Music to live for

Music continues to be one of the things that I am grateful for every day. I don't think I could live without music. I just applied for a job at Pandora, which has been my work radio since I moved here. Before that it was KCRW on iTunes but my last job was on PCs and we weren't allowed to have iTunes. What's up with that? Anyway, there are so many great ways now to listen and discover new music - Pandora, Lala, Buzznet, Last.FM - and buy it with a click on iTunes or Amazon. Lala actually has amazing prices on CDs.

I'm listening to some particularly amazing discs right now that I wanted to share with you.

1) I've only JUST discovered Cat Power with "Greatest" but she has a score of albums that I haven't heard. I'm really particular with female vocalists but I just love her stuff. Listen to one of my favorites from this album, "Love and Communication."

2) If you haven't heard The Gorillaz they are amazing! To get the full range of their music, you only have to listen to this song, below, and "Kids With Guns."



3) I've always liked Beck but the first album I actually bought is his latest, "The Information." I love everything on it and listened to all of his other albums. My next favorite album is "Sea Change." You can listen to three songs (including my favorite, "Cellphone's Dead") and read a great review on NPR. I'm telling you, new music is waiting to be discovered all over the Internet.

4) Thom Yorke is the lead singer of Radiohead. I like them but have never purchased their music. After hearing "Black Swan" on Pandora, I bought his solo album, "The Eraser," and am in love with it.

5) A friend introduced me to Beirut. He's a 19-year old from New Mexico who made an album inspired by gypsy music, it's amazing. This is the first song I heard but the rest of album, "Gulag Orkestar," is all different.

You can find out more about all of these artists on the websites I listed above. I encourage you to buy and try!

Learning through the songs of America

This is just plain cool! Another example of how individuals can change the way we do just things. In this case, Janet Reno (the former US Attorney General) is hoping to change the way that U.S. history is taught and increase interest in learning history by young people. She's just released a three-disc album, Song of America, (that's only $20 on Amazon!) of music from America's 400+ year history.

Her hope is that young people, for whom music is extremely important, will be inspired by the songs and be able to better understand the men and women who shaped the country that we live in and the integral role that music has always played. It took nine years for her to complete the project in collaboration with her niece's husband, a tour manager for a punk band, and so far it's getting rave reviews. Let's hope others take the torch and run with it!

Music is the one thing that humans create

The other day, a friend was over and I had music from the iPod playing. A weird song, that I love, from a Believer compilation came on. "What is THIS?" my friend asked. It occurred to me that even though I love this song, I'd never looked up the band, CocoRosie. They're two sisters who make very unconventional but strangely beautiful music. Their first album was recorded in their apartment bathroom in Brooklyn. You only have to watch this video to see how bizarre and yet wonderful they are:



I got feedback from several people that they liked my posts on music and one reader offered, in response to my claim that humans don't actually make anything, that we create music not from nature but from our imaginations. I have to give him that. I think I would die without music. Here's what I'm digging at the moment.

Albums that I love every song on are:
Spoon, Gimme Fiction
The Raconteurs, Broken Boy Soldiers
Dandy Warhols, Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia, Welcome To The Monkey House (I still don't have their latest)

I listen to this Dandy Warhols song every time I go running and it makes me laugh my ass off. It's fantastic, especially if you're a "struggling artist."



I recently got the KT Tunstall album. She had two very mainstream songs playing all over the radio ("Suddenly I See", "Black Horse & The Cherry Tree") so I got this one for my mom as catchy and easy to get into usually becomes irritating to me. But this is a great album! KT is half Chinese, adopted, grew up in Scotland and is actually musically educated. You can hear in her voice that she's a spirited and passionate person. I prefer listening to her rich voice without seeing her face but to get a taste, here's the video for one of my favorite songs "Another Place to Fall."



If you were into the English Beat in the 80's, check out The Futureheads' News & Tributes. If you were also a fan of early Talking Heads and Devo, give a listen to Maxïmo Park ("Apply Some Pressure" is their radio hit.)



Oh and this is really fun! I've been a fan of Natacha Atlas, an Egyptian musician, for ten years. I have every album starting with Diaspora. A couple of years ago she put out an album, Something Dangerous, that expands on her traditional sound by incorporating rap, jazz, R&B, pop and dance. I was supposed to see her in concert at the Hollywood Bowl a couple of summers ago but they announced that her Visa was denied on suspicion of terrorism. Nice work America! Here's a song from it:



ENJOY!

