Bad Boys

Provocation, poor taste, questionable ethics, incompetence, regrettable decisions, and egregious criminal acts, featuring:

Russia's "unsurpassed master of profanity." 

The Cairene laundry presser whose ode to bin Laden was yanked from the Egyptian airwaves. 

The troubled Jamaican genius who spent the last years of his short life in prison for murder. 

Japan's greatest unpop star. 

The Beirut underground star whose fuck you to Lebanon's military leaders nearly ended his career. 

The creepy American hustler whose death unleashed a torrent of horrifying not-so-secret secrets.

Listen to this show in the archives

54-71 | Six Albums

Six of their terrific albums reupped by special request on Sept 10, 2015, here.




Precise drum and bass guitar like wriggling in the darkness, like a machine 
It seems to go sunk feeling to the bottom to the bottom on and on. 

Snare is fiercely tight. Liked. 

Even so, relentless with drum and accurate+solid dry guitar, dry as a skeleton that did well.

Also air.

Air between every single thickness to the music comes through
To snap up, sound comes suddenly pops out.



Downer acceleration. 

Such as down one step down step spiral staircase 
Poisoning inevitable.

It is a love song? Code of feeling part of the loop other than those pinched
It is great tension anyway.

Songs trimmed to sound that need rather sound you do not need
With guitar chaos skinny enough to not know what you are connected to


Open hi-hat drum is good.

I have hardened as the songs firmly in a medium tempo. 

I like the place to rise a little late.

Noodles | 15 Albums + EPs

15 albums and EPs, nearly 8 hours of Noodles, reupped again on June 17, 2015, by reader request, here.

[Originally published on April 13, 2012.] I'm in an incredibly good mood this evening. Not only did I finish three ridiculously complicated projects this week at work, but I got the final confirmation (date, time and location) of a reading I'll be giving one week from tonight in Washington, D.C., with one of my all-time favorite poets, p. inman.

Although it's the first reading I've given in a year (and you can listen to that previous reading, here, if you scroll down to April 23, 2011), I'm frankly more excited about getting to hear and watch inman than I am about reading any of my own stuff. Inman may not be the most famous poet associated with the Language Writing movement that came into prominence in the 1970s & 80s, but he is certainly the most radical. And, as far as I'm concerned, the finest. He is the Melt Banana of poets. Check out, for instance, this comic I drew in 2009 using his words (and Sugiura Shigeru's images):

Which brings me to tonight's musical offering. As many of you know, I'm a huge fan of Japanese pop and rock (including, yes, Melt Banana). Most of what's on my computer, and thus on my iPhone, is J-pop and J-rock that I either found while on vacation in the archipelago, or downloaded from one of the many Japan-focused music blogs I've been scouring over the last several years.

Without question, my favorite still-active J-rock band would have to be the all-female trio, Noodles. Formed in 1991 in Yokohama, Noodles has clearly drawn the bulk of its inspiration from American bands of the same period, especially post-punk and grunge acts like Nirvana and the Breeders. But they are, IM (not so) HO, more satisfying than either.

Blasphemy? Perhaps. But consider this: Whereas Nirvana collapsed after only a few albums with Cobain's suicide and the Breeders never managed to put together that many more albums, despite none of its members actually having died, Noodles, like the Energizer Bunny before them, keep on going and going ... and going. And, inexplicably, getting better and better ...

No matter what sort of mood I'm in--from "Pretty Okay" to "Utterly Defeated"--it doesn't take more than two or three Noodles tracks to push me up to "Ecstatic," or, at the very least, "Hey! Wow!" I love, love, love, love, love this band, with its Stolen From College Rock Radio hooks and structures and its macaronic lyrics and its obsessively alt-rock-referential titles ("Slits," "New Wave," "Velvet Underground," "Runaways," "Splash," "Lemon Grass Foo Foo").

810 MBs is, admittedly, an almost egregious commitment to ask of you. But, then, ask yourself: Has the Bodega Pop proprietor ever steered you seriously wrong, yet? If you have any love for J-Rock, if the 90s were over far too early for your liking ... give this one a try. You won't regret it.

