Going To A Happening

If you are an enthusiast of soul and/or R&B, or perhaps just want to start popping your fingers to a new groove, I have a treat for you! Although my collection - like my knowledge - is not very extensive, I tried my best to compile this mixed bag of soulful goods. Most of this is on the side of northern soul and focused on music mainly from the mid-sixties, but let me assure you: it's called Let's Dance! for a reason.

Visit this link to download the whole thing or pick and choose however you like: Let's Dance!

THE (LONG) TRACKLIST:
1. Gino Parks - The Same Thing
2. The Dynamics - Misery
3. Julian Covey & The Machine - A Little Bit Hurt
4. Wilson Pickett - Mini Skirt Minnie
5. The Sharonettes - Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow
6. Big Mama Thornton - Wade In The Water
7. The Originals - Suspicion
8. The Young Rascals - Good Lovin'
9. Richard Berry - Have Love, Will Travel
10. The Mirettes - He's Alright With Me
11. Little Milton - Grits Ain't Groceries
12. Hannibal - My Kinda Girl
13. Eddie Floyd - Big Bird
14. Guitar Red - Just You And I
15. Mickey Lee Lane - Hey Sah-Lo-Ney
16. Chuck Wood - Seven Days Too Long
17. Jackie Edwards - I Feel So Bad
18. The Velvelettes - Lonely Lonely Girl Am I
19. Barbara McNair - You're Gonna Love My Baby
20. The Rebel Rousers - As I Look
21. Lillian Dupree - Hide And Seek
22. Little Caesar & The Empire - Everybody Dance Now
23. Fred Hughes - Don't Let This Happen To Us
24. Little Willie John - Leave My Kitten Alone
25. Rufus Thomas - Memphis Train
26. The Capitols - Cool Jerk
27. Tommy Neal - Going To A Happening

First he was dead and then he was... alive.

So, it has been many months since I have updated this. A large portion of that is due to the lack of regular internet access, and a lack of time to properly type something up for We Are Murderers. Until today.

I tip-toed around the internet in search of a few songs to listen to on MySpace, when I noticed a band I didn't remember adding (what a common occurrence) post a bulletin - it was a group formerly known as Sex Pests, now incarnated as O, CHILDREN. On a half-whim I added them late last year when they only had one raw track up and their identities were still a mystery; to my surprise, they've developed a lot in that time.

With songs like "Ace Breasts" and "Perfect 10", you get the wrong first impression - or perhaps just the right one. Lyrics about finding dream girls and opening up an "ace breast store" are eerily boomed in harsh vocals over snappy synths and drums that pulse like a dolourous heartbeat. If there is any fun and flirtation in their demos, it feels as if it is only at the surface.


O, CHILDREN

The Future Is A Dream

I wonder if there's a word that can accurately describe certain dreamers. They do more than rest their heads at night and let their minds bloom into a boiled pot of past sights and sounds and new automatic cloud thoughts. They make it their life and work. They draw, paint, film, play, sing, and write the electricity that bursts inside them. People like André Masson, Michel Gondry, Sandra Cisneros, Jean Cocteau. They should be celebrated, instead of living as a short blip of notice from time to time and dying quietly as the black marks of language in our books. For they are like the aerials of a radio or a television, fine-tuned on fancy and fantasy.

Pipilotti Rist is also one of those people.

Death Party

I was perusing the Yeborobo MySpace earlier and noticed something I hadn't seen before: a flier. I was so delighted I took it up in mine little hands and decided to paint the town bloody with it!

THE VIOLETS, EIOH, AND YEBOROBO?! 'TIS A DREAM. IF YOU ARE IN LONDON, DO NOT MAKE PLANS. INSTEAD, WALK THY LEGGR HERE.

Also, a few songs I had uploaded for someone and - if you don't have them - they don't deserve to go to waste:

-Wimple Winch - Save My Soul
-Broadcast - Tears In The Typing Pool
-The Sugarcubes - Blue-Eyed Pop
-Konki Duet - Il Fait Tout Gris
-The Magic Mixture - (I'm So) Sad

KAP BAMBINO!

