As a few of my more recent posts will reveal, I’ve come down with a bad case of wanderlust. As far as I can tell, there’s no cure for this ailment, once you’ve got it, there’s no getting rid of it. The only recourse is treatment, which is wandering.

You’d think that traveling would cure this problem, but when wandering from place to place, the wanderlust is still not satisfied. In fact, the more you wander, the more you need to wander.

Of course, the opposite isn’t true, either. If you think that once bitten by this bug you can simply settle down and it’ll just go away, you don’t understand the drive of someone who needs to travel, needs to be on the open road logging mile after mile of endless beauty.

There is no destination for the wanderer, just as there can be no real home. The journey does not end in some far off town, just as it doesn’t begin where he last laid his hat and kicked off his shoes. For this rambler, life is one long, wonderful journey.

So often before, I’ve told you to travel and see the world. Now, however, I’m telling you to not travel, because if you do, you might catch this bug and never want to settle down. This is true, if you catch it, you won’t be able to settle down. Even if you get yourself a fine job with good pay and benefits, a nice house with a yard, you’ll soon feel that tugging, that itch and the temptation to scratch it will be too strong to resist.

And one scratch, one short stretch of two-lane will lead to another and then another and soon you’ll be crossing state lines and you’ll have no recollection of where you started, let alone where it’ll end.

You know… that reminds me of a song by my good friend, Roy Acuff, called “Railroad Boomer.” Why don’t you take it from here, Roy?

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Railroad Boomer by Roy Acuff

Come and gather all around me,
Listen to my tale of woe.
Got some good advice to give you,
A lot of things you ought to know.
Take a tip from one who’s traveled:
Never start to ramblin’ ‘round.
You might get the wand’ring fever
And never want to settle down.
And never want to settle down.

I met a little gal in Frisco,
I asked her if she’d be my wife.
I told her I was tired of roaming,
That I’d settle down for life.
Then I heard a whistle blowing;
I knew it was the Westport train.
I left her standing by the railroad.
I never saw that gal again.
I never saw that gal again.

I’ve traveled all over this country,
Guess I’ve traveled everywhere.
I’ve been an every branch and railroad
And never paid a nickel fare.
I’ve been from Maine to California,
Canada to Mexico.
I never tried to save no money:
I’ve got no place to go.
Got no place to go.

Now listen to a boomer’s story,
And don’t forget the things I say.
I hear another train a-coming,
And I’ll soon be on my way.
If you want to do me a favor:
When they lay me down to die,
Dig my grave beside the railroad
So I can hear the train go by.
So I can hear the trains go by.

So you folks take warning, stay at home, ok? There’s nothing to see out here, just turn on the Travel Channel and that should take care of you just fine.

There’s an old folk song called “Cotton Eyed Joe.” Most folks have heard it, but sadly, most seem to have heard a dance version of it by some crappy Sweedish band called Rednex. The original version, however, dates back to before the Civil War.

The version that I know well, done by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, tells a bit of a different story. It proves that over the years, the narrative suffers and can morph into an indistinguishable (but really fun) mess.

The Rednex version uses some of the same lyrics, so you might recognize them.

Here’s the song….

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Let’s review the lyrics, shall we?

Don’t you remember, don’t you know
Daddy worked’a man they called Cotton Eyed Joe

Ok, so this author’s father worked with a man named Cotton Eyed Joe. So far, so good.

Had it not been for Cotton Eyed Joe, I’d a been married a long time ago.

And here we arrive at our chorus. This line repeats throughout the song, thus sharing with us its importance. It is because of this Joe fellow that the author is not now married and was not married “a long time ago.” This is important, we shall return to this idea.

Down in the cotton patch down below
Everybody’s singing to Cotton Eyed Joe

Very well. Joe (and presumably the author’s father) works in a cotton field. For some reason that is not stated, all of the employees enjoy singing to Joe. This, however, fails to explain the ways in which Joe halted the author’s marriage.

Nevertheless, the author again repeats:
Had it not been for Cotton Eyed Joe, I’d a been married a long time ago.