Asakawa Maki | 18 albums

[Re-upped once more on April 25, 2015, at a reader's request]

When I was in Tokyo in mid-2010, I spent a couple of full days wandering around almost all of the 9 floors of the massive Tower Records superstore in Shibuya. 

When I got off the escalator at floor 2, which houses Tower Shibuya's extensive J-Pop and J-Indies stock, I was immediately struck by a kind of mini-shrine made up of of the CDs of Asakawa Maki, most of which seemed to feature grainy black & white photographs of the singer on the cover, often smoking.

I had no idea who this mysterious enshrined singer was, but after a bit of YouTubing and Googling, I was able to figure it out. Asakawa Maki was born on January 27, 1942, in Nagoya--she'd have been 70 years old this month had she not died in 2010, just shy of her 68th birthday. She got her start singing in U.S. Army bases, but got her big break in a series of concerts organized by avant-garde poet and playwright, Shuji Terayama in 1968. (Terayama would write lyrics for a number of her early songs.)

Over the next 40 years, Maki (as she was often referred to) released some 30 records, only slowing down in the aughts. She continued to perform live up until her death. She was one of the greatest, most expressive singers of all time, not just in Japan, but in the world.


Listen to "House of the Rising Sun" live

FILE ONE
Asakawa Maki II
Asakawa Maki no Sekai
Black
Blue Spirit Blues
Cat Nap

FILE TWO
Darkness I
Darkness II
Darkness III
Darkness IV

FILE THREE
Hitomoshigoro
Live
Maboroshi no Onna-tachi
Maki
Nothing at All to Lose

FILE FOUR
One
Rear Window
Ura Mado Maki V
Yami No Naka Ni Okizari

Guitar Vader | 5 albums, 2 EPs

Reupped again on March 26, 2015, at a reader's request, here.

If someone put a gun to my head and forced me to choose just one Japanese rock band to listen to until my retirement years, my first impulse would be: "Just kill me." For, how could I--how, indeed, could anyone--choose just one? My second impulse, tempered by the desire to continue living, would be to flip a coin: Heads = Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her; tails = Guitar Vader.

Formed in 1998 as a male-female duo, Guitar Vader was largely influenced by the Beatles and the Pixies, though they also learned and/or borrowed from every late 20th century act from Guitar Wolf to Beck. Their first album, Die Happy!, was released on cassette and never had a proper CD (or LP) release. (It is, I would argue, the single most perfect example of Japanese pop rock ever recorded.)

In 2000, they added a drummer and a couple of years later added a(n American) keyboardist. They broke up in 2007 when their drummer began to have serious health issues related to his heart; they had been working on a sixth studio album, which was abandoned. So far as I know, none of them seem to have pursued solo musical careers.

I found most of these albums on other, now-defunct sites, wiped out in the Megaupload action. They are, so far as I can tell, all out of print and impossible to find.

Included here are:

Die Happy! (1999)

Wild at Honey (2000)

From Dusk (2001)

Baby-T/GVTV/Shimanagasgi (2001)

REMIXES_GVR (2001)

Dawn (2003)

Happy East (2004)

Watch an interview with Guitar Vader's Ujuan Shozo and Miki Tanabe:

Black+Blue in Harajuku | Japanese Retro

Just reupped the 14-song mix here.







Do I really need to pitch this one to you? 

I didn't think so.

Girls Sazanami Beat! | Vols. 1+2

Listen to "Chou Gutsu Terrorist" by The Let's Go's

Listen to "Yeah Yeah" by The Portugal Japan

Make off with Vol. 1 here

Listen to "Hello!Hello!!" by The Helloes!


Listen to "Yes, No Blues" by Gaijin

Get your paws on Vol. 2 here

Nobody does retro like the Japanese. Which is to say: Whatever it was, whoever invented it, they'll play it like they own it. 

Sazanami, a Tokyo-based label that celebrated its 10th anniversary last year, is one of the archipelago's leading purveyors of backwards-glancing garage, go-go, pop, rock, surf and pseudo-punk, and these two high-voltage volumes focusing on contemporary girl-group grooves are must-haves for all of you retrophiles out there -- as well as anyone seeking a musical alternative to caffeine. 

