over at that point…

CB4 - Straight Outta Locash
CB4 - Sweat Of my Balls
CB4 - Rapper’s Delight

Buy:
The soundtrack is out of print, as far as I can tell, but you can probably pick up the movie on VHS from the $2 bin at your local Video Ezy that’s still trying to shift space for more copies of Cheaper By The Dozen 2 on DVD.

If you’re going to do a half-arsed NWA reunion in 1999, then I s’pose it’s not too awful to draft Snoop in. (Obviously a whole-arsed reunion with Yella standing to the side being useless, and the D.O.C. doing the lines he wrote would have been ideal, and possibly Eminem standing in for Eazy in the confrontational-whiny-voice stakes would have been a more interesting half-arse, but politics innit?)

The concept does fall apart, though, when your reunion only extends to one live appearance on a TV show, and then said TV show releases a compilation album featuring only a Snoop Doggy Dogg cover from your performance. I mean, it’s probably down to whose publishing was easier to clear or something but FUCKING COME ON!

N.W.A - Nuthin’ But A “G” Thang (live on Farmclub)

At least I knew to be disappointed going in. I haven’t even listened to half the horrid nu-metal nonsense, and most of the hip-hop is lame me-and-my-posse shouting unsubtly over boomy instrumental versions (okay, Eminem - The Real Slim Shady (live on Farmclub) is alright, if hardly essential), BUT!!! the five bucks or whatever I paid was totally worth it just for Mya’s “Case Of The Ex.” Yes, it’s just a PA, and it’s got a tedious “my album drops on the 23rd” plug at the start, but I had never heard the song before, so hurrah for Farmclub.com for introducing me accidentally.

Mya - Case Of The Ex (live on Farmclub)

Buy:
I’ll recommend you do try and find a copy in the 5-for-$20 bins at JB like I did, but if you’re a mad keen fan of Bionic Jive or something, then Live & Unreleased From Farmclub.com does appear to still be in print. Unlike the URL itself.

Happy new year, kids - it’s been a busy few weeks, but we should be sticking up tracks far more frequently for the rest of the summer.

Seeing Francis McDonald (in his capacity as a Teenage Fannie) programming Rage before Christmas prompted me to dig out this, perhaps the most relaxed cover version ever. From the B-side of BMX Bandits‘ “Serious Drugs,” this take on fellow Scots Primal Scream’s “Don’t Fight It, Feel It” is labelled as being live, but plainly has a ludicrously obvious loop of cheering sitting near the bottom of the mix (the recording could well be one take, though).

BMX Bandits - Don’t Fight It, Feel It

Buy:
There’s a newish BMX Bandits comp out, spookily enough titled after the above-mentioned single. Sanctuary don’t sell stuff online, cop it at Amazon, along with their latest.

IT’S CHRISTMAS!

But first, multiculturalism:

Beck - Little Drum Machine Boy
for those of you who feel the Hanukkah Funk.

AND NOW!

Doris Day - The Christmas Song
Chestnuts roasting, and all that.

Doris Day - Winter Wonderland
Okay, so here in the real world, we’re a month into summer, but let’s indulge cultural dominance, eh? IN THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS.

John Denver & the Muppets - Twelve Days of Christmas
Actually is John Denver on this? Well, it’s from that record, you know the one. My bodge Korean-licensed CD version doesn’t have any credits or anything and I didn’t listen to this before putting it up. There’s loads of Muppets, I can tell you that.

Dr Teeth & The Electric Mayhem - Little Saint Nick
This one I can credit properly due to fond memories of the gatefold vinyl edition as a nipper. Look out for Animal.

Gene Autry - 32 Feet & 8 Little Tails
AGH RUN it’s a HIDEOUS MONSTER oh wait.

Gene Autry - The Story Of The Nativity
Never mind the narrative quality, feel the length! 13 minutes + of children being indoctrinated into The Amazing Robe-Man.

Fat Les - Naughty Christmas (Goblin In The Office)
Let’s hope this doesn’t bring back bad memories. Except of Keith Allen.

Sonic Youth - Santa Doesn’t Cop out On Dope
But can we take their word for it? I mean, it’s only one night a year the dude’s really got to hold it together and punch the timecard, who knows how he squanders the rest of the year?

So, a few months ago I did a post about singer/songwriter Greta Gertler, showcasing loads of new & unreleased songs, that could well have been an entry on Womenfolk. What we’re gonna do right here is go back - way back - and then come forwards a bit. The recordings today are all from a 2001 gig, but the songs mostly date back to the mid-’90s and her chamber-pop group Peccadillo - there’s lots of light-hearted humour, examination of human mating rituals, bemoaning of acid trips gone wrong and silly innuendos. Plus the odd spot of sensitive introspection.

