The very young need the sun - 2/8 show

We have been having miserable, miserable weather lately. We'll have a big snowstorm, then a little more snow, and then a little more snow, and then a rainstorm, and then snow again. This week we had sleet, which collected in the form of slush, which then turned into snow. All around the city there was an inch of ice adhering to sidewalks, streets and what-have-you. It is time for an escape!

One way I used to escape from winter, in college, was to listen to Haircut One Hundred. The sunny, Caribbean-influenced pop makes me feel like I'm in Florida, somehow. So I played them on today's show, and tried to pick a number of other sunny, summery-or-warm-climate tunes.

I wanted to start with "The Tide Is High", by Blondie, but it turned out we don't have that album at the station (though we have four others), so I played "Pretty Baby", from Parallel Lines — a very sunny song, though it lacks the Caribbean/Reggae influence of "The Tide Is High".

"Bubbles", by Free Design, is also not specifically a summer-or-warm-climate song, but it has a cheerful sunny sound. Free Design was a jazz-pop group from the late 60's and early 70's, made up of 5 brothers and sisters. "Bubbles", about the pleasures of bubble gum (seriously), shows strong jazz-vocal influences, while being, at the same time, almost saccharine sweet. It would be a bit much to listen to a whole album, but they are awfully fun mixed in with other music.

Sergent Garcia, on the other hand, is really warm-climate music. This Paris-based group (which I discovered in 1999) mixes Afro-Cuban sounds with Hip-Hop. The lyrics are mostly in Spanish, and the beat is infectious — you've just got to move your body when you listen. "Jumpi" is one of my favorite songs from the album, and it features raps in both French and Spanish.

Ojos de Brujo is a band I discovered more recently, while in Spain. They describe their music as "Nuevo Flamenco", and it combines Flamenco with various modern pop and dance sounds. "Color" is particularly wild, with funky, jerky beats.

Josephine Baker's "Don't Touch Me Tomatoes" is a song I found on a compilation I bought for Eric years ago, called Divas Exotica. The quality of the sound in this song is much better than on the Josephine Baker boxed set we also have, and her voice is deeper as well; I think it must have come from one of her later performance, in the 60's or 70's (when she was, herself in her 60's). It's got great Caribbean flair.

The The B-52s' 1989 album Cosmic Thing is, to me, very much a summer album. In an interview, one of them explained the album by saying something along the lines of, "some people stay in Athens, Georgia and write about living in New York; we were in New York and writing Athens, Georgia." Any number of songs on it have a real hot summer feel. "Junebug" is by no means the best song on the album, but it's fun, and a really good party tune. (Sample lyric: "go go go go go-go-go, whoah whoah whoah whoah whoah-whoah-whoah!")

And finally, I did choose Le Tigre's "Dyke March 2001" on the grounds that the Dyke March is in June. The version I played is perhaps a bit repetitive (I should check out the original, non-remixed version), but it's still pretty amusing. It's a techno-dance beat, with a sample of a woman saying, somewhat earnestly, "I like to come to the dyke march because I like to be surrounded by..."; the sentence is alternately finished with "women", "naked ladies", and occasionally "feminist fury". (I'm not sure if the original version's lines are mixed up the same way.)

*: new stuff
(r): requests

artist	song	album	label
Blondie	Pretty Baby	Parallel Lines	Chrysalis
Free Design	Bubbles	Kites Are Fun (The Best of Free Design)	Varese Saraband
*Hello Blue Roses	St. Angela	The Portrait Is Finished and I Have Failed to Capture Your Beauty	Locust
Keep feat. Yukimi Nagano	Summer Sun	Waltz for Koop	Quango
Count Basie	Love Me or Leave Me	The Essential Count Basie Vol 1	Columbia
*Dengue Fever	Sober Driver	Venus on Earth	M80
Haircut One Hundred	Love Plus One / Pelican West	Arista
*Ghislain Poirier feat. Ambitieux, DJ Netik	Ladies & Gentlemen	No Ground Under	Ninja Tune
Sergent Garcia	Jumpi	Un Poquito Quema'o	Virgin
Josephine Baker	Don't Touch Me Tomatoes	Divas Exotica	Capitol
*Spiller Whale	Raptures & Drynesses	Fresh Tables EP	Uncle Grandpa
Royce feat. Robust	Girls on Bikes	Tuff Love	Galapagos4
*The Whitsundays	Antisocial	The Whitsundays	Friendly Fire
Ojos de Brujo	Color	Techarí	Diquela
The Dials	Nothing but Crazy	Flex Time	Latest Flame
The B-52's	Junebug	Cosmic Thing	Reprise
The Gossip	Standing in the Way of Control	Standing in the Way of Control	Kill Rock Stars
Le Tigre	Dyke March 2001 (Reid's Afro-Dykey Mix)	Remix	Mr. Lady
*Ungdomskulen	Modern Drummer	Cry-Baby	Ever
Frank Zappa	Valley Girl	Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch	Barking Pumpkin Records
(r)Out Hud	The Stoked America	Let Us Never Speak of This Again	Kranky
*Rafter	Chances	Sex Death Cassette	Asthmatic Kitty
*Yeasayer	Forgiveness	All Hour Cymbals	We Are Free
*Sam Shalabi	Jessica Simpson	Eid	Alien8
Mucca Pazza	Alarm!	A Little Marching Band	Self-released
*Valet	Fire	The Second Marriage Records Compilation	Marriage Records

Labels: music, playlists

posted by Tony at 5:23 PM