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Two Christmas ago, I did a 2 CD (actually 4 CD) mix made up of covers. I wanted to dip back into that since covers, especially when they’re more of a reinterpretation than a straight cover, are always fun.

For this mix, I’ve decided to focus on one particular artist: Syd Barrett. Syd was a founding member of Pink Floyd, playing on all their early singles, the first and some of the second album. At the start he was their vocalist, guitarist and principle song writer.

Due to drugs and a going a bit crazy, he left/was kicked out of Pink Floyd. He still performed and put out two albums over the next few years before “retiring.” Though his musical output lasted barely over five years, he is still seen as in influential legend.

I got into Syd Barrett in the late 80s after I got into (then) current Pink Floyd. After dipping into their back catalog, discovered Piper at the Gates of Dawn (Floyd’s first album) and snatching up Barret’s Madcap Laughs and a few bootlegs courtesy of the guy who used to sell bootlegs at the Frackville Mall, I was hooked.

Living in central Pennsylvania, I was the only person I knew who was into Syd. Towards the end of high school, with the explosion of “alternative music” finally bubbling its way into Mifflinburg, others got into him too.

Somewhere along the way, I picked up a Syd Barrett tribute album at a record shop in Williamsport. Beyond the Wildwood had a bunch of great songs on it, some of which have made it to this mix. Most of this mix, however, comes from research.

To be honest, I hadn’t heard most of the songs (or even most of the bands) prior to making this mix. Sure, I had heard of Jesus and Mary Chain, David Bowie and Robyn Hitchcock, but who are Dream Divers, Midnight Movies and Carnival Act? Beats me! But everybody here, all 46 bands, have been influenced by Syd Barrett enough to cover one of this songs.

I wanted to do something fun with two discs full of music, so I have the same 23 songs done twice by two different artists. For example, “Long Cold Look” is done by both Fat & Limo as well as Dolphins.

Some of the songs are pretty straight forward. Robyn Hitchcocks “Dominoes” sounds almost exactly like Syd. I can hardly tell the difference between Paul Roland’s “Matilda Mother” and the original. Other songs, however, are drastically changed. The Polka Floyd Show does a polka cover of “See Emily Play,” while Fortran 5 does a very liberal interpretation of “Bike.”

Some other new found favorites are: “Terrapin” by Big Blood & The Bleedin Hearts, “Arnold Layne” by a very European-sounding Etienne Daho, an instrumental version of “Vegetable Man” by Larsen that really does need to be listened to intently and a dance version of “Rats” by What Noise.

Oh there’s quite a lot of fun to be had here.

This is the whole track list…

Want to hear some samples?

Big Blood & The Bleedin Hearts – Terrapin

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Gloves Leeches – No Good Trying

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Chandeen – Apples and Oranges

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The Polka Floyd Show – See Emily Play

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Larsen – Vegetable Man

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Etienne Daho – Arnold Layne

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Kevin Blechdom and Eugene Chadbourne – Chapter 24

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The Soup Dragons – Two Of A Kind

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Just click on the link and save the zip file to your desktop. Then open the zip file with WinZip (or whatever program you use to open zip files). Add to your MP3 library or burn it to a CD-R. Easy as pie!

Check out my other mixes right here…

Ok, it’s really not as impressive as it sounds. Originally, Jimmie Rodgers released everything on 78s. I don’t have those. But what I do have now (thanks to a lucky find at the local Everett record shop) is the late 50s, early 60s LPs that reissued all of his songs over an eight year period.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Jimmie Rodgers is known as the father of country music. He recorded from 1927 to 1933. In just over six years, he laid down 110 songs. Before his music career, he worked on the railroad, making ends meet for his family. In 1924, at the age of 27, he contracted Tuberculosis. Because of the illness, he had to quit the railroad, but was somehow able to organize a traveling roadshow (basically a tour) which went well until a tornado destroyed his big top.

He returned to working on the railroad in Miami and Tuscon, but lost both jobs due to his illness. Trying to find work in North Carolina, he was finally able to record his first two songs on August 4, 1927. These were “The Soldier’s Sweetheart” and “Sleep, Baby, Sleep.”

Over the next few years, he worked with other country personalities like the Carter Family, jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong, toured with Will Rogers and recorded in New York City.