A shout out to Algeria!

I know I'm the only one who gets a thrill out of the little red dots on the map of who's showing up to my site but yesterday I got my first ping in AFRICA. I'm so excited...it's from Algeria! Little do they (the Algerians) know I am a lover of their music.

It all started in 1995 when I saw the movie Party Girl at the local independent cinema in Seattle. The movie was cute and funny but what struck me most was a certain "Middle Eastern sounding" song. I rushed out to buy the soundtrack to find out what the song was (this is before you could listen to clips on Amazon) and found it was Khaled's "Les Ailes."

I bought an album of Khaled and eventually, four of his CDs. I bought Rachid Taha (also of Algeria) and saw the Master Musicians of Jajouka (Morocco) play in Seattle. It was a fantastic show, a magical experience. I bought Césaria Évora from Cape Verde, off the coast of Senegal, a beautiful blend of African, European and North American sounds.

A friend introduced me to Passion: Music For The Last Temptation of Christ. I have still never seen the movie but the soundtrack is unbelievably beautiful. I bought Passion Sources, the music and musicians that inspired and contributed to the soundtrack. Its traditional North African songs (many not more than vocals) are probably too exotic for most but I love them. I collected all of Dead Can Dance's music, also heavily borrowing North African themes. This rich music ironically goes very well with the dark, wet winters of Seattle.

Although my tastes have become more varied since moving to Los Angeles, (I'm loving Central-African-by-way-of-Belgium Zap Mama's latest) this music still holds a special place in my heart. In the last couple of years, I've even got my mother hooked. She can't get enough of Natacha Atlas (Egypt) and has listened to nothing but Cheb i Sabbah (Algeria) for the last few weeks. (This is a great disc.)

Seemingly unrelated, today has officially been declared Star Wars Day in Los Angeles but there's no mention of North Africa's special role in the sextet of films.

According to the official Star Wars site, North Africa has provided most of the films' shooting locations:
Tatooine was originally named Aquilae in the draft scripts of Star Wars, before adopting a name very similar to the southern Tunisian city of Tataouine. Being the most explored planet in the Star Wars films, Tatooine required the greatest number of real-world filming locations. In Africa, Djerba, Matmata, Tozeur, Medenine, Ksar Hadada, the Chott El-Djerid, and La Grande Dune doubled as Tatooine locales; in California, the production crew visited Death Valley, and in Arizona, the sand dunes of Yuma.

So, from California to Algeria, Happy Star Wars Day!

Pay the monkey back

A bevy of bands that I'm listening to now are imbued with the sixties: steeped in the varied sounds of The Rolling Stones from the late sixties mixed with a good measure of The Beatles, The Beach Boys and The Kinks from the mid-sixties and a dash of Herb Alpert and Nina Simone added for good measure.


The songs put out by The Bees, The Dandy Warhols, and The Raconteurs are unmistakably reminiscent and yet the product is wholly original. Amy Winehouse sounds like she's imported directly from the sixties as the new sound of Motown! These songs make me feel like I'm listening to memories from my childhood with the excitement of discovering something new. It's truly exhilarating.

One song, Chicken Payback by The Bees, is like a kids' tune from The Electric Company with utterly ridiculous and yet irresistibly singable lyrics set to a simple beat. Every comedian will tell you that words with hard consonants are naturally funny, as are the names of animals...and get a load of these lyrics! (Come to think of it, wonder if this is an animal rights song?)

Watch the video (lyrics below):


Chicken Payback by The Bees

(chicken)
pay the chicken back back
pay the chicken back
pay back the chicken back
do the chicken payback

(piggy)
pay the piggy back back
pay the piggy back
pay back the piggy back
do the piggy payback

(monkey)
pay the monkey back back
pay the monkey back
see the monkey
do the monkey
pay the monkey back
oh

(chicken)
pay the chicken back back
pay the chicken back
pay back the chicken back
back do the chicken payback

(camel)
pay the camel back
sittin' on the camel back
see the camel
do the camel
pay the camel back

(donkey)
pay the donkey back back
pay the donkey back
pay back the donkey
pay back
pay back the donkey

yeah
come on
all the animals together
break it down
let me hear ya

[repeat the above]