Faithful visitors to this blog may remember a time, nearly 350 days ago, when I attempted to post 60 songs throughout the course of November. All was going well and I was on track to complete my task when suddenly, in a post about Jenny Lewis's cover of the Travelling Wilburys' "Handle With Care," STEREOGUM linked to my site where the original was hosted. Literally thousands of people visited PIMPS OF GORE in a matter of hours, and my bandwidth for the month was kaput.
I found it a little bit amusing that my site was crippled not because I posted some rare Decemberists track or a leaked single from The Shins, but because I was unhip enough to post a decades-old song from an album that pretty much no hipster or person under the age of 30 had talked about since it had gone out of print. While I'm pretty sure I'll be safe this time around (my hosting service allows about 10 times more file transfers than the one I was using last year), I like to imagine what song might bring my site down this year.
My idea for this whole November thing is basically that I need to post 2 songs a day. You same faithful visitors know by this point that I have a crippling inability to post in a timely fashion. Hell, we're over 2 weeks into the month and this is my first posting on the matter. So basically, I'm down to this: stay tuned in the next two weeks for a couple of extremely massive posts. Get your Right Click button ready, kids:
"Not Tonight" by MATT SHARP w/MAYA RUDOLPH: Yeah, the Maya Rudolph from
Saturday Night Live. Did you know she was Minnie Riperton's daughter (I use the past tense because Minnie is dead)? I like to imagine her doing her imitation of Christina Aguilera while recording the backing vocals here. And yeah, Matt Sharp, the goofy old bassist for Weezer. Apparently, Rudolph was a member of Sharp's group The Rentals before she made it to SNL. Nutty. Anyway, this is their fantastic cover of a Tegan and Sarah song.
"You Send Me""I Have Learned to Do Without You" by MAVIS STAPLES: I've mentioned Mavis and the Staples Singers - her family's gospel/R&B band, lead by patriarch "Pops" Staples - here before, but have never posted anything from any of her solo recordings. These two tracks come from her self titled debut and her second solo album,
Only for the Lonely, which you can now find paired together on a single disc. I highly rec' seeking that, as both records are fantastic. "You Send Me" is a cover of the Sam Cooke classic. While no one will probably ever top Cooke's rendition, Mavis sings the holy shit out of it here.
"I Want You Back" by DAVID RUFFIN: David Ruffin's may be one of the most heartbreaking stories to come out of Motown. As backing vocalist - and then, eventually - lead vocalist for the mighty Temptations, Ruffin was poised to be a massive star. If you're wondering if you know his voice, think of "My Girl" or "Ain't too Proud to Beg." For various reasons, from his ego to his cocaine use, Ruffin was dismissed from the Temps. As Ruffin eventually left Motown for Warner Brothers and RCA, his cocaine addiction continued. While he had a few minor solo hits (hunt down the incredible "My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me"), his career never reached the heights it should have, especially when you consider this slamming take on that old Jackson 5 nugget, "I Want You Back," from the unreleased-until-2001 album
David.
"Bewildered" by JAMES BROWN: In my college years, I became a huge fan of James Brown, mainly because a friend of mine rolled through town for a visit with a cassette copy of
Spank in his car. After that weekend, I sought out Brown records from all eras of his career (my roommate had a particular, and odd, fondness for that song from
Rocky IV, "Livin' in America"). It wasn't until last year that I discovered a great 1960 record of Brown's entitled
Think!, which features tonight's amazing "Bewildered." The whole record is 100% R&B (James wouldn't start messing around with funk and dance for a few more years), and as far as I'm concerned, this track is the centerpiece. Listen to those vocals, his phrasing and that piercing decending guitar part.
"Betcha Got a Dude on the Side" by STAR QUALITY AND CLASS: A long while back, I posted a track from Latyrx (Lyrics Born and Lateef the Truth Speaker) called "Lady Don't Tek No." That track featured production from DJ Shadow that borrowed liberally from this original old school hip-hop track. About a year ago, a blog called
Cocaine Blunts posted this, so I'm sad to say I can't claim to have done the footwork myself. I've been following that site for years, so fans of hip-hop/rap should head over and check it out. Here's a link to Noz's
original post on both tracks.
"The Quickening" by LATYRX: Since we're on the subject, here's another classic track from the aforementioned Latyrx record,
The Album.
"Pause""Workinonit" by JAY DEE aka J-DILLA: I never get the chance to post enough about hip-hop. While I'm a huge fan, I just never feel qualified to write about it in the same way as the guys over at blogs like Cocaine Blunts or My iPod Weighs a Ton or dozens of others. I have a friend named Bill who would be an invaluable resource on the matter, but he doesn't write. (Now that I'm thinking about it, perhaps I'll invite him as a guest writer if he's up for the task some time.) Regardless, I always wanted to do a little write up of Jay Dee, especially after his recent passing. He was one of the most prolific and best producers of hip hop in the game, working on records from the likes of Black Star, Common, De La Soul, The Pharcyde (he produced "Runnin'", one of my all time favorites). . .even Four Tet! Not to mention his amazing collaborations with Madlib, put out under the moniker of Jaylib. And if he wasn't dishing out beats, he was cutting and rapping on his own amazing records, like
Donuts and the posthumously released
The Shining. Dude should have been a millionaire.
"The Worst Band in the World" by 10cc: I'm posting this track in conjunction with the Jay Dee track, "Workinonit." Listen to them back to back and you'll see why. How genius does a guy have to be to sample the shit out of a 10cc track, especially when it's one as hilarious and satirical as "The Worst Band in the World"?
