He Said captain, I Said Wot!

A bit of playful fluff today from Captain Sensible, a founding member of seminal brit punk rockers The Damned, who went on to redefine himself as an alt pop icon in the early 80's.

DOWNLOAD WOT BY CAPTAIN SENSIBLE

Happy Memorial Day! FI will be on Hiatus until Tuesday, May 27

The King of Singing Drummers

While we're talking about drummers and folks named Levon, we might as well go ahead and crown The Band's Levon Helm the King of Singing Drummers. Who else are you going to pick, Don Henley? Phil Collins? The dude from Night Ranger who sings Sister Christian?



The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

Who is Alvin Tostig?

You'd have to ask Bernie Taupin, who writes 100% of Elton John's Lyrics

I asked the interweb though, and consensus is that Alvin Tostig is Levon's father

and who is Levon?

# 1 on my list of songs I love that make no sense. Its from the 1971 album Madman Across the Water. Its been one of my favorite songs since I was a little kid, and though I love to imagine Little Jesus on the porch blowing up balloons and watching them fly I have no idea what this song is about and really don't care. The best I can guess is that its a multi-generational parable about breaking away from the expectations of your parents, with some messianic/end of the world stuff thrown in for good measure. Whatever the meaning,the song works on every level!

LEVON




PS. Nigel Olsson, with Elton since the early seventies, is one of my all time favorite drummers... because he understands the power of space and laying in just behind the beat. Check out his sweet, sweet drum kit in this clip.

David Berthy Guest Posts Today

Howard Tate’s falsetto is one of my favorite sounds in soul music. The best thing about it is, despite its power, Mr. Tate never overuses it. He saves it in reserve, and then, just when you think one of his tracks can’t get any better, he unleashes it with a kind of precisely controlled fury. Before you know what happened, the sound is gone and you’re wondering what you just heard and when you can hear it again. The more you listen, the more his songs are defined by these perfect moments. He’s just a great singer. I picked this song because it has a nice reggae mix. You hear a lot of reggae artists doing soul songs (The studio one soul record is a nice one, especially for summer) but you don’t hear soul artists doing a lot of reggae treatments, so this has a unique sound, I think.

Hold me Tight by Howard Tate

Along with Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, and Ian Dury, an artist named Wreckless Eric was on the Stiff Records Roster. I've heard his name before, but never his music. Then I was listening to Bob Dylan's radio show (the theme being around the world)and heard this song, which I proceeded to play over and over. It was WE's debut single and biggest hit, Whole Wide World. Enjoy Bob's intro!

DOWNLOAD WHOLE WIDE WORLD

I heard this late-era Pavement nugget in a bar the other night and was reminded of how much I love this band. From their last studio album, Terror Twilight, its Major Leagues.


DOWNLOAD MAJOR LEAGUES

While Christmas shopping with his songwriting partner Al Cleveland in 1966, Smokey heard his collegue mispronounce the phrase, "I second that motion"as "I second that emotion". The result was this velvet smooth number 1 hit. I can't stop listening to it.

DOWNLOAD I SECOND THAT EMOTION

Want to hear June Carter Cash whooping and hollering like a banshee? I thought so...

In 1973 Johnny and JCC put out Johnny Cash and His Woman, an album of duets. Though this single didn't perform well on the charts (#69), I'm totally charmed by it.

DOWNLOAD ALLEGHENY

The opening track from Psychedelic Rock pioneer Love's seminal 1967 album Forever Changes. I first heard this song when Jen brought in Calexico's version for Hayward to play. I dig the original version with the strings and trumpet solo...it all sounds like something off the Hair Soundtrack... if it had been a spaghetti western.


DOWNLOAD ALONE AGAIN OR

Who raps about republicrats, aids quilts, karma puke, Margaret Sanger, the Euphrates, & eskimos all in the first 58 seconds of a song? Why its snarky whiteboy rapper MC Paul Barman of course!

DOWNLOAD BLEEDING BRAIN GROWS

The kids down at the Fuller Park Music Program have chosen this R&B Jam for their next project

DOWNLOAD UMBRELLA

Producer Willie Mitchell and the Hi-Rythym section were responsible for that velvet smooth 70's Memphis soul sound that Al Green brought to the masses. Hi-Records had other artists too, of course, including Syl Johnson, and St. Louisan Ann Peebles, who recorded the original version of I Can't Stand The Rain in 1974, later covered by everyone from Eruption to Missy Elliot.