You know when you hear or read about a band, casually, by chance, skimming through a blog or eavesdropping on the scene kids in line behind you, and you totally disregard it? And then later, when you finally "rediscover" the music attached to the name, the songs plow right through your chest and brain like a rusty chainsaw? Maybe not, but that's exactly what happened to me last week when I listened to Kap Bambino. A few weeks ago I had read an article on the French two-piece, or rather the banshee vocalist Khima France (AKA Caroline Martial), found it interesting, and then completely forgot about them. I don't know what triggered it but somehow I stumbled across their page in the MySpace sea and I haven't looked back since. This is the kind of raw, trashy-as-fuck electro I dream of. Can you really blame me for being batshit crazy about this group?

Kap Bambino - Zero Life

Kap Bambino - Neutral

Doctor! Doctor!

It is a bug; it is a "thing" going around. Or perhaps because school is back in session all the children are spreading filth and disease amongst each other again. Either way, a lot of people I know are being struck down with colds, flus, coughs, sniffles and all those other disgusting ailments. One day, it made me wonder: how many songs are there about being ill? Then I realised that a lot of those songs weren't very good in the first place, whether they were talking about a metaphorical or literal sickness. In fact, a lot of them were downright boring, unless they were singing about having the "blues" for various reasons (but is that really legitimate?). So I decided to think of all the good songs that were reminiscent of being ill, or about doctors, hospitals, going through withdrawal, etc.

Here are a few in a nice eclectic package.

- Pink Floyd - Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk
- Jefferson Handkerchief - I'm Allergic To Flowers
- The Waterproof Candle - Electrically Heated Child
- X - Nausea
- Dr. T - Undertaker's Theme
- The Chants R&B - I'm Your Witchdoctor
- Wire - Sand In My Joints
- Killer Pussy - Teenage Enema Nurses In Bondage
- Ritual - Mind Disease
- Ultravox - Artificial Life
- Free Kitten - Smack
- 23 Skidoo - Mary's Operation
- Vitalic - No Fun
- This Heat - Sleep

Be kind and don't sneeze all over your hands.

A Cathedral Of Erotic Misery

I am an addict of Constructivism, Dadaism, avant garde, Surrealism and sound poetry, all of which are related somehow, although not directly. I am a creature of dizzy cycles and nothing is certain of when it comes around only vaguely knowledgeable of what will come around. At least once a year I have what I will now refer to as my Dada season. When I was younger I discovered Dada. Then sound poetry. Then I fell in love with Kurt Schwitters, simply because the first words he greeted me with were "My name is Kurt Schwitters... I am a painter and I nail my pictures together." He was not strictly a dadaist. In simple terms, Dada is misery - Merz, his own works of art, pieces built up of found objects - is happiness. He had no interest in politics; he was a one-man movement. Merz is Schwitters and Schwitters is Merz.

At this moment I can't find a recording of An Anna Blume to share but I can direct you to Ursonate, a well-known early example of sound poetry: Kurt Schwitters - Ursonate (save target/link as, which goes for the rest of the links on this page). UbuWeb Sound is a huge collection of sound art recordings in which I visit regularly and for which I am thankful exists or else I could not share some of these tracks.

Bob Cobbing - Portrait of Robin Crozier

Bob Cobbing was the first explorer of sound poetry in England and a long-time experimenter in visual and performance poetry. His works in the visual, sonic and performance medias are extensive, widely varied and difficult to classify.

Tristan Tzara - L'amiral Cherche Une Maison à Louer

L'amiral Cherche Une Maison à Louer is one of the best known examples of Dada tonal poetry, in which several voices speak, sing, whistle, and so forth simultaneously in such a way that the resulting combinations account for the total effect of the work. The simultaneous poem demonstrates the value of the human voice and is a powerful illustration of the fact that an organic work of art has a will of its own.

Henri Chopin - Sol Air

Henri Chopin is something like the father of sound poetry to me, not in the traditional sense of a person "being there first" (he wasn't, becoming active in his own experiments in the 50s) but because he is an explorer of sound and mapped it extensively. Initially armed with just his voice and tape recorders, he went far beyond spoken word. His work is not of any language or Word. It's diving head first into our breath and soul and exploring the true and pure focus: our own voice, with no reliance on language.