This is a hip hop tune by Kelis and the Neptunes from 2003. It was a pretty big hit, and is about food. But I wouldn’t be posting it except it also has a goofy sense of humor and an offhand video that has an offhand sexiness that is pretty appealing.
I also like the straightforward arrangement, minimal mix and simple sound, plus goofy dadaist suggestive lyrics.
I like themes, up to a point of course. This video has terrible video transfer and bad audio, but it does have some sense of how great that Food Glorious Foot song is.
From Oliver, but not as evocative as this crap.
This song was a hit in 1969, which means I was stumbling into adolescence and learning to delight in stupid rude puns (or what appeared to be so, at the time). This version, a song about food by the way, is contemporary (from October 2014), and Tony Joe’s voice isn’t quite so flexible, but it percolates anyway. And he has a nice buzzing solo, too. And Dave Grohl and Pat Smear, too. Plus Dave.
In my high school years, and into college, my band was Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen. They were a country band that played the old style, no wimpy folk music here, and featured the Commander as big personality and boogie king, Bill Kirchen as most excellent rockabilly guitar, Andy Stein on the fiddle (one I touched after a show at Long Island University), the incomparable Bobby Black on pedal steel, and Billy C. Farlow as rockabilly vocal king.
The band’s roots were in Ann Arbor, though they ended up in San Francisco. But this clip is from a concert to support White Panthers leader John Sinclair, who was doing hard time for holding two joints when he wasn’t managing the MC5. The point was that drug laws were being used to muzzle political dissent.
The MC5, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Bob Seger, and Alan Ginsberg, and many others, performed at this show.
I didn’t know this clip until today. For me this band is the exemplar, the ultimate. And this is the perfect weepy country song.
This is the elpee version. Better mixed and performed. Perfect.
Effortless midtempo rock.
I’ve founnd myself in conversations with friends over the past few weeks talking about how things are worse now than they’ve ever been. It feels that way, there is lots of dark stuff coming out right now, but I grew up in the 70s. There was dark stuff then, for sure. I think the amount of dark stuff is always the same, it just isn’t always in our faces the same way.
And there is some notion that what is in our faces now will help us address the problem of institutional bias, and find ways to diminish it’s effects in the future. Probably wishful thinking, but a goal worth pursuing.
At dinner tonight our host was spinning a new Bill Laswell record, on vinyl! It sounded great, and was in keeping with Laswell’s lifelong attempt to mix up all the genres of music. There was some techno, reggae, and ambient on the disk.
Which reminded me of Laswell’s production of Afrika Bambaataa’s World Destruction, which features Johnny Rotten on backup vocals. This is crazy early 80s hip hop, end of the world punk hop, so I’m sure you’ll grok it.
There is much more to be said about Laswell, but for now, let’s agree that the world sucked in the early 80s, too.
Awesome. Have no idea where this video comes from, but it’s good. Great song!
Was Smokey Robinson ambitious? This is a fantastic song built on a grandiose metaphor. But the Marvelettes were the original Motown act, and their tune Please Mr. Postman put the label on the map.
Good lord, Smokey. Good song.
It’s been a while since my last post. I know you’ve missed me and my young people music. The band I want to share with you all today is Tame Impala. When my friend first showed them to me about 4 years ago, he described their sound as “psychedelic Beatles.” I could definitely hear that in their music, though it is much more modern with use of synthesizers and such on top of their instruments. What I like most about them is probably the lyrics, though the music sounds really good to me as well.
Pretty cool video, too.
As we saw with Joan Jett punkifying the Mary Tyler Moore theme, and my previous post of Hole’s version of Clouds, it’s punk’s illusions I recall.
I also recall the Lemonheads, who did the same thing with Simon and Garfunkle’s Mrs. Robinson, long before Joe Dimaggio’s 100th birthday. This is not serious, but it is hopeful it would upset Paul Simon. (Further research indicates Simon hated it, Garfunkle loved it. Beautiful.)
Evan Dando is a callow privileged ass, based on this video, but there is something theatrical that builds here. The song gets darker, despite his insipid smiles. Maybe that all derives from the movie clips. Let’s not give the Lemonheads more credit than they deserve.
Is there any reason to cover this song except the easy access to market video clips? This version certainly doesn’t improve on the original, at least not without the clips.
And, of course, you have to ask, why Venice?