In fact, that’s where his final recordings were made. In May of 1933, growing weaker and weaker due to his TB, he traveled to New York to record, completing four songs on the first day. He took a day off to recover, returning to the studio the day after. He rehearsed a few songs and recorded one – he was unable to stand and returned to his hotel room to again recover. A few days later, joined by a couple of session musicians, they recorded another song, Jimmie having to lie down on a cot in between takes. For his last song on May 24, 1933, he recorded “Years Ago” by himself. Two days later, he was dead at the age of 35.

I got into Jimmie Rodgers when I was living in West Virginia. The local library had a small record collection and I found a wonderful compilation called Country Music South And West, which featured two Jimmie Rodgers songs (“Blue Yodel No. 11″ and “Dreaming With Tears In My Eyes”). I’m not sure what drew me to them, but I had to hear more.

Thankfully, the library also had a Jimmie Rodgers “Greatest Hits” compilation. I don’t remember which one is was, but it had 15 or so songs on it and I loved every one of them.

When the file sharing thing took off, I download all 110 songs (plus some outtakes and some stuff Chet Atkins overdubbed in 1955). But as I got into vinyl, mp3s became mere shadows of what music should be. That’s when I discovered at all 110 songs were released by RCA Victor from 1956 to 1964, spread across seven LPs. The songs are out of chronological order (which does bug me a bit), but they’re all there from “The Soldier’s Sweetheart” to “Long Ago.”

The releases are:

Never No Mo’ Blues (1956)
Train Whistle Blues (1958)
My Rough And Rowdy Ways (1960)
Jimmie The Kid (1961)
Country Music Hall Of Fame (1962)
The Short But Brilliant Life Of Jimmie Rodgers (1963)
My Time Ain’t Long (1964)

They followed it up the next year with The Best Of The Legendary Jimmie Rodgers which contains 12 of his best songs including “T for Texas” and “Mule Skinner Blues.” Ten years later, they put out a double LP of songs and the year after that a split release by Jimmie and Hank Snow called All About Trains, which highlighted five songs by each artist all about trains.

I’m sure there have been other greatest hits comps over the years, but now that I’ve got all 110 songs on vinyl, I guess I don’t have much need for them.

Would you like to hear some of my favorite Jimmie Rodgers songs? Take a listen…

The Soldier’s Sweetheart (his first song)

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Mother, Queen of My Heart

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T for Texas (Blue Yodel No. 9 with Louis Armstrong on trumpet)

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Frankie and Johnny (this one’s pretty violent!)

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Dreaming With Tears in My Eyes

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In the Jail House Now

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TB Blues

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Hobo Bill’s Last Ride

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Long Ago (his last song)

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These are but a small sampling of my favorites. I hope you enjoy them.

I posted not too long ago about the death of Fugs’s co-founder, Tuli Kupferberg. It must have been because of this that Smartz, for some birthday thing or something, picked up a copy of The Fug’s First Album for me. Thanks!

When I opened it, I must have gotten an “oh crap” look upon my face because she said, “you already have this, don’t you?”

And it’s true, I did. Or so I thought.

What she handed me was The Fugs First Album in Stereo. What I had was in Mono. Oh neat, right? Most folks really don’t care about this stuff, but I certainly do. I’m not a fetishist when it comes to record collecting, but different mixes always interest me.

So with a bit more digging, I found out some more things. So here we go.

The first Fugs’s release wasn’t The Fugs First Album. Not really, anyway. Their first release was called: The Village Fugs Sing Ballads of Contemporary Protest, Point of Views, and General Dissatisfaction. It was released by the Broadside record label as Broadside 304. It was also given a Folkways listing, but it’s not really clear if Folkways ever actually released it.

It was then, a few months later, re-released with a name change to The Fugs First Album by ESP Records as ESP 1018 (the first version may have been a blue-tinted cover). That was also mono and was probably the same mix as the Broadside release. After a pressing or two (no idea), the album was remixed, edited and used a different take of the song “Swinburne Stomp.” They also released a Stereo version of it, though three of the songs are “dual track monophonic.”

Other variations can be found here.

ESP also rereleased it again a few years later with a psychedelic wizard cover that looks pretty dumb, in my opinion.

I guess that makes five releases with three different mixes (first mix mono, second mix mono and second mix stereo). After a quick check, it turns out that my mono mix is the second mix mono. The first mix mono as released by Broadside (The Village Fugs…) is quite pricey. It usually goes for $200. I have found it for $75 and though it’s tempting, it really can’t be anywhere near justified at this time.

