Dude, It's Friday. Cover For Me.

I drove into a burning ring of fire. I went down down down and the flame went higher. IT BURNS! BURNS! BURNS!, THE RING OF FI-YAH!!! WHOOO!!!

Tom Jones - Ring of Fire

Ray Charles - Ring of Fire

This Kid Named Miles - Ring of Fire


It’s “Cover For Me” Friday and today I dust off my “Covers” series that used to be oh-so-popular on Koopa’s Hideaway. I would’ve brought this series back sooner, but I was worried about damaging my blogular integrity by conceding to popular demand and revisiting this series. I felt kinda like how the Hanson brothers must feel when they get pressured to sing “MmmBop!” at every show. I had to wait until my audience at large had forgotten about my seminal, groundbreaking covers series, and THEN bring it back blow your mind all over again.

Tom Jones’ reworking of the Johnny Cash classic, “Ring of Fire”, is a 60’s go-go/mod version that would earn a hearty “Yeah, baby” from Austin Powers. I’m willing to bet every time Tom played this song in concert that he got showered with even more women’s panties than usual. Truth be told, it’s a kickass version and you’ll wonder why you ever thought Tom Jones was lame. Next, I’ve got Ray Charles doing a sexy, soul-filled rendition. It’s a rollicking romp and the bass line just bumps along as Mr. Charles bares his soul and reminds you that he’s been through that doggone burnin ring of fire and came out the other side with the scars to prove it. Then, to close out my Ring of Fire trifecta, I’ve got an old school reggae and r&b version (think Jackie Mittoo) by This Kid Named Miles, leader of the Breakestra collective. This song came on a new-ish 7” vinyl single with “Funky Reggae” on the b side, by a mysterious fellow who goes by the moniker Bumps Jackson (I'm pretty sure this is actually alias-happy hip hop producer Madlib, since his name is really Otis Jackson). And, there’s your obscure vinyl reference for the week. Have a great weekend hideawayheads, I’m going back to the country to enjoy a weekend of bonfires, parties, and country cruises.

So You Wanna Be a Mixologist

You think this looks easy, huh? Well...it's not. OK? As you can see, I'm kinda busy right now or else I'd explain it to you. Just...take my word for it, alright...You think it's just throwing a bunch of stuff together and "mixing it up", don't you? I can tell. Well, if that's all there was to it, I'd be out of a job now wouldn't I? Maybe when you grow to appreciate it, I'll try and tell you what it is I do and all the processes I have go through. Until then, quit bothering me and let me get back to work...geez.

So, I’m still making mix cds for my hard-time-having buddy. I made this one on Saturday afternoon/late-night. It’s almost exclusively from my vinyl collection, except for three of the nineteen tracks. I started with the idea of “country-politan” music, but with a sometimes-funky, sometimes-melancholy twist. Then, I broke one of the cardinal rules of mix-making by including two songs by the same artist back-to-back. Nobody’s going to give me any awards for a super obscure mix, but that crap only matters to record collecting geeks like me. Since this mix isn’t for me or another record collecting geek, who cares? Most people probably don’t think about stuff like this when listening to a cd, but I’ve read (and seen) “High Fidelity”, and I know that there are lots of rules. Check out my rule-breakin, straight off the wax mix below. I'll add links to various songs as time allows.


1.Kris Kristofferson – Sunday Morning Comin Down (down & out country, the best kind...)
2.Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra – Some Velvet Morning
3.BB King – Chains and Things
4.My Morning Jacket – How Could I Know? (b-side of ‘Off the Record’, literally)
5.Paul Simon – Slip Sliding Away
6.Dr. John – Walk On Guilded Splinters
7.The Band of Bees – Punchbag
8.James Taylor – Mud Slide Slim
9.Curtis Mayfield – Stone Junkie (live from ’72 Newport Jazzfest)
10.Curtis Mayfield – Pusherman (live from ’72 Newport Jazzfest)
11.Bobby Womack – Harry Hippie
12.Bobby Womack – Nobody Wants You When You’re Down and Out
13.Johnny Cash – Wanted Man (live from San Quentin prison)
14.Bob Dylan w/ The Band – When I Paint My Masterpiece (live)
15.Neil Diamond w/ The Band – Dry Your Eyes (live from “The Last Waltz”)
16.The Band – Ophelia
17.Elvis Presley – Tryin To Get To You (from “The Sun Sessions”)
18.Elvis Presley – Blue Moon (from “The Sun Sessions”)
19.Bob Dylan – Meet Me in the Morning

