Get Loose, Philadelphia

This weekend, Love Train pulls into town. Love Train will have tons of great soul and RnB acts (about many of whom I've dropped knowledge before) playing, all under one roof. All represent the classic "Philly Sound"; smooooooth jams from mostly the 70's and mostly penned/produced by legendary producers Gamble and Huff.


Download "Get Up Get Down Get Funky Get Loose" by Teddy Pendergrass

You should go, but you can't: tickets start at $55. (One site selling tickets insists that the cheap tickets have "awesome" views though; the mid-price tix have merely "great" views, and the most dear tickets have "brilliant" views.)



Love Train is a concert supporting the recent compilation of the same name, which aims to put the musical descriptor "The Philly Sound" into people's minds, right up there with "Motown" and "Stax".
Playing are Jerry Butler,
The O'Jays,

the Delfonics, the Jones Girls,

Harold Melvin's Bluenotes (which used to have Teddy Pendergrass in it), and the (new) Stylistics.

I've told you about Jerry Butler multiple times before; Internet tells me that he has an album called "Sings Assorted Sounds With The Aid of Assorted Friends and Relatives"

and Internet implies that he is a Freemason.


The Delfonics had a bigBIGbig hit with "Didn't I Blow Your Mind (This Time)", which I believe the New Kids on the Block re-recorded. So, you've heard the song before, guaranteed, whether old or "New" (Get it?). You also might have heard it when I included it on this mix, which is about how I am the best thing going these days.

The Stylistics were the first of these bands that I knew by name, way back in college. Not surprisingly, my knowledge/ownership of "The Philly Sound" much expanded once I actually lived in Philadelphia.


The first song by the Stylistics that I loved is called "Pieces"; I still love it but am usually annoyed by the rest of their jams. A little saccharine, a little cloying, a little treacly. All the lead singing is done in a falsetto, FYI, which you either like or don't (I like).

WanderLust

Albert Camus famously (well, even "cliche-edly") wrote that there "is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide."
I take this problem much more seriously when grading student papers.

Likely, the best option would be to somehow lead the papers themselves to commit suicide, instead of myself.


( Facebookers, view "Lovers Who Wander" by Dion on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buP1_OhjP5o )

([{Download "AMX: Unsafe at Any Speed", my most recent mix. It, of course, includes the above song.}])

Ah, but a reason to live! Like a crocus, leaping forth from the earth in earliest spring! Like an olive branch of peace, borne across vast oceans! Like a jellybean, delicious if artificial, rolling about my mouth!
Like a drumbeat built for speeeeeeeeeeeed!
.....! with handclaps, even !.....

The above song is by Dion, not Dion and the Belmonts; small detail, except that with the Belmonts, Dion made much less rokkin' tunes. This one swings, really has some of that ol' pep that this mix, friends, has in spades.

Oh papers, your weight, carried it seems for millennia, nearly grinds me to dead dust. And yet the waters of life flow from the ever-renewed spring that is
"AMX: Unsafe at Any Speed":

Healing waters which consist of doo-wop, early rock 'n' roll, "guitar freakouts", and all manner of leather-clad rebels, plain white tees and jeans, and a 'little sis' who can do the Mashed Potato.



Yes, 'Teachers who Wander", wander from the flat affects of required classwork, toward the NeverNeverLand of the Internet. A Musical Mecca to which The Teacher is guided by a profound wanderlust. Oh verily, these papers
"broke my heart, I really showed it,
Look at me now [after downloading "UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED"], you'd never know it
Now my story can be told with a smiling face
I'm the luckiest guy in the human race".

Yes, I traded drudgery for funnery, poorly constructed sentences for expertly-wrought musical mixes. I now pass on the possibility of your own, similar transition. Listen, learn, love, licent, etc., all with the help of "Unsafe At Any Speed.zip", the lovely and lively zip file that contains the above song, as well as many others.

Felicitous Salutations!

I walked past the Abbaye the other night; someone was karaoke-singing "Feliz Navidad".

AMX: Bringing Forth the Fruit of Earthly Delights

OH!
MY!

I pridefully present another installment of AMX Mixes !
This lil' monster goes by a number of names. Technically, the ZIP is called "Unsafe at Any Speed", but alternate names include

DeathProof (remember, the distant paternity of all AMX mixes is Tarantino movie soundtracks)
Only the Good Die Young
Attack of the Leader of the Pack
Rebel Beat

Profoundly intrigued- that's what you are!
Here is a youtuby from one of the tracks, the very movie, very driving around, very mod "Il Giardino Delle Delizie" by Ennio Morricone.



Hitherto, for these mixes, which come in at around 15 songs, I have described TheWholeThingAllAtOnce.
Which many found, reasonably enough, to be a bit overwhelming.
So I will now present a few songs, every now and again, and each one will come with a little posty-clicky for downloady, for the whole mix.

Here is the tracklisting, but in alphabetical order. Wanna know what order they really go in?
Better download it then. AMX: Unsafe At Any Speed

(the symbol between title and artist?: it's a car, with skidmarks behind and headlights in front! Pretty good, what?!)

