Monkey Bastard's MP3 Blahg

Okay, here it is. The fourth volume in this already legendary series of the best musical mixes the internet has to offer (illusions of grandeur? Moi?).

Volume 4 has something for everybody. From the down & dirty rock 'n' roll of Easy Livin', Gluecifer and New York Dolls to the legendary blues of Robert Johnson. From the souped up, euphoric funk of Beck to the 21st century Anglo angst of Radiohead. From classics like Be Bop A Lula and Act Naturally, to obscurities like Firefall's Get You Back and Wrecks' Again.

The best cut by far though, is Station Blues by Otha Turner & The Afrosippi Allstars feat. The Rising Fife And Drum Band (phew!). It's a track I've been positively addicted to since I first heard it a few months ago on an American folk music compilation entitled Further Beyond Nashville. It's a recording so good my ears are crying tears of joy. I wouldn't even know where to begin to describe it, you'll have to check it out for yourself. I know very little about the traditional music of the American south, but I know what I like. To those who are followers of this kind of music, Station Blues may sound perfectly normal, like yesterday's news even. But to this idiot, who doesn't know anything about anything, it's a song that's been on repeat, very loudly, for days on end. The neighbors must be wondering what the hell is going on. This is what music writer Max Reinhardt wrote in the liner notes of the compilation:

"In the hill country of Mississippi there is a musical tradition - an endless boogie of trance music - handed down from father to son amongst a small cluster of families and played their fife and drum combos. Otha Turner, now in his nineties, is the shaman and cane fife griot of hill country boogie. Luther Dickinson, of the North Mississippi Allstars, recorded Otha through the 1990's, mostly on Otha's farm. The phenomenal result, the legendary 'Everybody Hollerin Goat' CD, reached the ears of Matthew Rappaport, who cooked up the Afrosippi Allstars project with Luther and brought down West African musicians to record with Otha in '99. So you can believe your ears - cane fifes, snare and bass drums, bottle neck guitar, kora, djembe, djun djun, sangban and kenkeni in a blues trance orchestra playing 'Station Blues', a close cousin to Willie Dixon's 'Sitting On Top Of The World'."

"Blues trance orchestra".... Well said. This song is downright hypnotic.

1. Easy Livin' - Girls are made for lovin'
2. Robert Johnson - Stones in my passway
3. Neil Young - Down by the river
4. Radiohead - You and whose army?
5. Gluecifer - Black book lodge
6. Buck Owens - Act naturally
7. Otha Turner & The Afrosippi Allstars feat. The Rising Fife And Drum Band - Station blues
8. Gene Vincent - Be bop a lula
9. Firefall - Get you back (live)
10. The Zombies - Hung up on a dream
11. Wrecks - Again
12. Drive-By Truckers - Danko/Manuel
13. New York Dolls - Back in the USA
14. Beck - Sexx laws
15. Chris Cornell - Steel rain

Download .zip file

Download volume 3 here.

Download volume 2 here. 

Download Volume 1 here.

 

David "I Have A Better Beard Than You" Sandström was the subject the historic, legendary, much talked about (yeah right...) debut post on Monkey Bastard's MP3 Blahg. I'm 99% sure you missed it, but it's damn good so check it out here. The album I wrote about there is by far the strangest of Sandström's albums, and the only one in Swedish. Usually he occupies himself with writing and playing more traditional, albeit rootsy, rock music with his band David Sandström Overdrive. These are some songs he's giving away for free at his website. Highly recommended, all four of them. They're the kind of songs that are so good, so well-written that even when listening to them the first time, they feel like something you listened to as a kid. Songs you can hum along to straight away, they somehow sound very familiar but not because they're rip offs of some old songs you already know, but because they have a timeless quality that just hits you straight in the heart. Songs that are like meeting an old friend.

How Sandström doesn't get more praise is a mystery. Swedish acts are hyped like hell on blogs world wide at the moment; if it's not well-known ones like Peter Bjorn & John, The Concretes, The Knife, Dungen or Hello Saferide, it's some small little weird unsigned band that not even Swedes have heard about, but who somehow caught the ear of some American blogger who prowls the far corners of the Internet in search of Scandinavian music. Yes Craig, I'm talking about you :).