Greta Gertler (& ¾ of Peccadillo), live at the Harbourside Brasserie:

Football Song
- Possibly the first instance in popular song of musicians and rugby players being likened.
Wedding Song
- Can you spot the occasional pattern to the song naming?
I’m Not A Lizard
Fishy Song
- If you like to hear pretty girls shouting “SEX!”, this is the one song you should download.
Dwell
- This song had its lyrics changed and point removed by A Successful Musician a couple of years later, and became the biggest Australian radio hit of the year. And look! Here’s one about the previous time he did it:
I Heard Your Song On The Radio

And here’s the one newer song in the batch, written after Greta’s move to New York and performed in the “solo” set of that night’s show. She’d just won an unsigned artist songwriting prize thingy for it at the time. Aw.
Everyone Wants To Adore You

Greta’s in Sydney this week, playing one show at the Vanguard on Sunday night. Go along for dinner, buy a CD or three.

Everyone loves The Go! Team, right? Hyped-up sample-clashing fizzy-pop TV-theme happy funtime music, etc etc - you’re on the internet, you know the drill. So I really, really wanted to love them live (they’re the only foreign band I’ve gone to see all year, actually), and they certainly seemed to be putting their side of the effort into it: a crowd of people running around, swapping instruments, jumping up and down and shouting… but in Sydney, the mix was so dead that in order to get excited, I had to ignore what was actually coming out of the speakers and dance to the platonic ideal of the song inside my head.

Retrospective forgiveness: thanks to my tax dollars, one of their Melbourne shows was recorded a few days later and broadcast the next month on yoof network Triple J, whereupon I was able to confirm that indeed they should have sounded totally ace. And now so can you! The whole broadcast edit (about half an hour of the show) is streaming on the JJJ website, and for re-listening pleasure, here’s a few of the non-LP songs they played on the tour:

The Go! Team - We Just Won’t Be Defeated (live in Melbourne)
- from the limited edition Australian tour EP/less-limited bonus disc on the tour-coinciding reissue of the album

The Go! Team - The Ice Storm (live in Melbourne)
- originally a bonus track on the Japanese version of their album, but also on the EP/bonus disc as above

The Go! Team - Untitled New Song (live in Melbourne)
- not on the tour EP, BUT! while Ninja makes a big deal about the song being untitled and asking for suggestions, the chorus asks “Are You Ready For More?”.. which happens to be the title of the EP. Hmm.

Buy:
You can get the two-disc version of Thunder Lightning Strike for $26 (it’s cheaper in shops than direct from the label), or Are You Ready For More by itself for $12. (For some reason, Shock have the wrong sleeve up on the site, so I’m giving you the real one here, stolen from Sanity).

You can support JJJ by paying taxes and voting against John Howard.

Remember hearing this on the radio in the ’80s?

Well, he loves to wear silk knotted scarves around his neck, baby
Finger them, finger the scarves!
He twists the scarf around my neck, baby
I wish he was twisting it around my clit, I mean my dick, I mean my cock, baby twist it
Twist it good, twist that silky scarf

And pull it oiled, knotted, out of her ass, let her come, etc etc. Those were the days, eh?

Since her Best Of dropped the ball, it’s about time someone got to doing some lavish bonus-disced-up reissues of the first couple of Sinéad O’Connor albums (remastering is pretty essential too, the CDs are close to inaudible at times) so that a coffee-table audience can have the joy of being exposed to the way the adorable contrarian handled the marketing requirements of the 12″ single.

Classic beyond classic was the “Jump In The River” extended version, which basically played the song and then let Karen Finley in the door to rant and, indeed, pant for another five minutes, but also of interest was the “I Want Your (Hands On Me)” 12″ that welcomed MC Lyte on somewhat more integrated cameo duties. Two of the mixes are below.

Sinéad O’Connor - Jump In The River (12″)
Sinéad O’Connor - I Want Your (Street Mix)
Sinéad O’Connor - I Want Your (Dance Mix)

Buy:
Her official webstore thing is a bit limp, so don’t go there unless you live in Foreign. Better deals are getting the local issue of her new album of reggae covers, which comes with a bonus disc of dub versions, or the Collaborations compilation, which is a decentish round-up, but doesn’t include either of these (or Marxman’s “Ship Ahoy”, come to think! If I can find the single, I’ll stick a version up tomorrow).