Crowd Lu | 100 Ways to Live

Listen to five freakin fabulous fongs from fhis FD

Download the whole thang here.

Found in P-Tunes & Video, the super-fabo vid/CD store on Chrystie Street in Manhattan featured in this blog's header image.

Anti-star Crowd Lu has, ironically, risen to mainstream popularity in Taiwan at least in part due to his bowl haircut, nerd glasses, and general dorkiness. He also writes very smart, catchy pop music. It reminds me a bit of Jonathan Richman, Alex Chilton and, golly, any number of mainstream 60s AM radio artists I can't remember at the moment.

Dude! Dudette! Take a stab at the first song on the playlist and then "Boring," which I think is the third.

I love it! With lots of special super dork emu rainbow glitter hearts swirling around (the love).

Snail Ramp | Fresh Brash Old Man

Five hoppin' trax

Get the whole shebang here.

Found in a suburb somewhere in Gunma Prefecture, Japan. This was in the Japanese equivalent of a Wal*Mart, in the 300-yen bin. (About three bucks.)

Founded in 1995, Snail Ramp is one of many Japanese ska bands. And when I say many, I mean many-many! There was actually a whole wall in Shibuya's Tower Records filled with nothing but Japanese ska that rivaled the rap/hip-hop section at the old Kim's Video on St. Mark's. No exaggeration. When the Japanese decide to cover a genre, they totally cover it.

And cover it well. This is a freaking great record, ersatz tho it may be. But, then, since when has authenticity or purity, especially in the realm of pop music, necessarily led to anything more than earnest forgettable crap?


Snail Ramp live

Tan Sri P. Ramlee & Saloma | Film Hits

Five fabulous songs

Download the first CD of this 2-CD set here.

Found in the "World Music" section at Tower Records in Shibuya, Tokyo. An import from Malaysia.

Actor, singer, comedian, songwriter, screenwriter and film director P. Ramlee died early, at the age of 44, but had by then written, sung and/or played on nearly 400 songs. I know almost next to nothing about him, other than he is considered one of the icons of Malaysian cinema. I also know that his music totally, totally rocks.

Dedicated to twist-lover Brandon Downing, who was just interviewed about his great new book, Lake Antiquity, at Bomb, and another flarf peop, Chris Funkhouser, who lived in Malaysia for--well, I'm not sure how long he lived there.


Bunyi Guitar

I LOVE YOU BOYZ | I WANNA BUY I LOVE YOU BOYZ

Five songs from this CD

Download ten songs from the CD in a single zip file here.

Is that not one of the greatest CD covers of all time? I really don't know how to classify I Love You Boyz. Parody? Hip-hop? Canto pop? They're all of this and more. I superamount hearts with colorful glitter love them, though their CDs are wildly uneven. But some of this stuff sounds like nothing else, unless you listen to a lot of WFMU, maybe. But it's more awesomely, if not stridently, pop. Or, they need a word all their own: Pawp.

Found in Brooklyn's Chinatown at my favorite local CD/video store near the corner of 8th Ave and 53rd Street (which has now become more of a bookstore than a CD/video place, alas). Four bucks. Four bucks!

I remember the day I got this (and a number of other CDs), afterward going up 8th Ave a bit to a Szechuan restaurant, and getting into this whole, complicated discussion with the waitress, who turned out to be the owner/cook's wife. She saw the bag my CDs were in and wanted to see what I'd gotten. So I spilled them all out on the table, she saw this CD, and blurted out: "Oh! Where did you get this?"

"Just down the street. You know that video store at the corner of 53rd?"

"They have it already?"

This led into a whole discussion about Cantopop and Hong Kong and how much she missed being there. At which point she sort of bit her lower lip and explained that she and her husband were, yeah, not actually from Szechuan, but Hong Kong, and had moved to the states--how many years ago, did she say? It must have been a while, because the CD is from 2004. So, if she thought it was amazing that the store had this CD already in 2009--well, you get the picture.

As she talked, I thought about the Robert Sietsma rave review clipping in the window of the place (had he used the word "authentic," and had it been, like several times?), and made a "twist-mouth" face.

Did they have dan-dan noodles? I asked.