Continuing,
I know a gal, lives down below
Used to go and see her, but I don’t no more.

Here may be our first clue. Could this be the girl the author was to marry before Joe stepped in?

Again, he repeats:
Had it not been for Cotton Eyed Joe, I’d a been married a long time ago.

Perhaps the next verse will shed more light on this tender subject.
I fell down and stubbed my toe
Called for the doctor Cotton Eyed Joe
Had it not been for Cotton Eyed Joe, I’d a been married a long time ago.

Or perhaps not. Here is evidence that Joe is not only an employee of a cotton farm, but also a physician or perhaps even a podiatrist. Still, the author again states that Joe is the reason he hasn’t yet married. This seems a little ungracious since Joe is doctoring the author’s toe.

Tune my fiddle and rosin my bow
Gonna make music everywhere I go
Gonna play a tune called Cotton Eyed Joe

Here we slip into a strange dream-within-a-dream segment where the author talks about playing the song that he is currently playing. This may hint at dissociative identity disorder. Perhaps the author does not realize he is already playing the song.

While this verse doesn’t clear up exactly how Joe is responsible for the author’s thwarted marriage plans, it does open up other possibilities. Perhaps the author was “crazy” and there never was a girl to marry. Or perhaps Joe stepped in on the bride-to-be’s behalf, saving her from what would be a very strained marriage – having a spouse with an acute psychological disorder is no easy task.

A conclusion can be reached that whatever the reason the author was not married a long time ago, Joe was probably not to blame. The author was the cause of his own heartbreak and is using Cotton Eyed Joe, a fellow that everyone in the cotton patch seemed to adore, a long family friend and even a doctor to the author, as a scapegoat.

A lesson can be learned here: stop blaming kindly old black men for your problems and deal with whatever it is that keeps driving the gals away. Or something like that.

I enjoy discovering good music that I’ve never heard before. Most modern music just bores me, so I usually dip into the late 70s/early 80s for this enjoyment.

A few months ago, I bought a compilation record/magazine called The Recorder. I found it for $2 at Jive Time in Fremont, noticed that there were three live Peter Gabriel songs on it (including a cover) and figured that those alone would be worth the two dollars.

I finally got around to listening to it an while the Peter Gabriel songs were quite fun, the real gem was the three opening songs by a band called Fish Food.

I’m not so good at reviewing music, so I’ll let the band introduce themselves to you…

Fish Food are a band are an aid, first to be the second coming round the mountain Diagram fingers spiced with many flavoured fingers from dressing gown chord sequences, aluminium crayfish savim, monkeys leap from limb to limb for five pence in the RSPCA jungle sale. Step lightly down the street, you don’t know who you’ll meet cleaving an enormous crevasse in a broken heart from which a flower grew, with metals soft as velvet and a colour so rich, deep and beautiful that the insects dared not land on it.

And honestly, that does sum them up rather well.

Fish Food (or Fishfood) was formed by four fellows from Bristol, England (about 100 miles west of London). It features Howard Purse on guitar, Doug White on Bass, Danny Duck on drums, and a local poet, here named only Andy (but it’s really Andy Fairley).

The three songs on this comp are all they ever wrote and recorded. They played a few times around Bristol, opening for the sort of legendary punk band The Slits.

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“Dry Ice Hot” starts us off. It’s been described as “Talking Heads gone in a wonky post-punk direction” and I guess that’s sort of true. The thing that struck me with both are the vocals. Andy sounds nothing like David Byrne, of course, but he is … distinct. You can’t really hear all that’s going on vocally, I think my mind shut out a lot of it – only bits seeped in. “Kind of pinched or squeezed at the corners and edges” was repeated a lot at varying urgencies. I think somewhere in there I fell in love with it.

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The second song “Seventeen Eels” is a short piece about seventeen eels in a red barrel. It describes the scene very accurately. There are seventeen eels in a red barrel. They squirm and bite, etc.