So why not David Sandström? Fuck knows. A Sandström hype is long overdue! Let's start one, right here, right now. Download, listen, obey the genius that is David Sandström, and spread the motherfartin' word! Tell your friends, people. Tell your friends.

The sixties

Move along

The Fatville treaty

TJ queen

I said TELL YOUR FRIENDS!!! Don't make me hurt you. 'Cause I would, you fucking know I would.

Okay, this mix thing was supposed to be a Monday thing, but after the making the first two Monkey Mixes, I got really inspired (I'm an old mixtape nerd and fell into my old habits faster than Frederick Abberline in a poppy field) and ended making shitloads of them in only a few days. So from now on, The Monkey Mix is expanded to Fridays as well.

I wasn't sure if I was gonna include both The 101'ers and The Clash, since both bands were fronted by Joe Strummer. Like Rob Gordon stated in High Fidelity: There are a lot of rules. You're supposed to mix it up a little, not too much of the same (unless you're doing some sort of theme of course). But I figured "What the hell... I don't pay any attention to the other rules, so why should I obey this one?". Plus, you can never have too much Joe Strummer.

The Ani DiFranco track's been a personal favorite for a decade or so, the Logh song is brand new (they will definitely make my Top 10 of 2007 list), Hayseed Dixie's insane country/bluegrass cover of Neil Young's Rockin' In The Free World is ridiculously good, I love how Black Rebel Motorcycle Club incorporates Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra into their own compistion As Sure As The Sun. Chris Morris' Bad Sex 2 is one of the most worrying, yet hilarious, things I've ever heard. Swedish sextet bob hund is one of my favorite bands of all time, and this version of Sista Beställningen was recorded at a live show in London in 2001. Frontman Tomas Öberg decided to stick to speaking Swedish inbetween songs, only throwing in a few words in English here and there. Sure, there were plenty of Swedes in the audience that night, but you have to wonder how the limeys felt about it.

1. The 101'ers - Keys to your heart
2. Ani DiFranco - Shy
3. Logh - Saturday nightmares
4. Quannum - Always fine tunin'
5. Alice Cooper - Only women bleed
6. Hayseed Dixie - Rockin' in the free world
7. The Clash - The man in me
8. Weeping Willows - When our hearts were young
9. The Soundtrack Of Our Lives - Mega society
10. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - As sure as the sun
11. bob hund - Sista beställningen (live)
12. The Stooges - Down on the street
13. The Beatles - Birthday
14. Huck Daniels - Foolish man
15. Chris Morris - Bad sex 2

Download .zip file

Download volume 2 here.

Download Volume 1 here.

 

I would love to have these blogs linked on the side banner, but Blog.com only lets me link to other Blog.com blogs. Since most of my favorite mp3 blogs are on Blogspot, I must resort to linking them in this manner.

So for good times and good music, head on over to...

Aversion

buddyHEAD

Built On A Weak Spot

Can you see the sunset from the Southside

Captain's Crate

captain's dead

Dans Mon Café

Don't burn the day away

Dreams Of Horses

Funeral Pudding

I AM FUEL, YOU ARE FRIENDS

i guess i'm floating

INVISIBLE ORANGES

Jefitoblog

The Late Greats

Looking At Them

Mainstream Isn't So Bad...Is It?

Mars Needs Guitars

Modern Music

MOISTWORKS : AN MP3 BOOMBOX

Music is Art

My Old Kentucky Blog

The Noise Show

sixeyes

speed of dark

Swan Fungus

swedesplease

to die by your side

THE VINYL VILLAIN

WFMU's Beware Of The Blog

The Yellow Stereo 

 

This is the story of a Norwegian band called Locomotives.

And here the story ends. Because I know very little about them, and googling proved futile. I saw the video for the song Universe on MTV Europe's Alternative Nation in 1998 (damn, that was a good show... Toby Amies was the man). I liked the video, liked the song, and ordered the EP G.R.I.L.L. from a shitty online shopping site called Boxman (the company that would let you wait a month for a delivery and then tell you the product you wanted is out of stock). Unlikely as it was, G.R.I.L.L. arrived in the mail, and turned out to be a rather pleasurable experience. Nothing earth shattering, but a good listen nonetheless.