Mayumi Kojima | Love of a 20-Year-Old (1996)

Listen to the first track of this blistering early Mayumi Kojima album

Get it all here.

Long-time visitors of the bodega not only know the special place this singer holds in our heart--they also know why. (Newer visitors need simply listen to the sample above.)

I'm so wiped out that I can't possibly write up a properly thrill-packed intro for this one ... but, just having found it, I couldn't wait to pass it along to you.

10 Best Albums of 2013

Merry Christmas, everyone. With a mere week to go until the ball drops in Times Square, listeners all over the globe have been compiling their Best Of lists for the year. For the Bodega, 2013 was a complex but often exciting time to be paying attention to international music. In early March our superfriend Carol hipped us to a program at BAM that would change our lives: Mic Check: Hip-Hop from North Africa and the Middle East. Later in the month, the Bodega returned the favor, taking her to see pioneering Palestinian rap group DAM at Drom on New York’s lower east side.

As more of our regular CD-findin’ haunts in the city dried up, new doors were opened, including two previously undiscovered stores selling Czech and Latin music, allowing us to exponentially grow our stock of both, literally overnight. For more recent music, there’s the endless rabbit hole that is Bandcamp. In fact, most of our 2013 faves came from this revolutionary end-run around the terminally ill Music-Industry-As-Such.

Above all, our fellow music bloggers kept their little rooms on the Internet warm even when the sun wasn’t shining anywhere else. Special Big Love to stalwarts Awesome Tapes from Africa, Jenny Is in a Bad Mood (Japan), Jewish Morocco, Jugo Rock Forever (former Yugoslavia), Madrotter Treasure Hunt (Indonesia), Monrakplengthai (Thailand), Moroccan Tape Stash, Music from the Third Floor (India), My Passion for Ethiopian Music, and Turkish Psychedelic Music 2, to say nothing of fellow eclecticists Flash Strap, Ghost Capital, Global Groove, Inconstant Sol, Kadao Ton Kao, Music for Maniacs, Snap Crackle & Pop, and Terminal Escape — to name but a few of the dozens whose offerings fill our hours and ears.

Two great but seemingly dead blogs got new life this year: Brain Goreng (Indonesia) and Voodoo Vault (Japan), though whether either will keep up the good fight into 2014 is anyone’s guess. Meanwhile, Interstellar Medium | Foreign Lavish Sounds stormed onto the scene to raise the bar unconscionably high and show us just how awesome a music blog can really be. We’re humbled, shamed even, but genuinely grateful for their existence.

2013 was a year of personal triumph for the Bodega: We not only published some of our least egregious nonfiction to date (in Burning Ambulance, Indiewire, LA Review of Books and Roads & Kingdoms), we received the ultimate worldly acknowledgement of our humble efforts in poetry: Inclusion in a Norton anthology. 

But there were setbacks. In April, our then-host, Divshare, kicked us out of the file-sharing playground, citing multiple complaints about our *cough* copyright infringement *cough*. Tail between our legs, we hooked up with ADrive and began to restock the shelves, offering customers a new feature: The Bodega Pop Comp (see “hot comps” in the sidebar to the right).  

Then, in May, Super DJ, creator and director of WFMU’s Give the Drummer Radio stream, and music blog supporter extraordinaire, Doug Schulkind asked if we’d like to bring the bodega to WFMU in the form of a weekly broadcast. Our ego said yes, yes, oh god let us, yes. Our ego has never been the brightest bulb in the tulip patch, but he tends to get away with pretty much whatever he wants.

So, every Wednesday evening from 7-10pm ET, starting on January 15, we’ll be hosting Bodega Pop Live on the aforementioned stream. Shout outs are due to several fabulous people—in addition to Doug, of course—who helped make this happen: Brandon Downing, Andrew Maxwell, Andrei Molotiu, Sianne Ngai, Mel Nichols, and above all, Carol “Craftypants” McMahon, who donated a Macbook we desperately needed to do the actual streaming. 