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But the real genius hits during the sarcastic “Modern Dance Craze.” Where the music in the other two songs was chaotic and harsh, there’s a jangly guitar and soft drums over Andy’s urging for us to “do the modern dance craze.” His urging does grow more frequent and you really do get the feeling that he wants us to be “grooving and be-bopping, getting with it and staying sharp, being cool on the scene” while we do this modern dance craze. As we acquiesce and give into this modern dance craze, we are rewarded for our triumph: “Oh that’s lovely, you’re really grooving it and digging it and loving the music. And we’re really having a lot of fun here tonight because we’re doing the new modern dance craze.” Andy even gives suggestions, “Oh that’s lovely, the modern dance craze, shake your butts, yeah.”

I don’t really have much to compare this to. Maybe TV Personalities if they weren’t so influenced by early Pink Floyd would have done something like this. And what’s more is I’m not sure who would like this. I do, of course, but this is something you either think is total crap or you love it to death and wish there was more.

The band broke up shortly after this recording and Howard Purse (who seemed to be the driving musical force in the group) put together a band called Animal Magic. After their demise, Purse got back together with Andy the poet/vocalist, forming the band Birth of Sharon.

I’ve not been able to find anything on them, though a reviewer says they sound like “Gang Of 4 trying to have fun.”¹

ITunes seems to have both The Recorder and a split download compilation of Fishfood and Birth of Sharon. Being on Linux, I can’t really access the iTunes store and really wish people would either stop using it or provide an alternate, cross-platform and nonrestricted way to legally download songs.

These were put up by the (digital only?) label Bristol Archives Records, which plunders the vaults of the old Bristol scene, releasing the gems they find. It’s a great service, so thanks bunches, but what’s with the iTunes only thing?

Get Fishfood ripped by me right here.

Technical Information:
Media Used:
Vinyl LP from my personal collection.

SoundConverter 1.4.1
-Converted WAV to 320kbps MP3

1. The reviewer mentioned is this guy. [↩]

Honestly, I tend to forget about these guys quite a lot. I never owned anything by them and never saw them live. But for a few years around 1993 to 1995, they were on every mix tape that everyone made everywhere.

At the time, I think they sort of brought “screamo” to the forefront.

I remember by friends Bryon and Murray going to see them somewhere and when they came back, they were changed. This was probably 1994. After that, everyone dressed like old men. It’s true. I can’t remember why and I’m not really sure Lincoln was instrumental in this, but after they saw them play live, everything was different.

Lincoln was from Morgantown, WV (I had friends going there at the time, but I think I heard of them before that). Their first 7″ was on Watermark Records and their second two were on the now legendary Art Monk Construction records. Art Monk released some of the most amazing records of that time.

I’m still hunting down most of the Art Monk releases and still have none of the Lincoln releases. If anyone can help in this area, I’d be indebted to you (literally).

Lincoln released three records, all 7″s. I’ve been able to find MP3s of the seven songs.

Here they are for you now.

Watermark 7″
Union
Grade Curve
Stop Means Stop
Seed

Two Headed Coin (Split with Hoover)
Benchwarmer

Last 7″
Sugarloaf
Waterboy

Get them here.
I didn’t rip these from vinyl nor did I encode them. The quality, good or bad, isn’t my doing. Once I somehow manage to obtain these 7″s, I’ll rip them proper (as proper as I can, anyway).

You can listen here…

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= Union

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= Benchwarmer

Most, when they think of Duran Duran, probably flash back to extravagant 80s videos filmed in Sri Lanka, dances songs and five boys in make up. And while that’s mostly certainly delightful and true, there was another side to Duran Duran that most didn’t get the chance to hear.

These darker songs were overshadowed by songs like “Rio,” “Girls on Film” and “Ordinary World.” Though the latter makes an odd appearance on this mix, for the most part, these songs were not hits, are hardly remembered, but are generally beloved by fans.

Some were album cuts, some b-sides and others never even made it that far. For this Halloween season, I thought I’d focus on a slightly darker version of an 80s dance band.