Ps – On Sunday night I went to see My Morning Jacket here in town at the Vogue Theater. It was Fenomenal. I spelled "phenomenal" with an ‘F’ because it was so F’n great; great F’n show on the same F’n level as their great F’n album, “Z”. You may have heard me gush about it a couple weeks ago. Best album I’ve heard all year, best concert performance I’ve heard all year. Don't sleep, hideawayheads.

Tears of a Clown

My search for clown pictures made me wonder: Is there anybody out there who actually likes clowns? I hate clowns. I'm not sure why it took me 26 years to realize that, but I hate clowns. Then again, I have read Stephen King's "IT", so that probably doesn't help.

Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - Tears of a Clown

I'm in the midst of compiling a couple mix cds for a good friend of mine who is going through a hard time, so that's where this song is coming from. He asked for some melancholic, thoughtful, meditative type songs. Some of my all-time favorite songs fit that bill, but it's not the type of mix cd that I usually make. So, it's been kinda fun to go back through my collection and pick out some of these songs.

Tears of a Clown is particularly special because the upbeat, pulsing music perfectly balances the "sadder than sad" theme of the lyrics. It was originally written by Stevie Wonder as an instrumental. Only later did Smokey Robinson add the lyrics and record it with the Miracles. Two of the all time greats contributing to the same song, no wonder it's so perfect. In fact, this song is about as close to perfect as you can get. (Flexing his lyrical muscles, Smokey even references an Italian opera.) Enjoy this piece of musical brilliance:

Now if there's a smile on my face
It's only there trying to fool the public
But when it comes down to fooling you
Now honey that's quite a different subject
But don't let my glad expression
Give you the wrong impression
'Cause really I'm sad, oh I'm sadder than sad
Well I'm hurt and I want you so bad
Like a clown I appear to be glad, ooh yeah

Chorus
Well they're some sad things known to man
But ain't too much sadder than
The tears of a clown when there's no one around
The tears of a clown when there's no one around

Now if I appear to be carefree
It's only to camouflage my sadness
And honey to shield my pride I try
To cover this hurt with a show of gladness
But don't let my show convince you
That I've been happy since you
Decided to go, oh I need you so
Look I'm hurt and I want you to know
For others I put on a show

[chorus]

Just like Pagliacci did
I try to keep my surface hid
Smiling in the crowd I try
But in a lonely room I cry
The tears of a clown
When there's noone around

Now if there's a smile on my face
Don't let my glad expression
Give you the wrong impression
Don't let this smile I wear
Make you think that I don't care
Cos really I'm sad

Go Colts!

Is there a cooler team symbol than the Colts horseshoe?

Gram Parsons - Wild Horses

My Colts are still the only unbeaten team in the NFL. Call me crazy but, I'm predicting a Cowboys vs. Colts Super Bowl. Wild Horses couldn't drag me away from that game, hence the song of the day. Edgerrin James was running around like a wild horse last night, too. (140 yards and 3 TD's?!) The Rolling Stones and The Sundays would go on to cover this song but Gram's version remains the superior one. But then, Gram's versions were usually superior to everyone else's.