Still awake? Hello? Awrighty, let’s move on to the sole reason you’re even here tonight: Bodega Pop’s Top 10 Albums of 2013 …

DAM
Dabke on the Moon ($8.99)
December 15, 2012
As we intimated earlier, middle eastern and north African hip-hop reigned supreme in our ears this year, including this album, technically released last year, but for all intents and purposes not readily available until 2013. It wasn’t the first album we’d heard by the pioneering Palestinian rappers, but it was easily the best of their work to date. The album blasts off with the unlikely-sounding rocker “Street Poetry” and doesn’t let up, kicking out jam after jam all the way through the anthemic “I Fell in Love with a Jew” and final deep groove of “Handcuff Them War Criminals.” If I was Christgau (“Christmas with Christgau” has a nice ring to it, eh?) I know three very talented young men who’d be getting a big ol’ A+ in their stocking.

The Girl
UR Sensation ($8.99)
January 9, 2013 (planned December 19, 2012)
I almost can’t breathe when I think about the awesomeness that is Aiha Higurashi. Her first band, Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her, was easily the best rock group of the Aughts, and with every subsequent project Aiha has shown us a new or at least slightly different side of herself.  The Girl, who released their second album this year, brings it back home to the stripped-down, noirish rock Aiha first explored with SSKHKH—but the sound is grittier, more disconcerting. Our sole complaint? Try setting up a Google alert for “The Girl.” 

Various Artists
Spanish New Wave, The Golden Age (6 Vols.) (Free)
January 20, 2013
See, I told you music bloggers were awesome this year. Compiled by Sebi and Jose Kortozirkuito for free download on Boozetunes, this six-volume set of post-punk music from Spain is everything the bodega dreams of: A vast, and vastly entertaining panorama of pop from a faraway time and place, lovingly introduced with a smart and relevant preface. 

Various Artists
Khat Thaleth (Free)
January 22, 2013
Goodness gracious: The year really started out with a bang, didn’t it? This late-January Arabic hip-hop compilation, released two days after the awesome comp above, is pretty much the coolest international rap collection we can think of since 1988’s Brazilian overview Hip Hop Cultura de Rua. And the download is gratis on Bandcamp. Yep, you heard us: Free.

Satanicpornocultshop
Picaresque ($10)
February 2013
The Japanese sound-collage trio put out seven albums and EPs in 2013, which makes them among the most prolific groups of … dare-we-say all time? A perennial favorite here, the shop’s funked-up February release had the bodega rawkin out on the 7 train as we rode it in to work every morning. 

Various Artists
Harafin So - Bollywood Inspired Film Music from Hausa Nigeria ($5)
April 23, 2013
Holy crap, but Christopher Kirkley’s label is amazing. 2013 was a stellar year for Sahelsounds, beginning with a January release of the second volume of Music from Saharan Cell Phones. This Bollywood-inspired, auto-tuned Nigerian pop was a real revelation to us, having had no prior idea that such a thing even existed. 

Nisennenmondai
N (iTunes store, $9.99)
July 2, 2013
OMG I love these women, who put out what was easily my favorite music video of the year. (Don't stop watching before the 3:20 mark, seriously.) A must-have for all fans of the N-group and for any lover of the industrial / instrumental / experimental wing of J-rock. 

MWR
Because I’m an Arab (Free, if link works)
August 14, 2013
A publicist for this Palestinian rap trio sent me word of this album—a retrospective of the band’s brief but thrilling career-to-date. Hailing from Gaza, these guys are as sonically rich as they are politics-forward. I’m not sure if the Dropbox link I’ve provided is going to work for you — but I have no earthly idea how else to get a hold of this album, let alone pay for it. (If you know, send the info/link our way.)

P.K.14
1984 ($8)
September 13, 2013
The fifth album by one of Beijing’s oldest post-punk bands, formed all the way back in 2001. (It must be liberating having such a short music history.) Though they’ve mellowed slightly with age, they’re still awesome—in fact, even more so this decade than last. You can listen to the whole album on Bandcamp for free … so go listen to it, not to me.

Various Artists
Sounds and Colors: Brazil ($11.43)
November 25, 2013
I have heard the future, and it sounds an awful lot like the República Federativa do Brasil. Seriously, this record is fabuloso. Also, this label looks like it’s gearing up to give Sahelsounds a run for its money. Blaspheme? No, blashphe-you. Get over to their Bandcamp page and start digging around — and don’t miss out on their earlier “name your price” collections. You won’t be disappointed.