Universe still managed to put a smile on my face almost a decade later (any songs that has Madonna and Karl Marx in the same line is alright in my book), and the more mellow tracks Penthouse and You Can't Always Get What You Want have a lot to offer as well.

According to www.bandinfo.no Locomotives released an album called Spin in 1997, one called Albert in 1999 and another EP in 2001. I haven't been able to track them down, but I'd love to hear them one day. If you have any info on Locomotives and what they're up to these days, email me: monkey_bastard@hotmail.com.

Universe (highly recommened)

Penthouse

You can't always get what you want

Music From The Unrealized Film Script, Dusk At Cubist Castle by The Olvia Tremor Control is one my all time favorite albums, also one of the most infuriating. The Olivia Tremor Control were part of the Elephant 6 collective, also home of The Essex Green, Dixie Blood Mustache (the best band name ever!), Major Organ and the Adding Machine, The Neutral Milk Hotel and Of Montreal. Visit the Elephant 6 website to find out more about these weird bands. The Neutral Milk Hotel's 1998 album In The Aeroplane Over The Sea (these people like long names) is often percieved as the definitive Elephant 6 masterpiece. I beg to differ, as I often do.

Dusk At Cubist Castle (recorded between 1993 and 1996, and released in '96) is most definitely the Masterpiece (yes, with a capital M). A whopping 27 tracks of the most beautiful psychedelic pop music you could ever imagine. The list of weird shit going on here would (as Glenn Danzig would say) reach from here to hell. Melodica, chanter pipe, space bubbles (!), singing saw, "mallet struck acoustic guitar", Tibeten prayer board... I haven't even heard of half of the instrument used on this recording.

But it's not just glorious pop music that would make John Lennon sweat bullets in his grave. I called it infuriating, and I did it for a reason. Ten of the album's tracks (#12-21) are a collage entitled Green Typewriters. The shortest Green Typewriter is less than a minute, the longest over nine minutes. Here's some examples of just how extraordinarily amazing The Olivia Tremor Control could be when they wanted to:

Jumping fences
No growing (exegesis)
NYC-25

...and some examples of how fucking annoying they could be:

Theme for a very delicious piano
Green typewriters (track #18)
Tropical bells

But this is all part of the charm, the genious that is The Olivia Tremor Control. I certainly wouldn't want an OTC album without the noise collages and the pointless interludes. They're just as much a part of the band as the gorgeous Beatles-like melodies and the angelic vocals harmonies. You can't have one without the other, as these two sides of the band represent the two very different musical views of main songwriters Will Cullen Hart and Bill Doss.

A spot-on review @ Pitchfork.

Elephant 6 has a section where you can freely download mp3. Click here for the Olivia Tremor Control section. I particularly recommend the gig at Emmaboda in Sweden 1998.

Buy it at Amazon.

The third covers post in five days. I swear this is the last one (for now...).

In the Dylan post below there's a cover of The Times They Are A-Changin' by Vice Squad. This track was taken from a 10 CD box set of old punk songs, entitled Horrible Punk - God Bless This Box. Each CD has its own theme, like "Punk Live Classics" (live recordings so lo-fi you can't tell one song from another), "Extreme Punk" (bands like Chaos UK, Driller Killer, Chaotic Dischord, Blitzkrieg and External Menace) and "Punk Indie Chart Hits" (Peter & The Test Tube Babies, Spizz Energi, Johnny Thunders etc). There are shitloads of punk compilations like this, and I've bought tons over the years. Not sure why, since they always have the same bands and the same songs. Anyway, the best and most interesting of these 10 CD's was the fourth one "Punk Covers". You're welcome.