This mix probably isn’t for everybody, but I’m betting even folks who don’t particularly care for Duran will like a good bit of it. The songs here span from 1979 to fairly close to the present day.

A few rarities grace this mix. “Salt in the Rainbow” is a demo from 2004’s Astronaut LP. It was the first time all five original members had worked together since 1985. Another demo, “Reincarnation,” is from 1979’s demo tape and features Andy Wickett (then known as Fane) on vocals. Of course, there’s the slew of B-sides from 1981’s “Late Bar” and “Khanada” to 2004’s “Know it All.”

Only one single appears on this collection. It’s “Ordinary World,” but here it’s an acoustic version.

The last song is a little mix that I put together combining two or three different versions of “The Chauffeur.” I called it “Drive By (Silver).” It’s not exactly a perfect mix, but it’s listen-able enough.

Go Get It Here! (174MB)

I’m using a new file hosting service called Megaupload (new to me, I mean). If you have any problems with it, just let me know. It’s easy! Just click the link, put in the little “captcha code,” hit enter and then choose “regular download,” ignore the ads (sorry) and download it to your desktop.

It’s a zip file, so everyone in the universe should be able to open it.

–

Here are a handful of songs…

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Salt in the Rainbow

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To The Shore

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Khanada

Previous In Between Mixes
Please Be Upstanding – Tracing a Relationship through the Songs of XTC (2009.1)
Hurrah without the “H” – Spring mix CD for you! (2009.2)
Hot Sun Beating on a Black Top – Road Trip Mix (2009.3)
True Till College – My Favorite Drinking Songs (2009.4)

Smartz returned from a trip to Pennsylvania this week with quite a bounty!

She not only found this very wonderful painting…

But she also found two records that you really wouldn’t expect to find in central PA.

The first was for her and is the very German version of Peter Schilling’s “Major Tom (Vollig Losgelost)” with “Ich Hab’ Keine Lust” as the flip side. “Major Tom” is the unasked-for sequel/retelling of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” I’ve always thought it was an ok song, but Smartz really likes it.

She also found the 12″ single for Sparks’s “Progress,” a mid-80s Devo-inspired bit of fun. It’s definitely not the best Sparks song in the world, but it’s worth a listen.

You can check out both of these songs below. Neither have been cleaned up and “Coming Home” is pretty crackly, but that doesn’t take away the fun…

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Want to hear a few songs from the new mix? I used to post songs from the mixes on my blog, but at some point I got away from it.

Here’s the entire track list…

1. Paddlefoot – Whiskey Before Breakfast
2. The Pogues – Waxie’s Dargle
3. Royal Fingerbowl – Big Whiskey
4. Mojo Nixon – Are You Drinkin’ With Me, Jesus?
5. Dean Martin – Little Ole Wine Drinker, Me
6. Spike Jones – Clink Clink Another Drink
7. The Handsome Family – Water Into Wine
8. Against Me! – Pints of Guinness Make You Strong
9. Jolly Rogers – All For Me Grog
10. They Might Be Giants – Drink!
11. Crucial Youth – Just One Beer
12. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins – Alligator Wine
13. Mothers Of Invention – American Drinks & Goes Home
14. Frankie Yankolvic – Beer Barrel Polka
15. The Replacements – Beer For Breakfast
16. Johnny Paycheck – Fifteen Beers
17. Frank Sinatra – One For My Baby
18. Elmer – Hangover of Love
19. Alseep At The Wheel – The Letter That Johnny Walker Read
20. Clean Living – In Heaven There Is No Beer
21. Tex Ritter – Rye Whiskey
22. Three Dead Trolls In A Baggie – A Dublin Lullaby
23. Jerry Lee Lewis – What Made Milwaukee Famous
24. Tom Waits – The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)
25. Gang Green – Ballad
26. Jr. Gone Wild – Sixpack
27. David Byrne – The Man Who Loved Beer

And here, you can listen to some…

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Mojo Nixon – Are You Drinkin’ With Me, Jesus?

Get the whole mix here!

Ok, nice sampling? Enjoy!