Little Fujiko | White Peach Jellyfish (1996)

Dare you eat a peach? [Reupped b/c you simply can't live w/out it.]

The radiant prayer of steel bursts between your ears. There it is, outside of sorrow. Inferior to the click beetle. 

Things that have poured, of light. That were born in soft legs and the rain that no longer rains. Into the arc lamp above, the "crazed moon." When it arrives and wraps.

Wraps the ocean? The shape of a poem. And horses, larvae. The dung peacefully eating its surroundings. 

The water of mayhem wrapped in the palm of your hand, twisting itself. FOR THE FIGHTING SPIRIT OF THE WALNUT. Nipped by the air creatures everywhere, bewildered, nut-cracking. Able to melt this cloud like a ringing ear.

The quick leaps have a fire!

You would like to stand yourself up, as humans did, long ago. Without gazing and is not here. To think poems are always thunderclouds with our blind eyes and folded branches. Fog descending stairs? 

Wonder what kind of deranged scratch marks resist dyed "Chinese" signs, food displays,  the right to read in any order? Shy twitch where the leaf mulch spreads.

Poetry continues to differ from what people believe the bar tilts, a cheerful hustle, the spirit torn apart by the swirl it's just lived through.

Little Fujiko | Little Fujiko (1998)

Freshly reupped here.

Just then I noticed the thin edge of words thinly glowing of wood. They stumble around with fingers rooted in the ducts of these creatures everywhere, hanging between branches of mistakes. Little Fujiko, little bolt of lightening, lease this illusory space closing in on you.

You believe you really saw this, these vacant bolts randomly passing you by, these blocks of cloud hanging from shoulder. We are all unexploded shells, wrapped around an inner field of nettles. You can't even listen as much as has been sung. You can't even sing as much as has been heard.

They pass it now from their lips to yours.

Unemployed Drifter | JAKAJAAAAAN!!!!!

Get it here.


I discovered Unemployed Drifter's first album, I Wanna Be Your Beatles!!! at the Tower Records superstore in Shibuya, Tokyo, in 2010, and immediately fell in love. While this follow-up album is not as solidly great, I'm not going to sit here and tell you I don't like it. I do. (It made my top 10 albums of 2011 list.)

Anyway, I hadn't actually ever posted it to the bodega shelves; though I had linked to copy I'd found elsewhere on the web. A reader alerted me today that that link is now dead, asking if I could post -- which I've just now done. 

Unemployed Drifter | I Wanna Be Your Beatles!!!

I have reupped this upsettingly great CD here.

[Originally written and posted on June 6, 2010.] Back in Brooklyn after two weeks in Japan. Found the thrilling CD above not in a bodega but in the last remaining Tower Records on Earth, in Shibuya, Tokyo. An amazing 7-story CD store with a dozen or more listening stations on each floor.

I spent about five hours over three days listening to music from around the world, mostly J-Pop. When I pressed the button to hear the above album by post-punk girl-band Unemployed Drifter, I fell instantly in love.




Too exhausted to say anything more, but the sample song should speak for itself. Will be back when I'm rested to upload a number of other things I found in Tokyo, Kyoto and the mountains of Gunma.

Mayumi Kojima | Blues de Cecile

Reupped by popular demand here.

While Blues de Cecile lacks the sophistication and musical intricacies of Kojima's later work, it's pure Shibuya-kei rockin' fun. Rarely listed among other Shibuya-kei stalwarts like Flipper's Guitar and Kahimi Karie, there's no question that Kojima draws from similar roots: namely 50s and 60s music from the Americas and Europe. When she was 18 years old, while still in high school, high on 50s American pop, she recorded her first demo, securing a contract soon after. Though she's recorded some of the most thrilling pop music to have come out of Tokyo in the last 15-odd years, the well-meaning folks at Pitchfork have apparently been too busy following every mutton-chop-sporting, three-word-named band from Sacramento to Eugene, to have noticed. 