Rock For the Non-Mulleted, Non-Indie

Rock is like a box of chocolates

Blackrock - Yeah Yeah

Who says you can’t dance on a Monday morning? Certainly wasn’t me and it certainly wasn’t this morning. I got into the office this morning and decided that the perfect compliment to two crappy cups of overpriced 0.25$ office coffee was a little Blackrock. That’s right, hideawayheads, rock wasn’t always just for the mulleted and the indie among us. I’m talking about ghetto rock, black rock, funk rock, soul rock, or whatever label you wanna give it. (And, no, I’m not talking about Fishbone, Funkadelic, Living Color, Thin Lizzy, or that mohawked fellow from INXS’ Rockstar.) Mos Def ambitiously attempted it on his last album, but people were hatin on him and that album didn’t get the attention it deserved. People weren’t ready for that album. Andre 3000 came with some radio-friendly rock and people slurped it up with ladles and spoons. There used to be a time when rock of all colors and styles was blanketing the airwaves. But, you probably think that you already know all this, don’t you? You’re probably wrong. See, I'm telling you stuff that you "know" but you don't "know". My not-so-profound-or-groundbreaking theory on knowledge is that the only way to really know something is to experience it. Then, you REALLY know it, ya know. I don’t know. But, what I do know is that my knowledge theory goes counter-intuitive to our internet age. (Let me know if you know what I mean, or, if you already knew all that, you can let me know that, too.)

Blackrock is a pretty ungoogleable, little-known funk/psych/r&b group from the late 60’s and early 70’s. I downloaded the mp3 from Fluxblog, who picked it up off the out-of-print bootleg comp, “Chains + Black Exhaust”. And, no, it’s not one of those anonymous, boring James Brown or Meters soundalikes, thank goodness. “Yeah yeah” is a freakin jam. Funky piano, bangin drums, soulful guitar. Great guitar riffs. And, as an educational tool, they let you know at the beginning of the song exactly what you’re about to hear. Black rock. Dig it.

Funky Friday - Muppetstylee

Funkadelic = The Muppet Band on Acid?

Funkadelic - I Wanna Know If It's Good To You

Funkadelic - Can You Get To That?

It's almost the weekend and I'm in a Friday-type mood today. If you know me well, you know that I've got the funk pumpin through my veins. White blood cells, red blood cells, a couple T cells, some plasma, and funk. After years of contemplative study in the temple of funk, reading the old scrolls and listening to the old records, I've come to realize that the lyrics in a funk song can be about anything. They can be happy, angry, funny, melancholly, political, sad, or simply nonsense. But, through it all, it keeps a funky beat that you're meant to dance to. So, funk music could be said to be a model for how to get through life. No matter what's goin on, you just gotta keep dancing along. As the theory goes, if we can all get together, pretty soon the whole place will be groovin. As the cracked-out George Clinton (my favorite Clinton) said, "Free your mind and your ass will follow." I think it works vice versa, too. Which brings me to today's posts...it really doesn't get much funkier than Funkadelic. Both these songs contain some of my favorite hip hop samples and I'm sure you'll recognize some of the beats from other songs. These two tracks capture the Funkadelic collective on a moonless night, at the crossroads of funk and psychedelia, right after their midnight meeting with the devil. If I had to describe what Funkadelic used to be like, it'd be something like, "Think of The Muppet Band, except instead of being puppets, they are a bunch of black dudes, operating on copious amounts of psychedelic drugs."

New Feature: Grab Bag Wednesdays!

I'd say this fellow is pretty mad, in the mental sense, for bees.

The Band of Bees vs Madlib - Chicken Payback (Madlib Remix)

I think I need to start posting more randomly, not just mixes and great new albums. I need to get back to posting great songs, or rare songs in this case, just for the heck of it. And, I think you deserve it, hideawayheads. You've earned this Madlib remix of this great Bees song. (As you may recall, I posted the original version of this song in my blogular tribute to the animal kingdom several months back. Nobody downloaded it then. Now you want it. But, you can't have it. Such is life.)

Here's a link to a site that contains a link to the "Chicken Payback" video.

It's Pronounced, "Soof Yawn"

Oh yeah, dude's a Christian too. He went to my alma mater Calvin College's rival, Hope College in Holland, Michigan. Surprisingly, I don't think he's Dutch.

Sufjan Stevens - Decatur, Or, Round Of Applause For Your Stepmother!

Sufjan Stevens - Chicago

Sufjan Stevens - Casimir Pulaski Day

I've been sitting on this post for awhile, but now seems as good a time as any since I'm discussing the Album of the Year already...

