Get everyone to sing and shake their Junk because it's Friday!

sets the mood.

^ogod

White Stripes – Icky Thump and everything I could find on youtube.
I don’t really like rock’n’roll much (I prefer funk and soul and trance; and cowboys/cowgirls, sometimes, too) but this is as good as anything I’ve ever heard ever. Ever.

Eels – Meet the Eels CD/DVD
Most AOR stuff that my contemporaries enthuse about is too damn whiney, timid and middle-brow. This skirts that but I enjoy the frequent meta “step back” the production takes – and I like where E is coming from. And his dog :)

^{Gods, that doesn’t sound very positive, does it? Anyway, I loved both these bands and will certainly be playing little else for the foreseeable future}

Yesterday I found myself singing “I Wanna Be A Lifeguard” which was the B-side of one of the first records I owned (“I’m Popeye the Sailor Man”, on multi-coloured 78rpm vinyl), that I played on a battery-operated red plastic record player with a real needle (spares came in tins of 50). This would be around the early 60s.

I wanna be a lifeguard,
Just a public-servin’, life-preservin’ man.
I wanna be a lifeguard
With a million-dollar coat of tan.
I’ll sit up high on top of the waves
And keep my eye on every cutie while on duty -
So, if you want a lifeguard,
You can bet your life that I’m your man.

^{I tried to google for it but, apart from an incomplete lyric and a different song by some band called Blotto, no joy.}

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.

I roamed and I rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
While all around me a voice was sounding
Saying this land was made for you and me.

The sun came shining, and I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
As the fog was lifting, A voice was chanting,
This land was made for you and me.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I’d seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the back side it didn’t say nothing;
That side was made for you and me.

Happy Independence Day, USA!

Jamiroquai

but I was downloading Little Feat iTunes for Mme Lupin and felt the need to mess around with Willin’ on the dobro.

I can’t sing (not that that ever stopped me) and Linda Ronstadt makes a more convincing trucker than me, of course, but I bought some bike panniers recently – that counts, right?

Maybe best not mention any of this to Uncle Enore :D

Shadows on the mountain, and the night begins to fall;
Gather up the children, ‘fore the darkness takes us all.
Tribe has come together, standin’ naked against the night;
Twenty feet from the fire, the evil waits with zombie eyes.

Eye-eye-eye eye of the Zombie!
Eye-eye-eye eye of the Zombie!

Oh! Sneakin’ through the long grass on leopard feet silently,
A beast already dead comes to join the dance on the zombie.
Ooh! Time has come again – again the moment of truth;
The terror is at hand, and there’s nothin’ you can do.

Eye-eye-eye eye of the Zombie!
Eye-eye-eye eye of the Zombie!

From out of nowhere he’s there, flashing hideous teeth,
Panic in the crowd, helter-skelter, we’re brought to our knees.
Back to the darkness, back on the mountain he stands,
You can’t fight a shadow, you can’t kill a dead man.

Eye of the Zombie, by John Fogerty

Around the time today’s tune was released, I was a bass-player in a group A Long Way Down The Bill at a festival where these people were headlining. They were the most boring live act I’ve ever seen :)

I’ve been plundering Mme Lupin’s iTunes this week and stole this for my iPod Shuffle – I’ve been playing it non-stop because it fits my current state of mind.

I know I’ve reminisced about this before but it’s what I’ve been shaking my junk along to today and I just want to testify.

Blossom Dearie

well, it isn’t apple blossom time here for a couple of months but I’m sure it is somewhere.

Has anybody here seen my old friend Abraham?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
You know, I just looked around and he’s gone.

Anybody here seen my old friend John?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
I just looked around and he’s gone.

Anybody here seen my old friend Martin?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
I just looked ‘round and he’s gone.

Didn’t you love the things that they stood for?
Didn’t they try to find some good for you and me?
And we’ll be free
Some day soon, and it’s a-gonna be one day …

Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
I thought I saw him walk up over the hill,
With Abraham, Martin and John.

by Richard Holler