DOWNLOAD I CAN"T STAND THE RAIN

Hit me with your Rhythm Stick was a number one hit in the UK for Ian Dury and the Blockheads in 1978. Stricken with polio as a child, Dury came to prominence on the 5 Live Stiffs tour with his Stiff Records mates Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello and others. His Excellent 1977 album New Boots and Panties was released the year before, and is well worth seeking out.

DOWNLOAD HIT ME WITH YOUR RHYTHM STICK

Friday Music

Fans of Thin Lizzy Rejoice! Heres a barn burner to get your weekend started from Ted Leo and The Pharmacists. Dig the way the drums and bass kick in during the fourth verse.


Download Timorous Me

The Lemonheads were the Foo Fighters of the Indie Rock era. They released their Iconic Indie-Light LP Its a Shame About Ray back in 1992. We'll, its been 15 + years and ripe for re-issue, so the goood folks at Rhino Records have got it covered. To celebrate the occasion, The Lemonheads are out on tour, and swinging through Chicago to play the Abbey tonight. (SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION ALERT!) A terrific local singer-songwriter, David Singer, will be opening the show at 9:00 with his band (named for one night only The Mrs. Robinsons).

If you do come, dear listeners, you will have the distinguished pleasure of witnessing yours truly turn into 39 year old pumpkin at midnight!

Here's the album's title track.

DOWNLOAD ITS A SHAME ABOUT RAY

I Want to Ride My Bicycle

Happy Birthday Tony B!


DOWNLOAD BICYCLE RACE BY QUEEN

Into the Sunshine

New music today from Swedish chanteuse Sarah Assbring, who performs under the moniker El Perro Del Mar. The new album, from the Valley to the Stars, has a stronger spiritual essence and fuller arrangements than the debut, and makes for great Sunday morning music.

DOWNLOAD INTO THE SUNSHINE BY EL PERRO DEL MAR

Great Debuts-The Modern Lovers

Stumbling across Theres Something about Mary on cable this past weekend, I was reminded of how much I like Jonathan Richman, who plays the re-appearing acoustic troubador in the film. Today's track is from the 1976 debut album by Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers. The band, heavily influenced by the Velvet Underground, featured future Talking Heads member Jerry Harrison, and was fronted by Richman's Snot nosed adolescent voice, which would later be appropriated by Spoon's Brit Daniel and LCD Sound System's James Murphy.

The album's songs address dating awkwardness, growing up in Massachusetts, the love of life, and on today's track, Pablo Picasso.


DOWNLOAD PABLO PICASSO

Feel The Love

Heres a new one from Aussie Indie-dance outfit Cut/Copy, from the recently released LP
In Ghost Colors. I like the way it switches back and forth between shimmering jingle jangle and vocoder laden techno pop.

refreshingly upbeat and and highly recommended!

DOWNLOAD FEEL THE LOVE

Doctors

Lets give a big FI MAZEL TOV to my bandmate and friend Dr. Dan Abrams, who successfully defended his dissertation up at the NU last week, and sadly will soon be leaving us for the sunnier climbs of California, where he's locked down a job at Stanford. Our loss will be Cali Neuropsych's gain.

But don't cry yet, dear readers, for tonight you have a chance to see the man in action for Hayward's second to last gig with Dan before the move (and before the move back Chicago to rejoin the band, of course). So come on up to the Green Room Session at the Edgewater Uncommon Ground, 1401 W. Devon. Our pal Nick Markos will open the show at 9 with Hayward to Follow.

To commemorate the occasion, we have a guest post today sent in by Dan himself. Its from another Doctor, of New Orleans music, that is. The track is "Those Lonely Lonely Nights" from Dr. John's 1972 album Dr John's Gumbo, a tribute to the music of his native city (Dr. John, not Dr. Dan). "Its my all-time favorite New Orleans album", writes Dan, "after spending many years as the Night Tripper, bringing snakes onstage and playing strange voodoo music, Dr. John got serious here playing crescent city classics with an all-star band". "


DOWNLOAD THOSE LONELY LONELY NIGHTS

Sequel Songs-Ashes to Ashes

Having lost contact with Major Tom at the end of 1969's Space Oddity, there are new rumours afoot at Ground Control by 1980. Word is that a message has been received from Major Tom from deep space "I'm happy... I hope you're happy too", but most suspect that he is now a junkie "strung out in heavens high, hitting an all-time low".

A Space Oddity's parable of the journey of no return into rock stardom at the onset of the Seventies is brought full circle by Ashes to Ashes, which speaks of the isolation and slandered notoriety in the aftermath of living through total excess.

Bowie himself has said that with this song he was "wrapping up the seventies really for myself, and that seemed a good enough epitaph for it".

