THINGS AND STUFF #2

Locust Music of Chicago, IL sent along this clip from the Al-Jazeera program Artsworld. No wonder imperialists hate this network so much - their journalism is solid! Not only on our feature attraction, a profile of Finland musicians Lau Nau, Kuupuu, and Es, but also on the opening piece about (the guaranteed touchy subject of) the painting of Hezbollah martyrs....



Digging the Lau Nau song and video briefly excerpted above, a song from her recent Locust release Nukkuu. Here's the whole thing:



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Hey, Nice Pooper zine from back in the 1990's has a website with some cool archival stuff, more to come hopefully. Check out the interview with Michael Morley (of the Dead C).

AND more NZ interviews at the Radio New Zealand site... 15-minute NPR-style Real Player-type joints... great recent ones with Alastair Galbraith and Bruce Russell...

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Can't front on Billy Preston's organ solo on "I Got The Blues" by the Stones. It's a ripper! Short and sweet. Not enough to forgive him for this (courtesy TLASILA blog), of course, but a good 'un.

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I always love it when reggae singers do a pop/R&B hit, like Junior Murvin combining "Closer Together" and "Gypsy Woman" by Curtis Mayfield & the Impressions on this record, or this one I just stumbled across tonight, Dennis Brown & the Observers doing Lou Rawls' "You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine" (you know, this song) as "Moving Away," collected on the Trojan 12-inch Box Set. And then there's my favorite example of all.... y'see, a while back, I was shopping at Reckless when I heard a rather sublime reggae version of "Billie Jean" coming over the store system ("she was more like a beauty queen with an M-16..."). When the vocalist eased his way from "Billie Jean" into a version of "Mama Used To Say," the somewhat cheesy but still great 1982 R&B hit by Junior, I had to go up to the counter and ask who it was. The answer was Shinehead, and the clerk had brought the record in from home. He ordered it for me, and recommended a blog called Who Cork The Dance? that had tons of "blown-out dancehall" mixes for download. I went there and quickly found this 90-minute mix that kicks off with none other than the Shinehead jam in question. Wow, my record still hasn't come in, and probably won't, but thanks dude, that was some excellent record-store clerking!

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The electric side of Rust Never Sleeps is so good... it's perfect. The all-time mighty "Powderfinger," then two startling metalloid punk songs, one with someone dialing a phone number fucking audible over the top of it, and then the closer "My My Hey Hey," one of the bleakest shambling horrors of a heartland rock anthem ever heartlanded. I mean, I know you already knew all this, but damn... and of course the acoustic side is perfect as well. Ever sit down and read the lyrics of "Thrasher"? Ever heard the way that song is used in Dennis Hopper's Out of the Blue?

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Alan Bishop lays it down: "These people are us. There is no separation.... People are crazy and weird everywhere. People all over the world are being socially engineered to trivialize those who are different from them. The price is paid in stacks of human corpses." From this feature on Sublime Frequencies.