46 replies to this topic

[Doctor Pogo]

I'll set the tone with one of my favorite songs, and one of my favorite to sing live. It's always a crowd pleaser, even if it makes 'em feel a little weird.

Written by blind songwriter Leon Payne in Austin TX in 1967, as a response to the senselessness of the Texas Towers shootings, "Psycho" has lived a kind of underground life, not getting recorded often, being forgotten for years at a time.

I learned about it from a country singer I toured with. He actually couldn't find any recordings of it, but he'd heard it from a friend. I added it to my solo repertoire having never heard anyone else's version but his. Later on I found the original, and several straight-ahead versions by various English bands, and a few really weird ones. Elvis Costello's version is one of my favorites, and the closest to my own.

Spoiler

Edited by Doctor Pogo, 19 May 2013 - 11:15 AM.

[Doctor Pogo]

One of my favorite bands destroys an 80s classic.

Spoiler

Edited by Doctor Pogo, 19 May 2013 - 11:16 AM.

[Doctor Pogo]

This was the apex of my high school music listening trajectory. I got into Hendrix and SRV; and then into King Crimson and Emerson, Lake and Palmer; that led me to Zappa and The Flecktones. And after Frank Zappa and Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, where can one go to satisfy his ever-increasing need for greater displays of instrumental prowess?

Mahavishnu. The summit of the jazz/rock fusion mountain. This is the first track from their first and best album, a super-intense, monumental and insane album that hooked its way into my high school psyche and left me transfixed. My musical interests have since expanded in every direction, and I no longer listen to a lot of the super-technical stuff that I used to. But I still return to this every once in a while, and I'm still floored, every time.

Spoiler

 

Edited by Doctor Pogo, 19 May 2013 - 11:16 AM.

[Doctor Pogo]

This kind of thing will probably come up a lot in this playlist. I'm a sucker for girl singers. So expect many.

Here's one of my favorite singers, and one of the most distinctive voices ever, Blossom Dearie, who died not too long ago. This is from an album of hers from 1959. She's playing the piano in addition to singing.

Spoiler

 

Edited by Doctor Pogo, 19 May 2013 - 11:16 AM.

[Doctor Pogo]

Forgot to post this on 4/20, so I'll make it up today. Fats Waller plays an old reefer song, written in 1926 by the saxophonist Stuff Smith. This recording is from 1943. Waller changes around a lot of the words and twists the rhythms and, well, yeah, man.

Spoiler

 

Edited by Doctor Pogo, 19 May 2013 - 11:17 AM.

[Doctor Pogo]

And now for something completely different!

I figure you guys will appreciate this guy, if you haven't heard of him already. His name is Mat, and he went to college with me and wisp. He was a trumpet major, and a pretty rad dude.

Now he makes metal videos on the internet. Really awesome ones. Click through to his youtube feed for lots more.

Spoiler

 

Edited by Doctor Pogo, 19 May 2013 - 11:17 AM.

[Doctor Pogo]

Another of my favorite songs to sing: great fun to do this song with a band. It just feels good.

And Cracker's been one of my favorite bands since I saw them at Athfest in 2002. David Lowery is some kind of crooked genius.

Spoiler

 

Edited by Doctor Pogo, 19 May 2013 - 11:18 AM.

[Doctor Pogo]

This is probably shameless self-aggrandizement, but I'm okay with that. I think it's pretty good.

This is a band from around Macon, Georgia, that I play drums with. I'm lucky to play with these guys, they're a bunch of badass dudes with way more experience and finesse than I have.

This is a live recording from a show we played back in January at a listening room in Macon. This is an instrumental tune, with a lot more jazz in it than we usually do. Most of our stuff is vocal, and more R&B/Funk influenced.

Spoiler

Edited by Doctor Pogo, 19 May 2013 - 11:18 AM.

[Doctor Pogo]

Let's end the weekend on a nasty party jam.

Spoiler

If you haven't heard of it already, over at boingboing there's a cartoonist named Ed Piskor who's doing a series called The Hip Hop Family Tree, and it's one of the best things ever. The first volume is about to come out in graphic novel form, but you can read it all starting right here.

Edited by Doctor Pogo, 19 May 2013 - 11:19 AM.