Its one of my favorite Bowie songs ever.

DOWNLOAD ASHES TO ASHES

Blue Days, Black Nights

Apologies for the late post today, but my phone and cable were out until the nice man came to tweak it all. So, to tie it all in, we'll go with Telephone Line from ELO today. It was released as a single in 1976 and I loved it as a 7 year old, as I do today. The computer bleep beginning, telephone voice effect, phone rings, overblown strings, were all intriguing to my young ears.

we used to giggle at the way he say "teleephone".

On top of all that though, its a pretty harrowing portrait of heartbreak and obsession



Download Telephone Line

Music today from The Breeders, off their long-awaited new album Mountain Battles.While I'm underwhelmed by the album overall (its no Last Splash), this track's been growing on me.

DOWNLOAD WALK IT OFF

Theme Time Radio Hour

I'm incredibly excited, Fingerhutters, because someone has gone and made seasons one and two of Bob Dylan's terrific old-timey Theme Time Radio Show available for download in its entirety...all the shows, all the songs, all the priceless Bob banter, all free. Zipped, archived, MP3 files, hundreds of them!

It makes me want to get in my car and drive across the country, sleeping days in roadside motels, just so I can listen to these shows on the road in the middle of the night.

You can get them here

I've always love Pop Staples sweet voice and velvet guitar sound and so does Bob!
Todays download is from his "weather"show (each show revolves around a theme).

DOWNLOAD UNCLOUDY DAY BY STAPLE SINGERS

The next Ukulele Cabaret will be upon us in just over three weeks time, dear Fingerhutters, so if you you haven't bought your uke yet, quit stalling, cough up the 30 bucks, and head over to the Old Town School to pick one up. The theme this time around is water, in all its forms, so dive in and give us a ditty or two. Learning to play couldn't be easier, everything you need to know is here:

http://www.alligatorboogaloo.com/uke/tabs.html

and here too:

http://www.ukulele.nl/

of course, if you're chicken, you can just come to watch and enjoy the music!

A very special prize will go to whomever can play and sing today's song in its entirety at the uke cabaret!


DOWNLOAD EPIC NAUTICAL ADVENTURE ROCK NUGGET (NOT COME SAIL AWAY EITHER)

VDEO BONUS!!! Bon Iver

Thanks to Tony B. for sending this in. Its from the from the late show at The Lakeshore Theatre here in Chicago last week. I was at the early show and it was fantastic.

Rare Soul Grab Bag

David Berthy Guest Posts Today

I don’t know much about the Guerillas, and couldn’t find much out, but this track is a beautiful thing. It’s one of those really versatile songs that manages to be propulsive and restrained at the same time. I’m pretty sure I remember reading that the Guerillas were from the French Congo when I tried to buy this 45 on ebay, and that makes sense, but I’m not entirely sure. Anyway, this was one of my favorites from last summer, and I pick it here as a kind of prayer to seal the end of winter.

DOWNLOAD LAWDY ROLLER

Tax Day

Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler) By Marvin Gaye

I Fought The War but The War Won

Emily Haines' debut album Knives Don't Have Your Back was one of my favorite rainy day albums of last year. As I'm also a fan of her other band Broken Social Scene Fan, I thought I'd check out her other other band, Metric, and came across this terrific track.

Monster Hospital is the first single from Metric's 2005 album Live it Out. In contrast to the piano based melancholia of Haines solo work, this one is a straight out rocker, with the kind of sound, energy, and angular guitar lines I'd hoped to hear from the Breeders on their latest
(No Dice There).

The refrain "I fought the War but the War Won, Stop for the Love of God!" is one of the great chorus hooks in recent memory.


DOWNLOAD MONSTER HOSPITAL

While we're mixing musicians with muppets, here's one I remember seeing when I was very young-Stevie Wonder playing Superstition on Sesame Street. Its astoundingly good.

Izzy Dilleski, Worlds Greatest Violinist

ooh-pa-pa dah!

I love Dizzy Gillespie...for his inventiveness, dexterity, utter hipness, warmth, incredible sense of humor, and iconic bent horn. My earliest memory of him was when he and his incredible bullfrog cheeks appeared on the Muppet Show. And my last was the priviledge I had of seeing him play once in a tiny new York Jazz club a year or so before he died. The feeling of love in the room was palpable.

In addition to being co-inventor of bebob and one of modern jazz'top trumpeters, he could scat like nobody's business, as on today's track.

