When I Was 26, It Was a Very Good Year

This guy with the tambourine is how excited I get when I compile 'Best Of' lists

King Koopa’s Best of 2005 List:

Best First Date: November 10 at BW3, with the figuratively bowlegged "Elle". Keep your, “yeah, because it was Koopa’s ONLY first date for the year” comments to yourself, thank you very much. As I kicked her ass in NTN Trivia and told her all the reasons she shouldn’t get involved with a shady character like me, this is the song that would’ve been playing if we were characters in a movie: Acid House King’s “Tonight is Forever”.

Best previously-unreleased Bob Dylan song from the year’s best soundtrack: Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues (alternate take #5), from the soundtrack to Dylan’s Scorsese-directed documentary “No Direction Home”. Sorry, “Visions of Johanna (Take #8)”, maybe next year. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if I was forced to choose one musician’s catalog to listen to for the rest of my life it would be Dylan. Dylan’s my favorite American and the embodiment of what made this country great.

Best remix featuring beats derived from a GameBoy: Beck’s “Girl” (8-Bit Remix). People say Beck’s lost his sense of humor, but by releasing a four song Gameboy-beat remix album before the official album release, I’d say he’s at least retained a sense of playfulness. I guess Scientology still allows playfulness. Stay tuned to Koopa’s Hideaway for any change on Scientology’s rules regarding playfulness.

Best cover song by someone with English as their second language: PJ Pooterhoots, covering Hall & Oates, “I Can’t Go For That”. (PJ Pooterhoots also won this year's award for Best Solo Artist Name.) This song has always been a floor-filler, never more so than with Ms. Pooterhoots’ version. It’s irresistible. If you can hate on this track then you are hopeless and I feel sorry for your miserable soul. The singer sounds vaguely Asian, but I can’t really place the accent. She sounds pretty sexy though, in that Yoko Ono pre-Beatles-breakup sort of way.

Best song that I can’t understand a single word of: Dungen’s “Festival”. Technically, I purchased this Swedish import in mid-2004, but it wasn’t released in the US until this year. It just means I’m cooler than you, that’s all, and I shouldn't be penalized for my excessive coolness. Dude, you know I was into Swedish prog-rock like WAAAAY before you were. This album kicks Swedishmeatballass.

Best song about outer space: Edan feat. Mr. Lif, “Making Planets”. A swirling, psychedelic trip from the year’s most original hip hop album. This song makes me think of taking a midnight cruise on a summer night with a full-moon, nodding my head like a demented bobblehead, with cheesy grin plastered across my face.

Best album to tide me over until the next Flaming Lips album: The Earlies' "These Were". Sorry, Brian Wilson, SMILE just didn't do it for me as much as "These Were". Again, technically, I purchased this album in 2004, but it didn't get released in the US until 2005. Don't hate me because you wish you had my refined musical palette. Instead, enjoy this slice of Tex-Brit psychedelia: "Morning Wonder", by The Earlies.

Best song from the year’s best album: The album is My Morning Jacket's "Z" and the song is “Off the Record”. Yeah, I’ve got this song on 7” vinyl. That’s right. I know, it’s pretty awesome, huh. I’m like a cumulonimbus cloud of coolness and I’m raining all over you. Hope you brought an umbrella because the forecast is calling for continued coolness with a potential for extreme awesomeness.

Best record label to put out a totally crappy hip hop record: Quannum. And, the album is APSCI’s “Thanks For Asking”. I’m a Quannum ball-swinger, but this thing just didn’t cut it. It’s the first chink in Quannum’s armor. Don’t make me start swingin from Stones Throw’s balls, guys. Seriously. This album's sooo crappy, I won't subject you to any mp3s.

Best remix of a song featured in a Will Smith movie: Amerie, “One Thing” (Siik remix). Pure hotness. On so many levels. The remix isn’t as jittery as the original, it makes Amerie’s vocals the focus of the mix. Ah shibbies!

Best show I saw all year: Wilco in Kalamazoo. Jeff Tweedy just keeps getting better. He’s proved himself to be one of the best songwriters of his generation. This show rocked me six ways from Sunday. “Handshake Drugs” from Wilco’s new ‘Kicking Television’ live double album was one of my favorite songs from that show. The best part of the weekend was when I forgot to bring my ID and I wasn't able to drink at Bell's brewery. Tragicomical. In a typical Koopa-type way.