[Doctor Pogo]

It's a dreary Monday in middle Georgia, which I actually really enjoy. Here's a lovely, lush, cloudy tune for cloudy times.

Spoiler

Edited by Doctor Pogo, 19 May 2013 - 11:19 AM.

[Doctor Pogo]

Late night, swing time. Six spirits dance around the bed...

Spoiler

Edited by Doctor Pogo, 19 May 2013 - 11:19 AM.

[Doctor Pogo]

A song of the Pogo.

Spoiler

Edited by Doctor Pogo, 19 May 2013 - 11:20 AM.

[Doctor Pogo]

My favorite classical piece. Or, at least, one of my favorites. Played by a great orchestra with a great conductor. Ahh.

Spoiler

Edited by Doctor Pogo, 19 May 2013 - 11:20 AM.

[Doctor Pogo]

The Penguin Cafe Orchestra was a quasi-classical band, formed in the late '70s by Simon Jeffes, after he ate some bad fish and had a dream where he was in a very lifeless and routine place, but when he felt better the next day a poem came to him that began "I am the proprietor of the Penguin Cafe; I will tell you things at random..."

Jeffes concluded some things about the purpose of randomness, surprise, and irrationality in our lives, and founded an ensemble dedicated to the pursuit of joyful and unexpected weirdness and irrational beauty.

The project continued until Jeffes died of a brain tumor in 1997. His son Arthur has since taken up the baton and reorganized the Penguin Cafe Orchestra to continue playing his dad's strange music. Several of the original members of the PCO occasionally perform as a band called The Anteaters, or as The Orchestra that Fell to Earth.

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

I'm gonna include another one here, because I like Penguin Cafe music so awfully much.

Edited by Doctor Pogo, 19 May 2013 - 11:21 AM.

[Doctor Pogo]

Here's one I just learned this afternoon. I was in rehearsal with the band that wisp and I play in, and one of the singers brought in this song wanting to work on it. I'd never heard it before. It's awesome. This groove is wicked, and the drummer on this recording is just perfectly in it. It's not an easy song, either, it's tricky - the verses are different and odd lengths, the timing in the middle is very strange, the chorus ends differently each time. But it was worth the extra time to learn it - what a cool song.

Spoiler

Edited by Doctor Pogo, 19 May 2013 - 11:22 AM.

[Doctor Pogo]

Galactic!

See these dudes live if you can. They throw down.

Spoiler

Edited by Doctor Pogo, 19 May 2013 - 11:22 AM.

[Doctor Pogo]

Pink Martini is a band outside of time and space. They're magicians.

Spoiler

Edited by Doctor Pogo, 19 May 2013 - 11:22 AM.

[Doctor Pogo]

This is fun. I'm really impressed how much I like it, given the source material.

Spoiler

Edited by Doctor Pogo, 19 May 2013 - 11:23 AM.

[Doctor Pogo]

Good morning Polysics.

Spoiler

Edited by Doctor Pogo, 19 May 2013 - 11:23 AM.

[Doctor Pogo]

The Hot Club of Cowtown is a great band. All three musicians are incredibly accomplished, and their blend of gypsy jazz and folk and western music is as far as I know entirely unique. I can heartily recommend any of their recordings as worth acquiring.

Here they are live, doing a gorgeous cover of one of my favorite Tom Waits songs. Their reading is pretty straight, they leave off their usual gypsy flourishes and instrumental fireworks and go for the beauty.

Spoiler

Edited by Doctor Pogo, 19 May 2013 - 11:24 AM.

[Doctor Pogo]

Okay, since Fin posted the original of this song today, I'm going to post this. Because I love this song, it was a great song to start with, and Shatner nails it. Shatner, of all people.

Spoiler

Edited by Doctor Pogo, 19 May 2013 - 11:24 AM.

[Doctor Pogo]

Here's a treat - one of my favorite John Prine songs performed by a young Bonnie Raitt.  So much goodness.

 

Spoiler

Edited by Doctor Pogo, 19 May 2013 - 11:49 AM.

[Doctor Pogo]

This is Riley Yielding, one of my favorite musicians to perform with and a good friend for many years.

