Behold The Power of the Exclamation Point!!

March 28th, 2006

Ultravox!

With Midge Urge guiding them, Ultravox was one the of the earliest new wave bands to fully embrace synthesizers as the “sound of the future” – churning out some awesome new wave classics such as “Vienna” and “Reap The Wild Wind.” But before Urge joined their ranks, Ultravox was Ultravox! (note the exclamation point) and featured an energetic Roxy Music meets Talking Heads sound. After three unsuccessful albums in two years, lead singer/keyboardist John Foxx and guitarist Robin Simon quit…and must have taken the exclamation point with them. It turned out to be their loss as the remaining members recruited Midge Urge, and together they churned out several hits before disbanding for good a few years later. As much as I love Midge Urge, I think Ultravox was even better with John Foxx as the lead, with a good combo of punk aggression and new wave chillness.

Here are some of cuts from their 1981 self-titled live mini-LP. I don’t think most of these are available on CD, at least not in these live versions.

My Sex
Man Who Dies
Quirks
Wild Beautiful And The Damned

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This Bitch Is My Recital

March 20th, 2006

DMC has a new album out – everyone should buy it.

Run-D.M.C. are without a doubt the greatest rap artists of all time. No contest, no debate, it’s scientific fact. Everyone’s allowed to have an opinion, but you can’t argue this, not at all. You like rap music? You listen to rap stations on the radio and watch rap videos on MTV? Without Run-D.M.C. there’s a good chance none of that would exist.

Run-D.M.C. was the first rap group to:
Go gold, platinum and multi-platinum
Get a Grammy Nomination
Perform on SNL
Perform on MTV
Appear on the cover of Rolling Stone
Have a number one single on the R&B charts
Have an album break the Top Ten

Yea, so to say they were influential is a little bit of an understatement. They INVENTED modern rap and are solely responsible for getting it into the mainstream. Check out an innovator and pick up DMC’s new album, Checks, Thugs And Rock And Roll. While your at it get Rev Run’s solo debut, Distortion.

I’m breaking from form a bit and putting up a track off of DMC’s latest, called ‘Machine Gun.’ It’s a hardcore anti-war song, something that rap has been severly lacking these days. Below that is the 12-inch Scratchapella remix of ‘It’s Tricky’ that features Run and DMC rhyming over Jay’s scratches with no added effects. In my opnion it’s better than the original.

DMC – Machine Gun
Run-D.M.C. – It’s Tricky (Scratchapella Remix).mp3

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Moog Monday

March 13th, 2006

Moog.

Mooooooog.

Mooooooooooooooooooooooog.

Moog is the only musical instrument that’s as much fun to say as it is to listen to. Thank god that Dr. Robert Moog invented it and not some dude with a name like Smith, Jones or Kragnowski.

The world’s first popular electronic instrument, the Moog synthesizer was invented in 1964, and was first used in mainstream pop music in 1967 by none other than The Monkees on their album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. The Beatles (who were always ripping off The Monkees success), followed suit and used the Moog on Abbey Road just two years later.)

The moog came into its own as a musical instrument a year earlier however, with Walter Carlos’ Switched-On Bach, an all-Moog reinterpretation of some of Bach’s most well-known works. In the wake of the incredibly unlikely success of Switched-On Bach (it sold over a million copies), a flood of moog imitators followed, all of whom took classical or modern compositions and re-imagined them in Moog form, while occasionally adding in their own (vastly inferior) compositions to the mix.

None of theme ever came close to the beauty of Carlos’ creations. And his Moog recordings remain some of the most recognizable to this day. He even went onto become a well-respected film composer, working with Stanley Kubrick on A Clockwork Orange And The Shining, and even worked with Disney, creating the score for Tron. Technically speaking, Walter Carlos only worked on A Clockwork Orange…beacuse a year later Walter went under the knife and became Wendy Carlos…I’m not joking.

While Moog interpretations of classical music can be enjoyable, I’ve always enjoyed Moog pop remakes much more. One of the most Moog-covered bands was The Beatles, and I’ve included three hard-to-find electronic remakes of Beatles classics for your enjoyment. The first is an amazing take on “Eleanor Rigby” by Ms. Carlos, and the other two are by 1950s-60s pop-pianist Marty Gold. I’ve included his version of “Eleanor Rigby” so it can be compared to Carlos’ as well as his awesome take on “Daytripper”. Carlos’ version of “Eleanor Rigby” is available on various CD collections, but Gold’s Moogalicious remakes (both off his incredibly imaginatively named album, Moog Beatles) sadly remain unreleased on CD.

Wendy Carlos – Eleanor Rigby
Marty Gold – Eleanor Rigby
Marty Gold – Daytripper

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Dropping The Needle

March 9th, 2006

Introductions suck so I’ll keep this brief. Vinyl rules, and this MP3 blog will serve as proof. The majority of what I post here will be music that is largely unavailable on CD, recorded straight from the groove and onto your hard drive. (If you want to know how to record vinyl this is a good starting point). Not all of it will be old, not all of it will be good, but I promise all of it will be interesting.

Enough talking let’s get rocking. Since this is my first post I figured I’d start things off with a bang, a nuclear bang to be exact. When The Wind Blows (1986) was a British animated drama based on the book of the same name, and tells the story of a cute elderly couple living contently in the countryside – until WWIII breaks out and they both die of radiation poisoning.

Cheery flick.

Anyways, as one of the few Western animated films from the period that was not made for kids (no shit), When The Wind Blows has remained a curiosity for many animation fans since its all-too-brief release in 1986. And it has becoming increasingly hard to track down over the years, receiving only a limited VHS release in America and has yet to be released anywhere on DVD.

Equally hard-to-find is its soundtrack, featuring a title track by the one-and-only David Bowie. I’ll be the first to admit that Bowie’s output in the 80s wasn’t perfect, but this gem of a single has unfairly been neglected since its original release. It finally saw a CD release in America this year, on Bowie’s newest greatest hits package, The Platinum Collection, but that’s really a needless purchase for the die-hard Bowie fans out there who already have every other song on that three-disc set. Also, the version on CD, and even the version on the original soundtrack, is shortened to only three minutes. The extended cut was released (wait for it…) on Japanese import only – and that’s the version I’m sharing with your today (along with the instrumental version). Enjoy the extended Bowie goodness and welcome to The Lost Turntable.

When The Wind Blows (ExtendedMix)
When The Wind Blows (Instrumental)


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