Ralph Font : Cosita Linda

"Ay, Cosita Linda" (which I think means "Hey, pretty little thing") was written by Pacho Galan, a Columbian composer, and was made somewhat popular by a recording of the song by Nat "King" Cole on 1959's A Mis Amigos LP. I can't tell for sure, but I think this recording came out before that, most likely in the early fifties.

Ralph Font was a New York jazzster put out a couple of latin-themed albums. The music on his album Tabu is relatively generic small-combo latin jazz, and there are (literally) a thousand records that sound just like this one. But it's a peppy little record and fun listening, chock full of latin standards, like "Bésame Mucho", "The Peanut Vendor" and "Tabu", with "Cosita Linda" being my favorite.

Font kicks off his take with a nifty little piano run, into a snare hit, and then the vocals. Now the vocals (in what seems to be a running theme here) are what makes the song for me. The combo is solid. It's a fine latin-tinged cocktail-jazz workout, led by the piano and backed by a plethora of percussion instruments. There's some good horn work and a nifty trumpet solo, but what truly puts it over the top are the vocals. Every time the singers pipe in with a line, everything else stops and drops out. The vocals themselves are relatively quiet next to the bustle of the rest of the tune and they're sung in an oddly low-register falsetto. They're almost... cute. As if some shy hispanic guy just tapped a pretty lady on the shoulder and is politely asking her to dance.

As I mentioned before, this fun little ditty can be found on Font's album Tabu. If you see it in a thrift store (it's not on CD), it's definitely worth a buck. You'll at least have something fab to drop the needle on the next time you're making margaritas. And as for the cover art, well, we'll just say it's clearly the product of a bygone era, and leave it at that.

[You can listen to Ralph Font's "Cosita Linda" by navigating to the post "Song010" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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Sir Julian : Caravan

Man, I love "Caravan". It's quite possibly my favorite tune ever, with the possible exception of "Brazil". You can't go wrong with a version of "Caravan". And the organ. I love the home entertainment organ. Maybe it's because my gram had one for a while, and she knew how to play it. That and it reminds me of trips we used to take to the shopping mall, on 9th and 77th, with it's 50's green and white marble-pebble facade... what do they call that stuff? You know what I'm talking about, it's in old elementary schools and post offices everywhere... Anyway...

Along with Lenny Dee, who is probably the undisputed master of the home entertainment organ, and Glenn Derringer, who no-one has heard of, but who's another of my favorites, Sir Julian could seriously rock the organ, while never leaving that safe haven of easy listening.


This is quite possibly the definitive "Caravan" for me, even more so than any version by the Duke himself. It starts with a low groove with a swinging bass line, shuffle drums and the organ dropping the main theme and punching its own accompaniment. The organ has that gorgeous fat round analog sound you just can't get from a chip. The tune slinks along for a bit, and then, around the two-minute mark, BANG! Sir Julian lets loose with a high-energy full-bore attack on the keys that makes you go weak in the knees; an organ-asm if you will.

To be fair, Sir Julian uses this trick on about a third of the tunes on the album, but it's still a suave move, and the tune seriously rocks.

"Caravan" can be found on The 13 Fingers of Sir Julian which isn't in print. It's also on RCA's History of Space Age Pop, vol. 1: Melodies and Mischief, which also isn't in print, but can be found. The History of Space Age Pop series from RCA is a fantastic compilation, and should be on any discerning music lover's shelf.

[You can listen to Sir Julian's "Caravan" by navigating to the post "Song009" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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Jimmy Smith : I'm Gonna Love You Just a Little More Babe

"Well, I got ...
More bounce to the fuckin' bump
And if you want to know why,
It's 'cause I'm motherfuckin' truckin' ..."

I gotta admit, what first excited me about this tune was the opening bars which are sampled pretty plainly by the Beastie Boys on "Professor Booty" from their Check Your Head album. Very few things get me more excited (musically) than catching a sample reference I've never heard before, even one so gratuitous. After that second tom fill, my brain immediately jumps to the Beastie's ingenious lyrics.

From there though, the song opens up into those gorgeous ringing female vocals. With only a hint of lyrics around the the chorus, they carry that sparkly 70's vibe that makes you feel like you've just been swept aboard the Mothership on its way to Studio 54 for some seriously laid back funking. You can just imagine the afro-sporting, rhinestone-jumpsuit-clad backup singers "oooh-ing" and "ahhh-ing" their way through the sessions with the sweeping hand gestures and slow camera pans.