 

He's a remarkable person in almost every respect - a master luthier who builds beautiful guitars and other stringed instruments; a homesteader and outspoken anarchist/voluntaryist, farms his own food and built his own house; an excellent songwriter with multiple albums; a world-class performer on not just the wide variety of string instruments he builds but also on trumpet and cornet and harmonica and baritone horn, plus his spectacular voice; and he's a goddamn giant at some seven feet tall or so.  The guitar in this video is full-sized, he just makes it look smaller.

 

He's gonna be building wisp an amazing handcrafted ukulele pretty soon, once we get the last of the money saved up.  And one day I'm gonna get him to build me a guitar.

 

He's not doing one of his own songs in this video, just demonstrating a guitar he had just finished.  But I love his take on this song, it's so good.  And he did write a new verse for it.

 

Spoiler

[Doctor Pogo]

The lead track from one of the swingin'est albums of all time by one of the best bands.  I love how moody the tune is, but it still swings like mad.  One of the tunes I've always wanted to do with a band, but haven't yet had the right band.

 

Spoiler

[Doctor Pogo]

Th' Legendary Shack Shakers!

 

I opened for this band at Franks' Front Row in Daytona FL on a Sunday night a few years ago.  Very small club, not a lot of room, so the crowd was pretty small, and packed in tight.  And holy crap, the Shack Shakers put on one of the best shows I've ever seen.

 

Their frontman calls himself Colonel JD Wilkes, and he's insane.  He was in the crowd, moshing, spitting, thrashing about like he was being exorcised, and still playing badass harmonica and singing.  At one point I'm pretty sure he reached into his pants, yanked out a handful of pubes, and threw them into the crowd.  By the end of the show he was bleeding in several places and everybody in the place was too exhausted to go on.

 

The band was phenomenal.  I learned a lot from watching their drummer and talking to him after the show.

 

I heard that the drummer was having heart problems, and the band played their last show earlier this year.  JD says they will return, but no word yet, and that makes me very sad.  This was one of the best live bands in the country, and it'd be a huge loss if they didn't return.

 

Spoiler

[Doctor Pogo]

This woman is amazing.  She's been inspiring me to make better music since I bought her album Rhythm Song when I was in high school.

 

Evelyn Glennie is one of the world's best percussionists.  She's a beyond brilliant performer, composer, collaborator, and teacher.  She's one of the most adventurous and fearless classical performers in history, writing and collaborating on original music that incorporates modern EDM, rock, folk music, world styles, anything.  She has worked on projects with jazz musicians, popular singers, rappers, beat producers, and Bela Fleck, whatever he is.  

 

And she's profoundly deaf.  She hears the music primarily through vibration, through her hands and feet.

 

There's a wonderful documentary about her called Touch the Sound, with some gorgeous music in it.  It's worth seeking out.

 

Here she is playing her marimba arrangement of my favorite Piazzolla tango.

 

Spoiler

 

[Doctor Pogo]

For my wonderful wispy on our 2nd anniversary, one of my favorite lovey songs.

 

 

Spoiler

[Doctor Pogo]

Here's a barn-burner from a band I used to follow back in Athens, GA.  They were pretty cool guys, with a good sense of humor, and made good records.  This is my favorite song of theirs, from one of the last releases on the fabled Kindercore record label that produced the coolest Athens music for about ten years from the mid-90s to the mid-00s.

 

Spoiler

[Doctor Pogo]

Here's an old traditional blues song.  This recording has been the inspiration for many, many other great artists including Nirvana and the Louvin Brothers and others.

 

But this is the original, a rail-jumper's song from just after the civil war, recorded by Huddie Ledbetter in the 30s.

 

Spoiler

[Doctor Pogo]

I went over to Phenix City AL on Friday morning to shoot an appearance on public access.  This is part of the result.  It's hilarious.  The song is pretty damn good, though - it's the Wayne Minor Band again, seen earlier in this thread.

 

EDIT: also, I'm playing accordion!

 

Spoiler

 

Bonus track: another from the same show, but actually pretty good, and not hilarious, except the terrible ChromaKey work.

 

Spoiler

Edited by Doctor Pogo, 04 June 2013 - 01:59 AM.