DOWNLOAD OOH PA PA DAH

Quiero La Noche

H. and I recently held a Woody Allen movie marathon and she was really struck by the opening credit music to Bananas, his 1971 slapstick comedy about Fielding Mellish, a blue collar intellectual played by Allen, who unwittingly finds himself taking over a Latin American country in a Coup.

We searched far and wide for a copy of the song, but could only find it on Youtube. It was written by Marvin Hamlisch, one of only two people in history (the other being Richard Rodgers) to have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, a Tony and the Pulitzer Prize.



PS. Fielding Mellish is one of the greatest character names ever. If you're starting a bluegrass/oldtimey or Indie Rock band, it would be a great name

Open My Eyes

Here's an obscure nugget from the classic rock pantheon.
Its Nazz, featuring a young Todd Rundgren, from their self-titled 1968 debut LP. Rundgren would later go on to become a successful solo artist and producer. The song Hello its me, the unsuccessful first single from this album, would become a hit later
as re-recorded by Rundgren.

DOWNLOAD OPEN MY EYES

Typewriter Tip Tip

I recently picked up the soundtrack to Wes Anderson's latest film The Darjeeling Express. Always terrific, WA soundtracks mine and compile the more obscure nuggets from the classic rock pantheon,along with original compositions from former Devo frontmant Mark Mothersbaugh (abesnt here for the first time) .

While I love the Kinks as much as the next guy, its the music composed by Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray and other artists from Indian cinema that make this a must-have collection.

Download Typewritwr, Tip Tip Tip

Freaky Friday

I played this song at my desk at work at least 15 times back to back this past Wednesday. Put it on in your car on your way home from work this evening and do some righteous headbanging at the wheel...start your weekend right. Its an early Indie rock Nugget from Dinasour Jr, Freak Scene, from their 1988 album Bug.

DOWNLOAD FREAK SCENE BY DINASOUR JR

Great music today from Psychedelic Popsters The Apples in Stereo. I've listened to three tracks from this album, Electronic Projects for Musicians, and it sounds like their best effort since the year 2000, which figures, since it a compilation of B-0sides and oddities from years past. AIS frontman Robert Schneider was the leader of the Elephant Six Collective, A pyschedelic pop movement in the mid-90's that also included Neutral Milk Hotel and Olivia Tremor Control among others.

I'll never forget seeing these guys live at the Empty Bottle in the late nineties. Drummer Hilary was about 7 months pregnant and the audience watched her eat an entire Hoagie in about 15 seconds between two songs.

Interested parties should pick up 1997's Tone Soul Evolution, a shimmering, hook laden
masterpiece from start to finish.

You Can buy it here

DOWNLOAD GOLDEN FLOWER

Like A River

New music by Neil Young disciple Sun Kil Moon, from the album April, released, oddly enough, yesterday, on April 1. SKM is Sunday Morning/Woodshop music at its finest, and on this one we get Will Oldham on backing vocals to boot. Upon first listen, its a return to form after the radical misfire of Ghosts of the Highway, an album of Modest Mouse covers released a couple years back.

DOWNLOAD LIKE A RIVER

Me Want Berries From Bushes

Does this gray post-winter have you feeling down? Maybe this track will put a smile on your face...but beware, it may instead drive you further into the cave. Yes, its the Louisville joke rockers King Kong, The B-52's of Indie Rock, with the lead track from their 1995 rock opera Me Hungry. Its the story of a caveman who falls in love with a yak. Enjoy!

Download Animal

Fans of 70's Power poppers like Cheap Trick and Boston should dig Sloan, a band of Nova Scotian boys who hit the Indie airwaves in the lower 48 back in the Nineties, but never made it big here like they did at home. Today's track is from their 1999 album Between the Bridges.

Losing California

David Berthy Guest Posts

When I was getting ready to DJ a little bit ago, I asked my friend David Baum in LA if he had any suggestions and he sent me this song. Being so bereft of musical talent that I once had a guitar teacher refuse to take my mother’s money anymore (hope ripping off Weather Report finally worked out for you Les, you killer of boyish dreams), I get over my skies fast talking about song structure, but I’ll try anyway. What I love here are the presence of churning rock guitars in a soul song, almost like a Bo Diddly thing, and the way the riff ramps up at the end for a great climax.
Thank You For Loving Me, Soul Soul Brothers Six

Like A Speeding Pantera

I'll be out of town until Monday, so we'll have a couple of Guest Posts from FI Rare Soul Afficianado David Berthy

This song, off James Murphy’s (LCD Soundsystem) Fabric 36 record, was an instant favorite. I don’t know anything about Jackson Jones or the genesis of this song, which is fine, because I prefer to make that kind of information up: It’s Hollywood,1980 and Jackson wakes up at 7 at night, still wearing his sunglasses because he got so loaded at the David & David release party. He lights a menthol and looks next to him, where he’s confronted with the presence of a woman he has no recollection of meeting. Look at that fox, he thinks. Inspiration hits him like a speeding Pantera. He grabs a pen and writes, “If I were a carpenter, I would nail all over you…” and the rest just writes itself.