You know what else those vocals remind me of? That Eastern Airlines ride at Disney World back in the 70's, where they showed movies of folks singing and celebrating all around the world over a super-groovy soundtrack. There's something about some of the music from that era that for some reason really brings me back to that ride, ostensibly one of the more boring rides for kids, but I just lo-o-o-oved it. Now we know why.

The track itself is a relaxed, sexy groove, and who would expect anything less from a Barry White cover? The song really belongs to the vocals and the rhythm section, who lay down a nice sustained rolling funk shuffle throughout. Jimmy Smith jazzes around the organ pretty well, though he's buried down in the mix a bit, so you have to really listen carefully to catch his far-out solos.

This tune was featured as a rip from a 45 back in November 2009 at the always great Funky16corners blog, in case you missed it. It's also available on Jimmy Smith's 1974 LP, Black Smith.

[You can listen to Jimmy Smith's "I'm Gonna Love You Just a Little More Babe" by navigating to the post "Song008" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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The Mae Shi - Summer in Gommorah

Who the hell are the Mae Shi? I've barely heard of them, but I love 'em. They do really noisy pop-inflected rock. But really, really noisy. And broken.

I'm a sucker for deconstructed pop-rock. That is, you take a normal pop/rock structure, you know, bands and a songs with verses and choruses and hooks and melodies, and you break it up and break it down. You do whatever you want inside that structure, as long as it's still recognizable as a pop/rock structure. Mainly, that you're a band and the piece is a "song" and has a hook. For some reason, I really dig that. So bands like the Mae Shi and U.S. Maple and some of John Zorn's side projects really appeal to me.

This song is a straight ahead rocker, not too far from something a late 60's garage band might have produced, but it's chock full of overdriven guitar, electronic noises, whoops and hollers, and just basically the noise of people rocking out and having a great time. Some of Mae Shi's stuff is far more experimental, but I went with something more straightforward cuz I didn't want to scare y'all.

This tune, "Summer in Gommorah" is off an EP of theirs called To Hit Armor Class Zero. (Yes, I believe that's a D&D reference.) The only thing I don't like about this EP is that the 5th song is a 50-minute-long noise goof-off. Sometimes I like that sort of thing, if it's done well, but this one is pretty boring. The first four songs are great though and their other LPs are all damn good too, with Hillyh and Heartbeeps topping the list.

(No post yesterday, because I was out sick. Soon, I hope to have some back-ups posts to cover spots like that, but I don't have enough yet that I feel comfortable posting them out.)

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Propellerheads : History Repeating (ft. Shirley Bassey)

For some reason, the Propellerheads only put out one album, but it's a great one. Arriving on the scene in the middle of the 90's lounge resurgence and around the same time as Austin Powers, the album is acid-jazz-soaked electronica, chock full of bass and horn-driven funk riffs with a twist of 60's spy themes. In all, it's a potent cocktail that should get your bootie shaking regardless of what sort of mood you're in.

Highlighting the set is "History Repeating", which features the astoundingly dynamic vocal talents of Shirley Bassey. You might remember her from such incredible numbers like "Goldfinger", "Moonraker" and the almighty "Diamonds Are Forever". The old dame still has it, and she belts the tune like it's the theme to a long lost Sean Connery-era James Bond flick. The song has it all, a shag-worthy rhythm section, a funky organ groove, a killer horn line, and of course Shirley's sterling vocals. Gotta love it.

If you're interested, and you should be, you can find "History Repeating" on the awkwardly titled Decksandrumsandrockandroll. (When I wrote this, Amazon had it for 2 bucks, plus shipping and handling. Delivered to your door for five bucks? Sold!)

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Follow-Up: Vampire Weekend

Sigh. All that talk about Vampire Weekend bashing and I totally forgot to talk about the music. So here's a paragraph that belongs somewhere in the middle of that article.

The nice thing about Vampire Weekend is that they have a great pop sense and sound a little like a South African version of Lincoln-era They Might Be Giants. By South African, I mean there's definitely a Bert Kaempfert bouncy feel to the music. Listen to "Holiday for Bells" or "Swingin' Safari" to get an idea of what I mean. It also rings a little of Paul Simon's Graceland, which is quite possibly my favorite album of all time. So it's no wonder I like Vampire Weekend. Check it out.

Bongwater : Nick Cave Dolls

"They call them Bongwater, that's the name of it? I never heard of that, I never heard of a band with that name."

Ahhhh, Bongwater. The artsy duo consisted of performance artist Ann Magnuson and weird-record-impresario Kramer, who founded Shimmy-Disc records which hosted such classic acts as Ruins, King Missile, Boredoms, Daniel Johnston, Naked City and the astoundingly-named When People Were Shorter and Lived Near the Water. He was King of the Weird in the '90s and produced some of the most mind-bending music around.