Attack of the Ghost Riders €< The Raveonettes

Boom Boom €< The Animals

Casseurs de Raison €< Pierre Rapsat

Down by the Riverside €< Bill Haley and His Comets

Down the Line €< Ricky Nelson

Guitar Freakout €< The Ventures

Hitchhike €< Martha & The Vandellas

Il Giardino Delle Delizie €< Ennio Morricone

Land of 1000 Dances €< Cannibal and the Headhunters

Let's Go €< The Routers

Love Is A Deserter €< The Kills

Lovers Who Wander €< Dion

Rebel Rouser €< Duane Eddy

State Trooper €< Bruce Springsteen

Teen Beat €< Sandy Nelson

Lots of rapid-fire snare drums. Provocative organ work. Teenage harmonies (teenagers like cars).
You'll see: a perfect mix for driving and for being driven.
AMX: Unsafe At Any Speed

Oh Boy! Obey the Oboe

Just wanted to mention that, because of my 'research' for the last post, I knew that mayflies have two penises.

2!

And at Quizzo in West Philly last Sunday, we were asked about it! And I knew! And we got a point!

Other than that though, you could say we were 'down and out' in West Philly.



youtube got it: James' Brown - Down and Out In New York City

This is from the James Brown-scored movie soundtrack I mentioned last time. See, he's using 'movie-style' instruments here- orchestra, flutes, etc.
Say which you prefer: Curtis' Junkie or James' ...Out In.. in the comments

I think somebody is rocking the oboe?


Which is of course a vaguely phallic instrument. So, if you had two of them, battling it out, dueling banjos style,
or a la "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" (which is a song I like, but do not like at Oscar's, which you can no longer smoke at, at all),
then it would look a little like a mayfly.
Because they have

2!

Oh, and please do not ever forget that oboe players have a posse:

A Junkie Mayfly, He's Sure to Die

To celebrate Labor Day the other weekend, I did what every American was supposed to do:
1) I spent money, and
2) I worked/labored as little as possible.

Youtube link to Curtis Mayfield's "Freddie's Dead", from the Superfly Soundtrack



I got 3 CDs, 3 DVDs, 1 jacket, shoes (2 total).



Like any living mayfly, all of these were new, which is unusual for me. Well, the digital media came from FYE and some of it had been listened to in store, but that's not really used, is it now?

Obviously, one of the CDs was Curtis Mayfield's soundtrack to the blaxsploitation flick "Superfly". Probably a bit better than James Brown's entree into the world of soundtracks, itself pretty good.

I also got Jesus and the Mary Chain. Psycho Candy, evidently a German pressing, for whatever that's worth.
Also, for what it's worth, I am teaching St. Augustine tomorrow. If you Google "Augustine" and "Devil", to better determine that the Devil in Augustinian theology is nothing but 'persuasion' towards sin -- that is to say, he is not a giant fucking bat that shoots lasers or something -- you will get many more sites related to fishing (in Devil's Elbow in St. Augustine, FL) than you expected.

I'm saying this hypothetically, of course: I would never use the internet as an aid to research.




I also got some random Japanese cartoon (one character is named Cat: ?!? ), "White Heat" with James Cagney, "Technique" by New Order (obv VG), and Truffaut's "Wild Child". None of them cost me more than $8.55 (w/ tax); shoes and jacket, only $10 each.

Can I pick 'em, or what?

It feels much more natural to say "'em" than it does to type it. Just so you know.

Blue Lives: Fire Diamond Edition

The Massive Attack album Blue Lines came up twice lately. With Neil for sure, and perhaps with our new friend MarguaX-Y-Z.



I was telling Margauz about music I listened to in high school, and told her and Neil both that a lot of so-called 'trip-hop' hasn't aged so well. Massive Attack, however, is just as great now as then: "Same As It Ever Was".

Blue Lines' cover (see above) reminds me of this:


which is called NFPA 704 (?), and more provocatively, a FIRE DIAMOND .

It sums up the dangers associated with any chemical, on a scale of 0-4 (0 = NBD, 4 = vewwy bad) : blue is health risk, red is flammability, yeller is instabilty/reactivity (think about it, they mean the same thing), and white, much like my blog readership, is 'special'.


Neil knows about Massive Attack because he is Irish. They are one of those bands, like Super Furry Animals, where you know them automatically if you are British, and probably don't know if you are an American, and still only maybe know even if you are an American Indie Nerd.
"Just as great" also includes another album, Mezzanine.

Maybe some other time I will tell you what I think about Mezzanine, which I like even more than the excellent Blue Lines.
But today is not that day. All I will say is this little creepy American Indie Nerd gem: 'it has really good production'.

ew
that's grosser than the bug picture, innit?

The song you are listening to is a cover, although for the longest time I took it to be the original. Still never heard the original (by William DeVaughn), although I now know it to be a cover. This knowledge comes to me courtesy of the American Indie Nerd band Yo La Tengo.
Download their live cover of "Be Thankful for What You've Got" here
Yo La Tengo do a lot of covers, because one of the nerds people in the band used to be a record clerk. So he knows a bit about old obscure business, you see.
All versions of the song say "Gangster Whitewalls", which I like.

Cure-Light

I went to the dentist today, for the first time ever.
Well, for the first cavity ever.



download Songs:Ohia- Two Blue Lights

It went well and went fast, except for one bit. The compound didn't set up in part of the filling, because the light that one uses to 'cure' the compound, to get it to set, wasn't strong enough.

I thought that she had a hair-dryer in my mouth, from the way it sounded, but, turns out, it was a BLUE LIGHT LASER, which she kept calling a cure-light.




After she figured out that her cure-light was jenky, she borrowed another. This is Penn's Dental School, and so they borrow stuff all the time.

So she used Two Blue Lights.


Songs:Ohia, despite the odd spelling and the odd punctuation, are very good. You know this already, from the above YouTube video. Basically the same people as Magnolia Electric Co.
Like Neil Young, if we need a little shorthand to get you to listen to more. A little more 'sad bastard music' than Ol' Neil, but, you know, he wants you to cry sometimes too.