I Love Music, Jackson Jones

In Color

For Heather, whose birthday is tomorrow... a song she loves, from a band she loves, who come from her neck of the woods.

DOWNLOAD SO GOOD TO SEE YOU

Daisy Age

We'll continue with that Spring feeling with a track from the First De La Soul album, 1989's Three Feet High and Rising. The album is a masterpiece collage of songs, skits, and pop samples (Steely Dan, Hall & Oates, Schoolhouse Rock)
The lighthearted vibe and flowery vernacular led to the group being dubbed Hippie Rap by the community at large along with fellow Native Tongue Posse acts Jungle Brothers and A Tribe Called Quest. To debunk the idea, De La Soul called their second record De La Soul Is Dead, and showed three dead flowers on the cover, one for each member, representing the end of the short lived "Daisy Age".




DOWNLOAD SAY NO GO

Spring is here technically, which means its a great time to start getting the XTC records out. I'm eschewing the more traditional early faves for this ode to Spring, a gem off of of 1999's Apple Venus, over 7 years in the making.


DOWNLOAD EASTER THEATRE

Today's track is the 1981 international club hit from Tom Tom Club, side project of Talking Heads rhythm section Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison.


DOWNLOAD GENIUS OF LOVE

Rare Souls Goes Pop

The Violinaires

In the soul, gospel, and jazz music worlds, its very common for artists to do renditions of rock and pop hits of the time, sometimes with disastrous results (ie-Aretha Franklin's version of the Doobie Bothers' What a Fool Believes). On rare occasions though, the hit is rendered in such a way that you get a whole new essence out of it in its new context. Such is the case with these two tracks. First, Its The gospel outfit The Violinaires with a soulful rendering of The Rolling Stones' "Salt of The Earth", originally appearing on their 1972 sprawling ode to American music, Exile on Main Street.

DOWNLOAD SALT OF THE EARTH


The second track is Bahamian Calypso outfit Ronnie and the Ramblers' version of Harry Nillson's hit "Everybody's Talking", mistitled by the band as "Midnight Cowboy" (It was on that movie's soundtrack"

DOWNLOAD MIDNIGHT COWBOY

I found both of these tracks on the terrific Joe Devivre site, a great resource for rare and free soul downloads. From what I gather, whoever runs this site is a clerk at Jazz Record Mart or some other vinyl boutique, and is transferring rare vinyl to digital and posting it.

Click here to check out the site

Belated St. Paddy's

Thanks to Quickdraw for sending this in to FI...the greatest version ever!

The Drummer Takes a Fall

MADRID - A former drummer for 1970s Swedish pop group ABBA, Ola Brunkert, has been found dead after an apparent accident in his house in Mallorca, Spanish police said on Monday.Brunkert bled to death from a throat wound which police suspect was caused after he accidentally smashed a pane of glass, a spokeswoman for the Civil Guard police said, adding that authorities were awaiting the result of an autopsy.
The official Web site of the band said Brunkert was possibly the only instrumental musician to appear on all the albums released by the band. Abba's two male and two female vocalists were among the world's best-known faces in the 1970s with hits including "Waterloo" and "Dancing Queen."

Ola Brunkert


DOWNLOAD WATERLOO

While manning the wheels of steel at Rodan this past Friday night, David Berthy
broke out this funk workout from Prince. The chorus hook stayed in my head all weekend. Its the title track from Prince's 4th album, released in 1981, just one year before 1999 would catapult him into international stardom. I believe that the album was written, produced, arranged, and performed in its entirety by his purple majesty.

DOWNLOAD CONTROVERSY

Ballad of a Tin Man

The Magnetic Fields, a band led by ukulele wielding New York City singer-songwriter Stephin Merritt, will be in town this weekend to play six (!)sold out shows at The Old Town School of Folk Music. The triple 1999 disc 69 Love Songs is widely considered to be their best work, and features, well, 69 love songs. One of my favorites, I think I need a New Heart, is deceptively sweet and jaunty on the surface, and downright brutal underneath, much like REM's "The One I Love".

DOWNLOAD I THINK I NEED A NEW HEART