Bongwater is notorious for full-on kaleidoscopic freak-show psychedelia, and this is a prime example. The piece starts out with a pastiche of found samples, including a stuttering pontification on Bongwater as a band name and someone abusing a telephone. After a minute and a half of psychotropic randomness, the actual song kicks in. The tune itself is a journey through classic psychedelic territory, with hazy guitars and a martial snare pattern laying down the backdrop for Ann's spoken word performance. Somehow she manages to be both sexy and bizarre, tripping her way through double entendres and references to funnel clouds, chocolate cake, lingerie pose-a-thons, balding actors, Dorothy Stratten, and of course, Nick Cave dolls. I want one.

This tune is a little on the adult-oriented side, with some salty language and vaguely risque situations. I mean, the album is called The Power of Pussy.

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I Missed a Day

Rats.

Linda Draper : Mother's Little Helper

I said at the beginning, "The music should just be really good, or at least interesting." This one falls into the latter category. Don't get me wrong. It is good. I enjoy it, and I wouldn't put anything up here that I didn't like. But posting this song is more about giving you something different than giving you something great. I don't think this song rings with the same universal appeal that the previous posts might have had, so if you don't like it, I won't think any less of you. But you should still hear it, because it's cool.

I couldn't find much about Linda Draper. She's apparently a folk/indie singer, which means she's probably a singer-songwriter who either wants to be Tori Amos or Norah Jones. I haven't heard anything else she's done, as is the case with many of the covers I've heard, but I'm sure she's wonderful if you like that sort of thing.

Here though she provides a stripped-down take on the Rolling Stones' Mother's Little Helper. Draper lilts her way through the song with nothing but a little bit of double-tracking and a tambourine. Where the original rocks, this version sort of ... floats. The weird thing is, it doesn't really sound full enough to have originally been imagined as an a cappella recording. Even most solo vocals have a sort of weight that seems to be missing here. It's almost as if they instead took a song that originally had all the parts, bass, drums, guitar and whatnot, and stripped them out, leaving only the backing percussion and the voice. Or maybe it's just a matter of some weird equalization. Either way, the result is a flat, dark, empty take on the song, which resounds with the subject matter quite nicely and makes for a vaguely unsettling experience, like driving down your neighborhood street in a light snow at three in the morning: familiar, yet eerie.

Mother's Little Helper can be found on Linda's 2009 album Bridge and Tunnel.

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Vampire Weekend : Campus

Yeah, I'm gonna kick this thing off with Vampire Weekend. "Vampire Weekend?!" I hear you say, assuming you are a follower of the indie scene and read Blender or AP or Pitchfork or whatever else the hip kids are reading these days to get their musical views. "They totally suck, because they're, like, indie wannabes and posers and everybody who likes cool music hates them."

Or, maybe you have no idea who they are and actually what I heard you say was, "What?"

Vampire Weekend has this weird cachet as the indie band that everyone loves to hate. See, if you like "indie" music, then you're not allowed to like this band. I'm not sure why. I think because they are from well-off New England families. Or maybe it's because your mom and little sister can stand them. Or maybe it's because you should hate everything that even remotely smacks of potentially being related to Twilight. Or maybe it's because they were in an Apple commercial... No wait, not an Apple commercial, but a Verizon commercial mocking iPhones... even worse.

But the problem with this whole "sell-out" line of thinking is that it completely ignores the music. How can you say a band sucks just because they were used in the credits for Step Brothers? How does that change the quality of the music? I mean, if they were good before, then they end up on the cover of Rolling Stone, how can they suddenly be bad?

That's stupid. Almost as stupid as the whole concept of "Indie" music. I mean, if it's coming out on a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary of Sony Megacorp, it's still not really 'independent' is it?

Regardless, the entire album is excellent, and finding a single representative song is an impossible task. I picked "Campus" because it's a great song, it sounds like them, and it's in the middle of the album. So if you've heard them, you've probably heard "Mansard Roof" and "Oxford Comma" and "A-Punk" and "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa". If not, go buy the album, or maybe borrow it from your indie-music-loving friend who has a copy, whether or not they claim to despise the band, because frankly, it's just a great album.

"Campus" can be found on their first, eponymous album. They've got another album coming out in a week too. How serendipitous! (No, really, it was. I only learned about it today!)

* For the record, I prefer the oxford comma in lists of phrases (see above), but I dislike it in simple lists. Just so you know where I stand.

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