I was even hoping to post a couple of examples of the different mixes and the alternate take for “Swinburne Stomp,” but I can’t even find mp3s of the first mix. That’s pretty surprising. Even things labeled as “The Village Fugs” on file sharing sites are really just the second mix mislabeled.

Maybe someday I’ll round up the scratch to buy The Village Fugs…

Way back when I was a young pup, I somehow found my parent’s tape of the first Fugs album from 1965. I guess my uncle had it and made a tape of it for my folks. I was probably 13. And to a 13 year old, songs like “Slum Goddess of the Lower East Side” and “My Baby Done Left Me [I Feel Like Homemade Shit]” were pretty much aimed right at me.

At this point in history, The Fugs had never rereleased their first album on CD. I had no access to more of their music and knew basically nothing about them.

Of course, with the internet existing, that’s no longer a problem. But even before that I was able to get a bunch of their albums (on vinyl!) and even a few on CD (their second album is actually really great – probably better than the first). But the first album had always had a wonderful little place in my heart.

Tuli Kupferberg was sort of like The Fugs’s Flava Flav. He was sort of the joker. Sure, they all were, but he was more so. He didn’t write as many songs as Ed Sanders (the other main member – though there were many over the decades). The songs he did write and perform were my favorite. Ed Sanders always had a serious and sometimes hokey feel. That’s all well and good, but Tuli seemed a bit more real to me.

Songs like “Nothing” (which is about nothing repeated), “The Ten Commandments” (literally) and pretty much everything in “The Rhapsody of Tuli” (a compilation of old Tuli Kupferberg recordings narrated by Ed Sanders) have stuck with me through the years.

This past week, Tuli died. He was 78. I never got a chance to see The Fugs play, but I’ve exposed many people to their music. And now I’ll expose you to some.

The aforementioned “Rhapsody of Tuli” is a great place to start…

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Here it is! The second volume of the Flip That Bastard series, which is pretty much just the B-sides of The Bastard Love Child of Punk & Disco series, which is (or will be) three mix CDs full of first singles of bands that are commonly thought of as 80s bands, but actually started in the 70s.

Got it?

Well, in March I released Volume 2 of The Bastard Son…, which featured the first singles of Joy Division, PiL, Simple Minds, The Cars, B-52s, The Fall, Magazine, OMD, Ultravox and many more. This CD contains the b-sides to all of those singles.

I’ve always been a huge fan of b-sides, especially when they we non-album tracks and even more so when they were weird. Weird is something that we get here. Take, for example, PiL’s first b-side, “The Cowboy Song.” Weird, huh? And how about the amazingly unexpected “Circus of Death” by The Human League?

Not all is weird, of course. Some songs are just good songs. Magazine’s “My Mind Ain’t So Open” and OMD’s “Almost” are every bit as good as their A-sides. The Buggle’s “Kid Dynamo” even rivals “Video Killed The Radio Star” (or surpasses it if you’re really sick of hearing that one).

The Fall’s “Repetition” is all about truth in advertising. The Fall’s “Repetition” is all about truth in advertising. The Fall’s “Repetition” is all about truth in advertising. The Fall’s “Repetition” is all about truth in advertising. The Fall’s “Repetition” is all about truth in advertising.

One little oddity shows up here. The A-side mix featured The Specials first single “Gangsters.” The B-side was actually by The Selector – it was a split 7″. Fun!

The song that really blew me away was the B-side to Men At Work’s “Keypunch Operator.” It’s called (and basically is) “Down Under.” This is the song that would eventually give them worldwide super stardom. However, this is a very early version and very different from the tune we all know (and love?). You’ll definitely recognize it.

Remember, many of these songs were only available on the first 7″s. Sure, some were slapped on remastered CDs as bonus tracks, but many were not.

Ok, ready? Here’s the track list…

And now, how about some sample songs?

Men At Work – Down Under

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PiL – The Cowboy Song

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The Human League – Circus of Death

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The Fall – Repetition

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OMD – Almost

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Magazine – My Mind Ain’t So Open

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Just click on the link and save the zip file to your desktop. Then open the zip file with WinZip (or whatever program you use to open zip files). Add to your MP3 library or burn it to a CD-R. Easy as pie!

Check out my other mixes right here…

I got my first CD player when I was 12. It was spring of 1988 and I probably saved my lawn mowing money for it. It was made by the very reputable electronics company, Crown and took something like 10 AA batteries. Through the help of Radio Shack, I bought a headphone to RCA plug adapter, hooked it up to the “phono” jack on my Emerson Boombox and went to town.

