Blue Kiss - Jane Wiedlin

Always my favorite Go Go.  Love the vulnerability in her voice.  It contrasts her strength and confidence as a writer and performer.

Sandy

Yesterday and today we've been dealing with Hurricane Sandy passing through these parts. Very scary wind gusts and we list power for about 5 hours yesterday evening. But we are OK. Today will be some cleaning up around the yard and hopefully back to a normal schedule tomorrow.

Galbi - Ofra Haza

[link] Israeli singer Ofra Haza, who died in 2000 of cimplications from AIDS, was huge on college radio in the 90's. She probably would have been even bigger today had she survived. Her stunning voice and exotic (to the western ear) genre stylings are perfectly suited to the way world pop has gone since then.

The Battle of New Orleans - Johnny Horton

A blast from my childhood.  One of my Dad's favorite songs.  Just learned it (pretty easy).  I'll have to play it for him sometime.

Don't Let Him Go - REO Speedwagon

A blast from my hard rock past.  I like the rhythm - very tight on the bottom between the rhythm guitar, bass, keyboards, and drums.  The little keyboard figures in the chorus have always been infectious for me. (Although you can have the solo.)

Camptown Races - Johnny Cash

One of Ru-Jun's and my old favorites.  I like the lyrics of this version and Cash's facial expressions are great here.  The people in the background are funny.

Lady - Little River Band

From 1978. A blast from my youth.  Deep pop atmospherics here.  High narrative content in the chord progression and instrumentation/production.  Particularly in the verse.  In the chorus, the vocal harmonies take over the song (in a good way but the atmosphere isn't there like in the verse). The jazzy verse-break about 2/3 of the way through sort of reduces the impact for me.  But it was an arrangement of its time, so that kind of thing probably couldn't be avoided...

North, South, East, West - the Church

One from the times of Saturday nights alone with a 6 of Rolling Rock, writing and sitting on the back steps of the apartment in Durham.  Kind of which I knew how to play uke back then.

Considering a banjo set

Songs like When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again and Frankie and Johnnie.

Soma Holiday - G.O.L.

One of the find from my since-2007 or so exploration of ambient (thanks to Groove Salad).  There is so much good stuff meshing in this song: low-mid tempo, juicy synth bass line, reggae-ish keyboard beat, beautiful synth washes.  Lush yet despondent vocal.  It doesn't get much better than this.

Steel Town - Big Country

The cover track of their best album (IMHO).  Great great great work. Listened to it incessantly in 1984-1985. Huge influence of mine.

Hard to record

In the evenings these days. Too little time and Ru-Jun is too demanding of my time most nights.

Walking the Floor

Here's my cover of the Ernest Tubb classic.  I first saw this song in the movie Coal Miner's Daughter, performed at the Grand Ole Opry by Tubb himself IIRC.
The string situation is not good on the banjo uke.  I think it can sound a lot better than this.  The kazoo is a custom made one made for me by Doc Kazoo.

Banjo uke

With some help from the store I bought it from (Elderly Instruments), i was able to get a string set that sort of works. The high strings are too tight and the low strings are too loose such that things don't want to stay tuned at all, but I have to play around with it more. The few moments I had it in tune it sounded cool. I had no idea my tuning would be so problematic for this instrument.

Jackie Blue - Ozark Mountain Daredevils

From 1975. Another song that takes me back. Never saw this band on TV or anything before. Interesting that the drummer does the lead vocal. In tge video you can see how restrained the composition and playing are for rock. I really like the transition between the minor A part and the major resolution in the B part. Nice songwriting.

Blister

Played Stickleback and BFBB for my intro bio class today (about 330 students were present) and it went pretty well.  I'll try to get the Echo video clips and put them up on Youtube.  Only thing that went wrong, which I realized a bit later, was that I gave myself a blister.  I was using the acoustic electric, which I'm still not used to and my hand was sweaty.  I guess I should get used to this, from what I've heard from guitarists I know.

Theme 1

Something I've been jamming on recently.

I'm Not in Love - 10cc

This song (from 1975) always struck me as innovative for pop of the time.  The structure of the song is pretty conventional.  The production seemed pretty experimental for pop.  It hasn't aged badly, in my opinion.

Dave Loggins - Please Come to Boston

Always liked this song.  From 1974.  I spent a lot of 70s listening to top 40 on an AM transistor radio something like this one.

Picked up a Beatles song

Eight Days a Week.  Pretty easy learn.  Everybody knows it.  I've always liked their earler poppy stuff better than their later, darker, complex stuff.

BFBB video

[link] Finally got a chance to record it this evening.

BFBB full lyrics

When you're out there every day
Flying above the waves
With fish as your pay
And there's no other way
You've got the blue-footed booby blues

And then you go home
You feed the hatchlings some bones
Your mate's been with them alone
In the nest on the stone
You've got the blue-footed booby blues
Yeah you've got the blue-footed booby blues

[chorus]
So Blue, So Blue
Why is the world so blue?
The sea and the sky
My feet and my eyes
There sure is a whole lot of blue

The horizon doesn't move
Some days you win some days you lose
It's all you can do
You're just a spot against the gloom
You've got the blue-footed booby blues

The days just advance
And you finally get your chance
To do your little dance
But you've lost the romance
You've got the blue-footed booby blues

[chorus 2x]

The Model - Kraftwerk

[link] It's hard to do much else in a genre after its inventor pioneers it, defines it, and elaborates it close to its complete potential. 

My Little Stickleback

A song that goes back even before Megachild, when the basement band went through a bunch of names. Just picked it up on the uke.  Here are the full lyrics:

V1
Little fish about three inches long
That's the reason why I'm singing this song
Kinda ugly and it's got big eyes
And it's got - three little spines

V2
Alaska's got a lot of lakes
Thousands of years ago the glaciers made them
And from the ocean little fish came in
In each lake - It's happenin'

Chorus
Oh, my little stickleback
You truly amaze me
On, my little stickleback
How you evolve so rapidly
Oh, my little stickleback
Evolution is so cool

V3
Up in the water there are many dangers
That's why they've got these little pelvic spines
And they've got armor plates too
If you lived up there - so would you

V4
Down in the bottom you don't need armor
Not many predators can find you there
So all the plates of the ocean cousins
Disappeared from the benthic dwellers

Chorus

V5
Someday soon we'll understand
The genes and processes that made you so grand
All these adaptations gave you such fame
Gasterosteus aculeatus - remember that name

Chorus

BFBB

The Blue-Footed Booby Blues is a song I wrote for Megachild.  It was pretty easy to learn it on the Uke but it was a little short (the Megachild version has a guitar solo).  So I wrote another stanza:

The horizon never moves
Some days you win, some days you lose
And it's all you can do
You're just a speck in the gloom
You've got the blue-footed booby blues

Seattle - Public Image Limited

This song was a revelation when I discovered it.  Great hard rock high end, beautiful mid tempo dance groove. Lydon's voice is the complementary acid edge of the buttery rhythm track.

Imitation of Christ - Psychedelic Furs

Earlier and rawer Furs. The live version is very similar in sound to the studio version. All the shards of the raw production, especially the whirling guitar grind and the throbbing sax, create a live garden of murk for the song to slither through.

Love My Way - Psychedelic Furs

From 1982. Every once in a while the pop chart is absolutely right about a song. This song is unconventional enough in structure, lyrical phrasing, and instrumentation that its hook became an instant classic.

Another for the set list

Evangeline by Icicle Works. Learned and memorized. The vocal nuance is the key to that song.