Not that it's entirely their fault. Now 40, Kojima hasn't put out a record in more than two years, not since 2010's Blue Rondo. I was fortunate enough to have stumbled onto tonight's record in 2010 in Tokyo--in a cramped but well-stocked used CD store in, you guessed it, Shibuya.

And now you can say you were fortunate enough to have stumbled upon it here.

Mayumi Kojima | Ai No Poltergeist

Reupped at 320kbps here.

I found this fabulous Japanese import at P Tune & Video Co (see the header image of this blog--that's the place) on Chrystie Street in Manhattan's Chinatown in late 2009. I knew nothing about the artist, but soon became obsessed with her, tracking the rest of her complete output -- more than a dozen albums and EPs -- on a trip to Japan in 2010 and then later, through various Japanese-focused blogs from South America to Asia.

This was one of the first albums I posted to the Bodega and for a very long while, it was the most popular in terms of grabs. Reupped in case you missed it the first time around.

Midori | Complete catalog

I remember seeing the cover of the album to your right, Midori's last, the moment I walked into Tower Shibuya in May of 2010 while in Japan on a two week vacation. If any of you have been to that Tower, you know how it feels to suddenly “wake up” after apparently having spent hours listening to samples, which are available at dozens of stations throughout each of the superstore’s 8 or 9 floors. Midori’s Shinsekai was the first thing I listened to and, for reasons my present self can’t begin to comprehend, I decided not to pick it up. I know I saw it again on my way out and thought: “Gosh … should I …?”

Back in the States, as I recalled the mysterious album with the shrieking girl and crazy cascading piano I’d heard at the Tower listening station, I grew sick with horrible pit-of-the-stomach XRGs (Xtreme Regret Gnawings), the haunting song of the collector filling my feverish head: “Gotta have it, gotta have it, gotta have it, gotta have it …” So deep, so dark was my misery, not even repeated listenings of this, which I did purchase at Tower, could console me.

Those remiss-filled days, weeks and months are a blank to me now. I can’t remember anything that I did or felt, other than the sucking wound in the pit of my soul: what I now refer to as “BM” (“Before Midori”). I don’t even remember how, finally, I discovered this album again—online, natch, exuberantly touted by some music blogger in Argentina no doubt, or, perhaps, gay Peru. I do vaguely recall, having the band’s name suddenly at hand and in mind, that I began searching the web, from YouTube to JRawk, for any possible shred of their online presence.


A song from Mariko Goto's first, pre-Midori band, Usagi (included in "Early" link below)

More than a year later, I’m now the “proud,” “fulfilled” “owner” of every album, EP and single Midori ever put out.

A few random factoids relevant to the band: Shinsekai, which means “new world,” is an Osaka neighborhood near the downtown Minami area. According to Wikipedia, it was built in 1912 “with New York as a model for its southern half and Paris for its northern half.” After the Second World War, it devolved into one of Japan’s poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods and, to this day, boasts a reputation far worse than Joan Jett’s.

The members of Midori all hailed from Osaka and, one assumes that at the very least, singer Mariko Goto was specifically from Shinsekai. 

A brief, colorful description of Midori's last album, Shinsekai, from JRawk:

“Midori has mixed the sour and sweet in the past, often blending them evenly to create an uncannily disturbing rumble, but here, they're flung together to create some truly weird sparks. “ メカ” (“Mecca”) isn't just all over the map, it's specifically built on chaos: crunching hyperactive, diseased tango, Boredoms style flashes of transcendent freakout, feverish repetition, madcap Carl Stalling-esque interludes, and God Knows what else in just under three and a half minutes. It's the strongest track they've done since "わっしょい" ("Wasshoi") from their first EP, and a quantum leap forward in their unique brand of brain smearing musical schizophrenia.”

Get the early albums. (Includes Usagi's Akemi-San to Midori-san and the following by Midori: First Demo; Second Demo; First; Second)

Get the late albums. (Includes Shimizu/Spring Water; Hello Everyone. We Are Midori. Nice to Meet You; Live!!; Swing; Shinsekai)

Kojima Mayumi | Me and My Monkey on the Moon

Listen to "セシルカットブルース" ("Cecil's Blues Cut")


Listen to "あの娘の彼" ("That Girl of His")

Get the 21-song retrospective aqui.