She looked at me sheepishly, shook her head and sort of half-shrugged. "We're from Hong Kong," she smiled.


Absurd ILYB comedy routine


Somewhat less absurd ILYB music video

Greatest music video ever?

Zom Ammara and Joey Boy

Download an mp3 of this song here.

This solves the mystery of who this was, btw.

Ceza | Rapstar

Download entire CD in a single zip file here.

I'm going to Japan tomorrow for a two and a half week vacation. Meanwhile, I wanted to leave you with something especially fabulous, thus Ceza's Rapstar.

Don't just listen to the samples. Be brave; download the damned CD. It's freaking amazing.

Ceza, which means "punishment" in Turkish, is the most famous hip-hop star in Turkey. He's also one of the fastest rappers I've ever heard.

Found at Uludag Video on Avenue W in Brooklyn, before they stopped importing CDs.

It's great, right? Whatever. If it's Fri May 21 or later, I'm in Japan. Maybe I'll post photos or somethin' here or Elsewhere.

Rayess Bek | Am Bihkeh Bil Sokout

Al Qanoune al Qanine"

Download entire CD in a single zip file here.

Found this totally kick-ass rap/hip-hop CD at the mighty Rashid Music on Court Street in Brooklyn, what I believe is the only surviving Arabic music store in Brooklyn. (There used to be at least half a dozen in Bay Ridge and Carroll Gardens I used to frequent.)

According to this article, Rayess Bek was one of the first artists to rap in Arabic, ca. 1997. According to his Web site, he just completed a doctorate in France and is working through the U.N. on an anti-war campaign with Frank Fitzpatrick.

Thai Reggae | Half Bob Marley, Half Original

Four songs from the CD above.

Download the entire CD in a single zip file here.

I don't take the current situation in Thailand lightly. I had long ago planned to upload this CD, which I found in the previously mentioned Thai store in Manhattan's Chinatown--on Mulberry? Elizabeth? Below Canal, at any rate.

It is, to me, one of the oddest CDs I've ever picked up. Half of the songs--every odd numbered song, beginning with #1--is a Bob Marley cover, but sung in Thai. Every other song--the even numbered songs--are what I believe are original songs, also in Thai.

Surprisingly--or perhaps not so surprisingly--it's actually exceptionally well done. Having spent my formative years in the 80s in San Francisco and Berkeley, I was pretty sure that I never, ever, ever, ever wanted to hear Bob Marley again. That was admittedly before I knew there was a band in Thailand covering his songs.

It would feel crassly hand-wringingly holier-than-thou to dedicate this upload to the Thai protesters, so I won't.

But, still.

GayBird | Legendary Queen + PRETTYHAPPY&GAY

Three mind-blowing pop songs from GayBird

Download the entire CD + a track from PRETTYHAPPY&GAY in a single zip file here.

Found in the video/CD store on Chrystie Street in Manhattan's Chinatown pictured in the header of this blog. Leung Kei Cheuk, aka GayBird, is an avant-garde composer and pop producer.

Hoàng Oanh | Gold

"Ngay sua se ra sao" and "Kiep ngheo"

Download the entire CD in a single zip file here.

In September 2008, I went to Minneapolis to do a reading with a couple of others in the Flarflist Collective at the Walker. The day after the reading, we wound up on a street that housed nothing but Vietnamese restaurants and video/CD stores.

After a great lunch, I popped into the video place next to the restaurant and combed the stacks as quickly as I could, finding, among other things, this fabulous collection of songs Hoàng Oanh recorded from 1960-1975. Of the 20-30 Vietnamese CDs I have, this is one of my all-time favorites, largely owing to Hoàng Oanh's voice, which never fails to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. She's amazing. I think, although I'm not certain of this, that she's still alive and living in southern California.

When Linh Dinh stayed with me last year during a neo-benshi festival that Brandon Downing curated, I pulled out my stash of Vietnamese CDs, begging him to please please please contextualize some of it for me. Which, graciously, he did.

Apparently, Hoàng Oanh was extremely popular in Vietnam, but largely outside of Saigon, where she was considered a bit unsophisticated or "country." I was very surprised by this, but assume it's true and that sophistication, like humor, doesn't always travel well from culture to culture.