By winning my annual contest of the year's best lyrical couplet crafted to rhyme with “Decatur”, (Steven A. Douglas was a great debater/But Abraham Lincoln was the great emancipator) Sufjan Stevens cemented a high-ranking place in my Album of the Year list. Maybe I love his album "Illinois" because I’m usually a sucker for things that are clever for cleverness sake. (“Decatur...” is essentially a lyrical test to find things to rhyme with Decatur.) Maybe I love it because I’ve been reading about Abraham Lincoln lately. Maybe I love it because he has super long song titles like, "A Short Reprise For Mary Todd, Who Went Insane, But For Very Good Reasons". I don’t know. Whatever the case, Sufjan Stevens has crafted another state album (after “Michigan”) and this one knocked me outta my socks. A musically and lyrically diverse album, it’s also a well-executed and well-conceived concept album. See, it’s an album of songs all about Illinois, hence the Steven A. Douglas and Lincoln references. Exceedingly clever. And tender. It’s an album of tender songs by a tender man. In the vein of Bob Dylan’s “Only a Pawn In Their Game”, Stevens included a song about John Wayne Gacy, the psychopathic clown. I dare say it’s about as tender a song about a psychopathic clown as can be written. Usually, I don’t go for albums with overly emotional/tender themes (see: anything Conor Oberst has done), but this album broke right through that and blew my mind. There’s so much depth to each song, and it’s such a beautifully arranged album. I think it’s something that Brian Wilson would be proud of musically, and lyrically it’s much more grounded and real than anything Wilson ever wrote. It’s ultimately a studio album and would require a decent-sized orchestra to do the songs proper justice in a concert format. That would be a fine concert, though. Fine, indeed…Check out his interview in The Onion.

Album of the Year (and, no, it's not the long-lost Sisqo studio album you've heard so much about. Wrong-wra-wrong-wrong-wrong.)

My Morning Jacket - Off the Record

My Morning Jacket - Lay Low

The following is a series of events and proclamations that are sure to change your life from this moment forth:

1) Yesterday, My Morning Jacket’s newest album, ‘Z’, came out and I purchased it, eagerly. 2) In a kickass attempt at rewarding their fans they included a free 7” record to go along with the cd. The record-collecting geek in me ("is there any other part?", you might sarcastically wonder...I say, "Screw you" for even potentially wondering that.) loves them already. 3) After thoroughly enjoying their previous record, "It Still Moves" I was really looking forward to this album. 4) At the time this post went to press, I have listened to the entire disc about 5 times in a 24 hour period, I have no reservation in declaring that ‘Z’ is the Album of the Year. (I'm issuing a pre-emptive "move over" order to The Darkness' upcoming album, "One Way Ticket To Hell...And Back!") 5) Seriously. 'Z' is really flippin' great. 6) I’m not trying to pull anything over on anybody, this album is really that good. 7) Alright, you wanna know who the competition is? It’s better than Beck’s “Guero”, Sam Prekop’s “Who’s Your New Professor”, Lyrics Born’s “Same Sh!t Different Day”, Sufjan Stevens’ “Illinois”, both Iron & Wine’s EPs, Josh Rouse’s “Nashville”, and it’s beating out Edan’s “Beauty and the Beat” by an eyelash. 7) I’ll be going with my older brother (Duke Koopa) to see them at The Vogue theatre on October 23 and I can hardly keep from dropping a hot, steamy load in my shorts at the thought of how great this show is going to be. 8) The show at The Vogue will cost you a scant $15.

Download the tracks and get ready to have your cornhole rocked six ways to Sunday. Then, leave a comment and go to the show at The Vogue with me and my bro on Sunday, the 23rd. (If you didn't get around to downloading "Wordless Chorus", the opening track on the album, the link is still active in my "Last Good Day of the Year" post.)

Enjoy the rest of your day, hideawayheads.

Update 10/12: In case you need affirmation of this album's greatest beyond The American Mastodon and myself, this week's The Onion gave the album a rave review: "It's both rare and marvelous to hear a good band make its first really great album...The record is undeniably the work of My Morning Jacket—all grandeur and pounding heart—but Z's take-a-shot spirit is bound up in the nutty, insanely catchy "Off The Record," which stacks up a stolen surf riff, a reggae rhythm, lurching vocals, and an extended, spacey coda. At first it sounds too wild and beastly to be any good, but the hook is as infectious as freedom, and around the third time through the song, doubts dissolve. If it takes some time to adjust to, it's only because it's hard to recognize a classic right away."