You Forgot Poland | Bodega Pop 14

Just reupped the 33-track Bodega Pop exclusive album here. You'll never forget Poland again.


Listen to "Tatuuj Mnie"


Listen to "Welcome to Poland Asshole"


Listen to "Artbroken"


Listen to "Nie Ma Nic"

 
Listen to "Rosol"

A collection of ear-blistering alt Polish pop, rock and new wave found over the last couple of years at Music Planet in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I compressed the album in a ZIP file rather than a RAR because at least one person I know who will love this album has complained in the past that she can't open RARs. (Yes, I know; hush.)

Niemen | Sukces (1968)

You are listening to first track of upsettingly groovy Polish psych album from late sixties

You are grabbing whole thingy here.

Not to make excuses, but I was in the middle of a longish post about this nothing-short-of-thrilling CD I discovered earlier today at a Polish media store in Greenpoint, Brooklyn  (Music Planet, 649 Manhattan Ave), when I hit a button or series of buttons that erased everything but the last two letters of the word "and." 

I can't rewrite it. I just can't. I'm exhausted. I have too many things going on right now. But neither can I wait to share this sublime gem with you for another moment.

Did you see the cover of this album? That's not a bullshit irony retro cover, dear reader. Oh, no. It's the original 1968 cover of Czeslaw Niemen's second album, Sukces (Success). Does the music live up to it? Oh, yes. Niemen (born Czesław Juliusz Wydrzycki in 1939 in what is now Belarus ) was one of Poland's most important rock stars and his voice, the arrangements, everything sounds like some filthier--or perhaps merely moister--chain-smoking East European reprobate version of James Brown. 

Hoo-wah!

Various Artists | Warszawa

Reupped in 360kbps by popular demand here.

[Originally posted June 4, 2011.] Found at Music Planet near the Nassau G stop near the border of Williamsburg and Greenpoint. Music Planet is a Polish CD and DVD store that I discovered a couple of weeks ago with friends as we wandered around the neighborhood, waiting for a table to have brunch. Somehow, I was able to talk them into stepping inside, after which I took note of several things, this all-Polish tribute to Joy Division among them.




Today, I returned to the neighborhood and picked up this, and "Woda, Woda, Woda" by the punk band Sexbomba. I think all of us assumed Soxbomba would be the clear winner; we were wrong. This is actually one of the best tribute records I've ever heard, in great part due to the range of responses, including an original song in Polish inspired by Joy Division. (This is, as it turns out, one of numerous Joy Division tributes recorded around the world.)



When I returned today I managed to find this immediately, but not the Sexbomba (a sign?). As I stood there, scanning the stacks, one of the clerks, dressed more like a pharmacist than a guy selling CDs, asked me what seemed like a very long question in Polish as he walked by me. Assuming he was asking me the obvious, I blurted out "Sexbomba!" He stopped, wheeled around and, again saying something that sounded incredibly long and complicated, pointed out the Sexbomba section. I thanked him in English.


"You like this band?" he asked, without skipping a beat. He seemed impressed.

"Mm, thanks for finding it for me."

"That's what I'm here for!" he replied, disappearing into the back of the store as I made my way to the register.

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.

Sexbomba | Woda. Woda. Woda.

Found last summer at Music Planet near the Nassau G stop near the border of Williamsburg and Greenpoint, where I also found this insanely great Joy Division tribute. (If you haven't yet grabbed that one, go get it now--it's one of the best albums I've ever posted here.)

Here's what I previously wrote about my interaction at Music Planet:

"Music Planet is a Polish CD and DVD store that I discovered a couple of weeks ago with friends as we wandered around the neighborhood, waiting for a table to have brunch. Somehow, I was able to talk them into stepping inside, after which I took note of several things [the aforementioned Joy Division tribute and Sexbomba's Woda. Woda. Woda.]...

"When I returned today I managed to find [the Joy Division tribute] immediately, but not the Sexbomba. As I stood there, scanning the stacks, one of the clerks, dressed more like a pharmacist than a guy selling CDs, asked me what seemed like a very long question in Polish as he walked by me. Assuming he was asking me the obvious, I blurted out 'Sexbomba!' He stopped, wheeled around and, again saying something that sounded incredibly long and complicated, pointed out the Sexbomba section. I thanked him in English.

"'You like this band?' he asked, without skipping a beat. He seemed impressed.

"'Mm, thanks for finding it for me.'

"'That's what I'm here for!' he replied, disappearing into the back of the store as I made my way to the register."

The members of the punk outfit Sexbomba claim to have met in 1986 while working together in the Warsaw Zoo. In their own words:

"We wanted to play fast and full of energy music supported on riffs, rythm [sic] and simple melody.

"Rock'n'Roll with punk rock means many songs with strong choruses. The lyrics are simple and sencere [sic] and are not going to teach anybody. Things have changed but we still play the same kind of music."

Google's translation feature tells me that "woda" means "water," so the title of this album would then be: Water. Water. Water.

Listen to "Sposob Na Swinie"

Get it all here.