Anti-Pasti - I wanna be your dog (The Stooges)

Sid Vicious - My way (Frank Sinatra)

The Vibrators - Jumpin' Jack Flash (The Rolling Stones)

Vice Squad - The times they are a-changin' (Bob Dylan)

One Way System - Cum on feel the noize (Slade)

Hollywood Brats - Then he kissed me (The Crystals)

Erazerhead - Teenager in love (Dion And The Belmonts)

G.B.H. - Pretty vacant (The Sex Pistols)

Disorder - Jolene (Dolly Parton)

Angelic Upstarts - White riot (The Clash)

Eater - Jeepster (T. Rex)

Vice Squad - Teenage rampage (Sweet)

Suburban Studs - My generation (The Who)

The Vibrators - Gimme some lovin' (The Spencer Davis Group)

The Drones - Be my baby (The Ronettes)

The Wall - Day tripper (The Beatles)

Dear readers,

I don't understand you sometimes. Almost every blogger I'd gotten to know before I got a blog of my own have stated how they are reluctant to post on weekends, because they don't get any visitors anyway. They have most of the traffic on weekdays, when people are chilling in front of the computer after work (or maybe during work, if they're one of those poor suckers who have to sit in a cubicle all day). People don't surf around mp3 blogs on weekends, because they have better things to do. Or so I thought. Having no blogging experience of my own, I took this to be true.

It therefore surprises me that on any given weekday I get an average of 20 to 30 hits. The last three weekends I've gotten an average of 200 hits a day (there must some sort of swinging door to this place on Fridays and Saturdays in particular). What gives, reader? I'm flattered that you would spend your spare time at a vomit colored (Linda Blair green was a poor choice) mp3 blog. Don't you have families to spend time with? Kids to see? Places to go? Shit to do? Ah well, it's your loss. Let's get on with today's topic:

A few days ago I posted covers by a legend, Johnny Cash. I suppose I could do a post about another legend, Bob Dylan, doing covers. But who would want to hear that? No one, exactly. So here's other people doing Bob's songs. For some time, I considered posting The Byrd's version of Mr Tambourine man. Not because I like it or anything (I don't), but it's so well-known it would feel strange not to include it. But then I remembered having William Shatner's version in my collection. Move over, Byrds! The Shat is here!

William Shatner - Mr Tambourine man

The Band - I shall be released

The Flying Burritos Brothers - To Ramona

Fairport Convention - Si tu dois partir

The Hollies - My back pages

Ministry - Lay, lady lay

The 13th Floor Elevators - It's all over now, baby blue

The Secret Machines - Girl from the north country

Chris Whitley - Spanish Harlem incident

John Martyn - Don't think twice, it's all right

Nancy Sinatra - It ain't me babe

Entombed - The ballad of Hollis Brown

Ben Weaver - Ballad of a thin man

The Handsome Family - Just like Tom Thumb's blues

Vice Squad - The times they are a-changin'

Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & The Trinity - This wheel's on fire

Andrew Bird & Nora O'Connor - Oh sister

Marc Carroll - Tombstone blues

Buy these bad boys at Amazon.

Andrea Kellerman, aka Firefox AK, is a good example of someone who may not be a technically perfect singer (technically perfect would be someone like Celine Dion or Christina Aguilera, and we all know how terribly exciting they are), but who knows exactly how to use her voice to get all the right emotions across. I've never been able to put my finger on what, but there's just something about the way she sings that grabs me and pullls me in. The same way Norah Jones may not be as good a jazz singer like Diana Krall or some other overrated contemporary skank, but still is a lot more enjoyable and soothing to listen to. Kellerman's cute too, which doesn't hurt.

Andrea, who had I planned to make my wife, is already married (bitch) to Rasmus Kellerman, aka Tiger Lou. They also have a punk band together called Las Puertas. That band sucks though, so don't bother.

 Madame, madame!

 The polar bear

 The draft (feat. Tiger "Wifenapper" Lou)

It's hard to believe there was a time when Nelly Furtado made music that was actually listenable....

1. Nelly Furtado - Turn off the lights
2. The Ark - Joy surrender
3. Stakka Bo, Titiyo, Fleshquartet & Nåid - We vie
4. John Lennon - Working class hero
5. Dean Martin - That's amore
6. Supergrass - Moving
7. Gomez - Bring it on
8. Travis - Driftwood
9. Turin Brakes - Underground (save me)
10. Roots Manuva - Witness (1 hope)
11. Gorillaz - S4
12. The Hellacopters - I wanna touch
13. Betty Everett - It's in his kiss (the shoop shoop song)
14. Donovan - Three kingfishers
15. The Flaming Lips - Haven't got a clue

Download .zip file

Download Volume 1 here