A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy about 300 km from Here

When I was a kid my buddy Brad and I had an imaginary radio station called WIMP. We had a little microphone and a tape player and we’d fool around in between songs and then listen back and imagine it was hilarious. (Since none of these tapes survive, and only he and I really heard them, I suppose they WERE hilarious.)

One of the silly things we really enjoyed was taking his Story of Star Wars record and primitively looping a Ben Kenobi line so it said “…you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy … scum … scum … scum.. scum… scum … scum … scum and villainy.” Ha! It’s still funny! Oh baby!

Anyway, I found the Story of Star Wars in a filediving session on Soulseek. Here you go.

The Story of Star Wars (side one)

The Story of Star Wars (side two)

The Line Forms on the Right, Babe

I saw the film Beyond the Sea awhile ago, mainly because I dig Kevin Spacey, and enjoyed some of the music a lot, but never hunted any down. Turns out I have had it in my collection for 20 years or so – an old raggedy LP called That’s All with a disintegrating sleeve and my father’s name on the label, in my mother’s handwriting – and have never listened to it once. Over the break I pulled it out for the first time, having just gotten into this crazy Ames Brothers record (Destination Moon) – and it’s really great. Here’s a couple of tracks:

Mack the Knife

Beyond the Sea

And here: I was looking for the Steve Martin bit where he riffs on one line of Mack the Knife for five minutes, and found this instead. Fuckin youtube rules, doesn’t it?

Everybody’s Talking about The Wire. Including Me.

I’ve been happily wrapped up in The Wire for the last month or two, which sports Tom Waits’ Way Down In The Hole (from Frank’s Wild Years) as its theme – sung each season by a different artist.

The best cover is from the fourth season – concerned with the sad-ass school system in the USA and the brutalizing No Child Left Behind clusterfork – and is sung by “…a group called “DoMaJe”, made up of five Baltimore teenagers: Ivan Ashford, Markel Steele, Cameron Brown, Tariq Al-Sabir, and Avery Bargasse.” (quotation from Wikipedia). It’s an incredible take, and I wish they did a full version of the tune. In fact, I’d like to hear them sing anything.

Anyway, here are four of the five themes – I’m missing the fifth season’s Steve Earle take – starting with mister Waits’ TV version. An interesting look at interpretation, in easily digestible two minute tracks! No time wasted!

Tom Waits’ Way Down In the Hole (Wire theme version, second season)

Blind Boys of Alabama version (first season)

Neville Brothers version (third season)

DoMaJe version (fourth season)

Read about it all on Wikipedia.

The January Blues

Can you tell I’ve been unmotivated to write here lately? Gentle imaginary reader, let me assure you that I miss you as much as you miss me. Here’s a little ditty by No No Zero, a Toronto band who’ll be performing at the Silver Dollar on January 26th. They’ll blast through 500 songs in 30 minutes without pause, and the songs will generally resemble this one:

Why Won’t You Let Me Fuck You?

Read about the band at their site – www.nonozero.com – and be sure to check out the photos of pond scum, which are seriously and surprisingly beautiful. You can also hear a few more of the tracks from Rough Stuff.

Now buzz off.

I Think I’ve Found My Theme Song

Nuff said.

Again with the Mister Rogers..!

Nothing to say: check it out.

Vegetable Band

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This’ll be all over the place today, but I must share it my own self: just watch this video. A great thing.