Best reminder that Michael Jackson used to be more than just a plastic-faced pederast: Team 9’s three way mashup of MJ’s “Scream”, Beck’s “E-Pro”, and AC/DC’s “TNT”. Me thinks he didn't write this song in that "dreaming tree" of his from the embarassing TV documentary he did.

Best new love song that sounds like a really, really old love song: The Band of Bees, “I Love You”. Break out the satin sheets and uncork a perfectly aged bottle of love tonight, hideawayheads. Pop this song in the boombox and get ready for romance, the likes of which you've never dreamed.

Best solo album by a member of Sea and Cake: Sam Prekop's "Who's Your New Professor". I'd say this is definitely one of the 5 best albums of the year. And, since this is my blog I'm going to go ahead and say that. While I'm saying things about Sam Prekop, I'd also like to say that the lead-off track, "Something" is my favorite song. There. I said it.

Best radio hit that never got played on the radio: Josh Rouse, “It’s the Nighttime”. This album got completely slept on. I really enjoyed it. You should too. Rouse may be a poor man’s Jeff Tweedy, but he’s well on his way to Tweedy-level consistency.

Best vacation of the year: My missions trip to Hungary. That ended up being my only vacation of the year, but it was worth every Forint. Here’s some totally sweet 70’s Hungarian garage rock: Skorpio Group, “The King With Shred Legs”. Don’t let the song title fool you, it’s all in Hungarian. And in case you had any intentions of learning Hungarian, be aware that the world’s top linguists still can’t decide what other languages Hungarian is related to. It's not Latin or Slavic-based. Their best guess is that it’s a descendant of some of the Scandinavian languages. Hungarian uses accents, weird letters and everything. Good luck.

Thanks to all the people who have checked out the site since I started this thing up last February. If it weren’t for all eight of my ravenous, insatiable fans, I wouldn’t be doing this. Thanks for stopping by and stay classy, Hideawayheads. King Koopa loves ya.

Frontin on Debra's Sister

DJ Reset - Frontin on Debra

I'm not going to win any DJ cred with this post, since this was technically last year's hot joint, but I've got a lot of time on my hands at work these days and I can't leave my Hideawayheads without this song for yet another year. Some music critic called this track the 'Song of the Year'...last year. Better late than never. It's a mashup/remix/blend of Beck's "Debra" & Pharrell Williams' "Frontin". To describe this track as "silky" would be coarse. Yeah, it's that smooth. I'd call it "dope", but it's much more intoxicating than the stickiest of the icky. Alright, fine, I'll call it "ill" and leave it at that.

Trading Spaces

Indie Folk:

• Kings of Convenience - Misread - Canadian folkies. These guys are part of a recent wave of good music coming out of the frigid hinterland known as Canada (along with Broken Social Scene, Feist). Ignore the fact that they're Canadian and that they don't exactly fit the theory described below. Canadians privately wish they were American anyway.
• Iron & Wine - Woman King - This dude is probably the best of the indie folksters out there. This song is from his latest solo EP.
• The Shins - New Slang (live) - The Shins could be the most popular of the indie-folksters. They're catchier than most. This live version is a little quiet, so just turn your speakers up all the way and it'll sound about right.

Electroclash:

• Midwest Product - When Doves Cry - Great song. Electro-stylee.
• Mahjongg - Hot Lava - A thumper of a tune. Great beat
• Tiger Tunes - Kirsten is a F'machine - F'n hilarious. This may be my favorite "electroclash" song.

Here’s a link to a fascinating article that makes a parallel between the record-low interests rates of the past 4-5 years and the decrease in the number of rock bands that use live drums. The author makes the case that the abandonment the suburbs and gentrification of urban areas has led to the rise of live-drum-less indie-folk and electroclash (which, honestly, sounds a lot like ol’ electronica with live vocals to me). I think it’s a really interesting theory, and it tweaks the part of me that needs to understand how and why things happen the way they do, the part of me that’s interested in the cause that produces a certain effect. I've been surmising for years that the suburbs are about 10 years away from being the new ghettos. We'll see. My high school economics class (taught by the brilliant, long-division master and singular personality, Mr. Dan Groff) really started me down this “cause and effect” path. From studying the stock market and economic theory, I learned that if you can sort through all the different variables, you can find a cause for everything that happens. Of course, that way of thinking usually works best when analyzing why something happened in the past, as opposed to predicting what will happen in the future. That’s why nobody has developed an accurate model for predicting what will happen with the stock market. There are too many ever-changing variables to develop an equation for prediction. So, the author of this article can’t tell you what’s going to happen to music in the future, but he has a pretty pessimistic view of the future of this country, so I would guess he’s not predicting another rise of boy bands in the near future. Probably socially-conscious music of some sort, eh? Who knows! That’s why this country needs music geeks like myself and this guy, because who else is going to argue about how the political/cultural landscape is going to affect music of the future? Somebody out there has to think about these things. But, that’s neither here nor there…read the article and appreciate the analytical genius behind the theory.