"Human Abstract" by DAVID AXELROD: Dare I reference DJ Shadow one more time tonight? As most music geeks will tell you, if there had never been a David Axelrod, there would have never been
Endtroducing. Hell, there may not even have been a DJ Shadow. Axelrod was/is a revolutionary music producer/arranger, and once you've heard a few of his records, you can almost instantly spot his style: sweeping strings, thick bass and rolling drums, along with a ton of psychedelia. Tonight's track is taken from his second solo album, 1969's
Songs of Experience. Which brings us to. . .
"Holy Are You" by THE ELECTRIC PRUNES: While the Prunes are probably best known for "I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night" and a few other psych-rock favorites, the band itself was nowhere to be found on the record this track comes from,
Release of An Oath. The album is basically Axelrod, producer Dave Hassinger and some session musicians (thank Carol Kaye for that bomb-ass bassline here), but it's probably the coolest, most interesting thing the Prunes (n)ever recorded.
"Etienne D'aout" by MALAJUBE: One of tonight's few "new" (while
Trope-L'Oeil was released in February of this year, I'm fairly certain it didn't cross the US border for many months) songs comes from schizoid Montreal indie rockers Malajube, who began popping up on blogs a while back. Pinpointing a sound or genre to describe this band is virtually impossible, so all I'm left to do is recommend you check the record out for yourself if you like this track.
"Battle Brigades" by THE FOUNDRY FIELD RECORDINGS: I went to school at the University of Missouri, in Columbia, MO. While the music scene there was great as far as seeing touring bands pass through town, there was never a band like The Foundry Field Recordings when I lived there. As a matter of fact, before I discovered they were from Columbia, MO, I imagined them being from somewhere more exotic, like Vancouver, or Spain or some shit. My hat is definitely off to them, especially after hearing this song on a blog a few months ago. For more info, visit their
website.
"The Dark End of the Street" by JAMES CARR: I helped manage a huge record store in downtown Chicago called Crow's Nest a few years ago. After the holiday season, our store lost its lease and we spent the next three months liquidating our massive inventory. While the store's normal policy for playing music on the overhead speakers was pretty strict, I conspired with the employees and two other managers to declare one of the Fridays before the store's close "Black Friday." Nothing but black music for 12 straight hours. It was easily one of the most fun days I had ever worked, and that experience was highlighted (highlit?) by the reaction to a number of customers to this classic by James Carr. This chilling, soulful beauty basically stopped traffic, and a ton of people came up to me asking, "Who
is this?!" While I've posted one or two other versions of "Dark End" on Pimps, this one is the definitive.
"I'm Your Puppet" by JAMES & BOBBY PURIFY: I used to hate this song. Now, I have absolutely no reason or explanation why I may have felt that way. I think it should be played at every wedding, and I recently dropped it into my set as I DJ'ed my friend Andy's wedding in Kentucky. (Trivia: James and "Bobby" Purify were not brothers. According to Wikipedia, "Bobby Purify was actually two different singers; the first was James's cousin Robert Lee Dickey. The second Bobby was vocalist Ben Moore, who replaced Dickey when he suffered health problems.)
"You're My Girl (I Don't Want to Discuss It)""(I Know) I'm Losing You" by ROD STEWART: I've already discussed this once before, in a post about the Faces a year or two ago, but for those who may have missed it: Rod Stewart used to be a fucking bad ass. I'm not even going to plead my case for the guy this time around, because if these two tracks (taken from, respectively, 1970's
Gasoline Alley and 1971's
Every Picture Tells a Story) don't sell you on the concept, you clearly don't know what bad ass sounds like. It doesn't hurt that Rod was pretty much backed by the Faces for both of those solo records.
"Le responsable" by JACQUES DUTRONC: When people think of French male vocalists, they always think of Serge Gainsbourg. While I enjoy a lot of Gainsbourg's stuff, Jacques Dutronc was the really real shit. My prediction: this winds up in a Wes Anderson movie in the next couple of years, maybe in some sort of bicycle/moped chase sequence.
"Deluca" by FLAKE: I've been seriously enjoying the next Shins album for the past few weeks. I've been dying to post a song from it, but that thing is being so heavily policed on the web that you'd think the secret to making a nuclear bomb was hidden between the bass notes. Instead, I'm posting the 7" version of "Deluca," which came out back when the band was called Flake (and then, Flake Music). This version is different from the one released on Flake's only CD,
When You Land Here, It's Time to Return, so hopefully this will satisfy you few Shins completists out there. I found this version on one of my absolute favorite music blogs,
Little Hits. Fans of power pop and early indie rock should not hesitate to follow that link, as there is a massive amount of music to be found there.
"1983""(untitled)" by THE INCREDIBLE MOSES LEROY: His real name is Ron Fountenberry. You'd probably go by the name The Incredible Moses Leroy, too, if you thought you wanted a career in music. These two tracks come from Fountenberry's scattershot debut album,
Electric Pocket Radio. While the record can be hit or miss, it features a surprising variety of songs, and was a good indication that this guy might be someone to follow in years to come. My favorite track on the album was "1983," a beautiful piece of synth nostalgia that always makes me think of "Don't Change" by INXS. "untitled" was simply that, the untitled bonus track found at the end of the album. TIML's second album,
Becomes the Soft.Lightes seemed to indicate that Fountenberry was changing his name to "Soft Lightes," and Allmusic.com says that a band released an album under that name 2 weeks ago. Anyone heard anything about it?
"Last Night""End of the Line" by TRAVELLING WILBURYS: In honor of my bandwidth crushing post from last year, I'm closing things out tonight with a couple more of my favorites from that long out of print debut Wilburys CD. I've heard rumblings that this will soon be reissued with
Volume 3, along with a host of bonus material, but those rumblings seem to have been going on for years now.