Well, lookee here: It's a fabulous collection of 1990s singles and rarities from one of our all-time favorite Shibuya-kei artists, Kojima Mayumi. I found this lovely item in Shibuya itself, almost certainly at one of the smaller indie used CD places dotting the Tokyo neighborhood's outskirts.

I'm currently cooling my heels with family in Corvallis, Oregon, where I'll be boxing up the "literally thousands of" (actually more like 20 or 30) Cambodian, Lao, Thai and Vietnamese CDs I found last week on Foster Road in Portland. If I find any of the covers online I'll go ahead and post while I'm here; but pretty much, if I do manage to post over the holidays, I'll be limiting myself to items like today's offering: Stuff I've already got on my computer but, for whatever reason, haven't yet shared with y'all yet.

Cover Me | 2 Dozen Super Awesome Covers

Listen to Melt-Banana's mash-up/deconstruction of the Beach Boys' "Surfin' USA" and "You're Welcome"

Hear Crowd Lu fearlessly scale the upper registers of Minnie Ripperton's "Loving You"

Dig Anthony Wong's Lou Reedy take on Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind"

Let your jaw drop in utter disbelief as Kahimi Karie reconceives Jimmy Cliff's "Harder They Come" for the 21st Century

Thrill to Mika Nakashima's dead-pan run-through of Sid Vicious's version of "My Way" (Note how "fucking" passes the censor several times, but not a reference to killing her cat, which gets bleeped out)

Sweat and fret as O.N.T.J detonate The Runaways' "Cherry Bomb"

Grab it all in one big glop, here.

According to George Plasketes’ Play it Again: Cover Songs in Popular Music, there are an estimated 40,000 songs floating around out there with at least one recorded cover version. This strikes me as an incredibly conservative estimate.

Whatever the real number might be, there are degrees of covering, and not all acts of covering mean or resonate in the same way. There’s a significant difference, for instance, between a Cambodian pop musician of the 70s swiping guitar licks from Santana or Creedence Clearwater Revival and a contemporary Latino group in Los Angeles basing a whole career covering songs from The Smiths catalog.

Neither act is better or worse, neither more nor less interesting than the other. But they are, in terms of their meaning, different enough to note.

Likewise, and more recently, Gwyneth Paltrow’s covering Cee Lo Green’s “Forget You” (the clean version of “Fuck You”) on an episode of “Glee” exists on a whole other meaning-plane from that of Gnarls Barkley’s cover of the Violent Femmes’ “Gone Daddy Gone,” despite the common denominator of Cee Lo.

Speaking of which, what is UP with Gnarls Barkley’s “Gone Daddy Gone”? First, take a look at this official video. (Sorry, you'll have to click the link; embedding has been disabled.)

The song was a huge hit in the 1980s for the Violent Femmes, who were, if memory serves me, THE voice of the geeky white ectomorph. Every song seemed, regardless of the lyrics, to be about the experience of being extremely uncomfortable in one’s distressingly reedy, pasty body. So, what could a rather larger-than-normal black guy possibly be wringing out of this song?

As it turns out: Everything. The video, which pictures Cee Lo as a plump fly, his band mates as other insects, emphasizes and expands on the discomfort of the original, even as the actual musicianship slickens and pop-readies the song up from the much more spastic original. Cee Lo’s and Gordon Gano’s meaning are not exactly trans-racial equivalents, but there are interesting echoes going on. In the context of Cee Lo’s later smash-hit “Fuck/Forget You,” the “Gone Daddy Gone” cover makes even more sense: both recordings pitch Cee Lo as heroic outsider, marginalized underdog. But Ceelo doesn’t feel uncomfortable in his body; it’s more about him wondering what your problem is with it.

So, getting to the mix at hand. While listening to one song after the next might make it all sound entirely random, there are reasons for each inclusion—though there was no one single criterion that covered everything. First, and at bare minimum, I only included a cover if, in transit, some significant border was crossed: ethnicity, gender, nationality, race. Beyond that, I chose sublime examples of reconfiguration, amped-upness and unlikely verisimilitude.