I hope everybody had a Merry Christmas and that you got to spend some quality time with the ones you love. My holiday weekend was spent staying up late with friends from out of town and waking up early to the exhortations of my nieces and nephews. I need a vacation from my vacation. I also encountered a mix cd project from one of the American Mastodon’s friends that has really inspired me to take my mix-making to the next level. The AM got it all started with this mix. I highly recommend it, and he might still send you one if you ask nicely enough. Then again, I could probably burn you a copy too. I’ve already got some good ideas that I’m starting on. Stay tuned.

Winter: Welcome To The Darkness

Curtis Mayfield - Right on for the Darkness

Willie Wright - Right on for the Darkness

Josh Rouse - Come Back (Light Therapy)

The above picture is Justin Hawkins of the English joke-rock band, The Darkness. The Darkness rock out in ways that make you bust out…laughing. The problem is that the laughing often drowns out the rocking. Personally, if I’m going to rock out, I take my rock with a pinch less irony. But, regardless, this post is not really about The Darkness with a big D, but about “darkness” with a little d. I just thought this was a really funny picture. People just don’t rock pilgrim hats, leather pants, and those keyboard/guitar things anymore.

Today is the first official day of winter, which means it’s the winter solstice, which means it’s the shortest, darkest day of the year, which means insomniacs will have no excuse for not being able to go to bed at a decent hour. (Interestingly, the winter solstice is also the biggest holiday for Wicca, a goddess/witchy type religion. That's cool and all, but there's something fishy about a belief system that isn't even as old as my parents, as this article in Slate points out.) The sun goes down super early and if the Hideaway gets switched to the Central Time Zone, as is being discussed, next year it’ll go down even earlier. That would be super. All so we can be on the same time as Chicago. Big whoop. For me, it will remove some of the confusion of going to a concert in Chicago, but that’s about it. I’m not a big fan of winter and all the dark evenings. Between the cold and the darkness, it kills my drive to go out and do things outside of the house in the evenings. I pretty much hibernate through winter. Christmas, President’s Day, and the thoughts of up-coming spring, those are the only highlights. New Year’s just means a monster hangover, that’s about it, oh, and the likelihood that I’ll fail miserably in my attempt at any resolution. Except my resolution to not do heroin. I feel confident that I’ll be able to keep that one for another year. Wait, does that resolution imply that I used to do heroin? I’ll leave that juicy implication open-ended, just for the sake of King Koopa’s blogular mythmaking… on to today’s songs:

I’ve got Curtis Mayfield’s original “Right on for the Darkness” and a shorter yet almost-superior version by a guy named Willie Wright whom I’ve never heard of outside of this song. It’s a socially conscious funky soul workout about doing whatever it is you do and letting other people hate on you if they wanna. “Playin’ on the clothes you wear/Laughing down at me/But I swear I just don’t care”Awesome percussion in both versions, more blaxploitation soundtrack-style orchestration in Mayfield’s. The last song is Josh Rouse’s “Come Back (Light Therapy)”, which uses the metaphor of craving the sun during a dark, dreary winter to needing your lover. It’s a great song from Rouse’s 70’s-style singer-songwriter album, 1972. Me likey.

Knocked Out Loaded

Bobby Rush - Bowlegged Woman/Knock Kneed Man

So, where’s King Koopa been all these weeks since my rowboating-with-robots post? Busy at work? Nope. Uninspired? Hardly. So, what then? Well, I’ve been making mix cds like a madman, but no longer for my hard-time-having buddy from before. Nope, these mixes have been for someone else all-together. Someone whose musical passions mirror mine, someone who loves a good mix cd as much as myself. Someone who possesses a yin to match my yang, a zig to connect to the end of my zag…figurative bowleggedness to accommodate my figurative knocked-knees.

Have a Merry Christmas, Hideawayheads. If you missed my Christmas party this past weekend, then you might as well have missed Christmas. You definitely missed getting a taste of some African moonshine, straight from a bathtub in Ghana. Talk about getting a fire in your belly! Whoo! Special thanks to D Friendly, my party's honored guest and moonshine-supplier, and to Buster Larkins for making it happen and getting his mom to babysit. Props, homeslizzles.