Actually, I didn’t go anywhere. Though portable, it pretty much wasn’t. Back in those days, portable CD players didn’t have any anti-skip technology. If you moved it a bit or looked at it wrong, it would skip and take about four years to start playing again. So even though the Crown CD Player had a shoulder strap (seriously), you just set it on a shelf and didn’t bother it.

My first CD shows my age and street cred. It was They Might Be Giant’s “Don’t Let’s Start” single. It was a CD3 and at that point, nobody had any idea where this crazy new CD craze was going. CD3s were 3″ CDs containing about 20 minutes of music, so they were used as singles. People thought this would actually catch on. Columbia Records released a slew of them – I had George Michael and Herbie Hancock. Most were sold with cardboard backing and then a sleeve, either plastic or, in the case of They Might Be Giants, cardboard.

Somewhere along the way, I lost this. And to rebuy it now is pretty expensive. I don’t really listen to CDs anymore, so lucky me, I found a copy of it on vinyl! Check it out…

It’s got the same track listing and it’s in amazing condition. Looks like it wasn’t ever played. Lucky find? Oh yes!

I probably heard the song either on Dr. Demento or MTV. If it was MTV, it was the presidential campaign for Randee of the Redwoods ["It's Randee, with two E's, like in 'the river'"]. They Might Be Giants played a couple of songs, including “Shoehorn,” which wasn’t a b-side for “Don’t Let’s Start,” but was from the same era. I remember they were wearing incredibly tall “hats” and had very stern hand gestures to go along with the song. Maybe that happened after I had the CD. I really can’t remember.

Anyway, the CD itself had four songs. “Don’t Let’s Start,” “We’re The Replacements,” “When It Rains It Snows,” and
“The Famous Polka.” The last three were true b-sides, not appearing on their first album and probably not appearing on CD until Miscellaneous T was released in 1991 – it had a bunch of b-sides on it.

“Don’t Let’s Start” has been described by the band to be a song about “not let’s starting.” They lyrics are fairly absurd:

When you are alone you are the cat, you are the phone
You are an animal
The words I’m singing now
Mean nothing more than meow to an animal
Wake up and smell the cat food in your bank account
But don’t try to stop the tail that wags the hound

It quickly became one of my favorite songs ever. When I picked up the single, I fell in love with them and quickly bought the album Lincoln (though oddly, I bought it on cassette – maybe the Crown had died by then). The song on the single is a remix from the one on the album. The music has a little less reverb and there’s synth overdubs on the “I don’t want to live in this world anymore” part. But you’ve probably only heard the single remix version. It was used in the video and on Then: The Early Years CD.

As for the other songs, “We’re The Replacements” is about being in a band and touring, but not about being roadies for the band The Replacements. That’s just an urban legend. They Might Be Giants never roadied for The Replacements. “When It Rains It Snows” has two halves, separated by a long five or six seconds of silence which was shortened on all releases after the single. You can only hear it in its full silent glory here! The final song, “Famous Polka,” was originally called “The Phone Inside A Ribcage Polka.” Personally, I like that name better. It’s about a famous person being just like the singer – she has two legs, which is the exact number of years that he’s lived in the city. Amazing!

The whole thing is amazing and I’m endlessly happy that I found it. And so are you!

Here, enjoy the video for “Don’t Let’s Start”!

Deputy dog dog a ding dang depadepa
Deputy dog dog a ding dang depadepa

There are a billion songs about summer. From Duran Duran to Blue Cheer to Peter Gabriel to The Beach Boys. And when it comes to hip hop and summer, most folks immediately jump to DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince’s “Summer Time.” Sure, it’s a fine song, but long before that was “Hot Hot Summer” by the Sugarhill Gang.

You’d probably know the Sugarhill Gang from their song “Rapper’s Delight” – it was the first “hit” rap song. And you’ve probably only heard it performed by the “Rappin’ Granny” on the movie The Wedding Singer. Anyway, Sugarhill had a bunch of other songs, including a really fun one called “Hot Hot Summer Day.”

And so, for this, the first day of Summer, I’d like you to take a listen to “Hot Hot Summer Day” by Sugarhill Gang. It’s over seven minutes long, which makes it sort of a short early rap song. Back in the late 70s, some hip hop songs were anywhere form 15 to 20 minutes long. Sugarhill summed it up nicely here, so check it out.

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