People's Official Wild Dummy Trick (September 10th - 14th)

Hello and welcome to Work Tunes.

Just a quick one today. I'm at home looking after Miss 3 and I am sick as a fully chrome set of mags. I thought about not posting this weekend, but since my target audience is me, I'm the only one who misses out. So, let's get into the music shall we?

A couple of kitschy sets this week in a compilation of Journey's best and Fastway's soundtrack to the long forgotten 80s horror film Trick Or Treat (starring Skippy from Family Ties with a cameo from Ozzy Osborne). There's a few old favourites from Something For Kate, Kathleen Edwards and A Tribe Called Quest. The new Meliisa Etheridge album is here - she seems to have gone back to her rock roots and is playing all guitars on every song. Also new is Dylan's dark Tempest and Wild Nothing's Nocturne. Because I've been listening to a bit of electronic music lately, I decided to get on someone who does it right, so I added Portishead. Rounding it all off, Ozi Batla's solo album is here because I recently heard the new Evil Eddie song and it reminded me. 

Check it out:

• Fastway - Trick or Treat
• Something For Kate - The Official Fiction
• Portishead - Dummy
• Journey - Greatest Hits
• Wild Nothing - Nocturne
• Melissa Etheridge - 4th Street Feeling
• Bob Dylan - Tempest
• Kathleen Edwards - Failer
• A Tribe Caled Quest - People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm
• Ozi Batla - Wild Colonial

Top Five Artists Last Week

1. Ice-T
2. Tracy Chapman
3. Digable Planets
4. Sex Pistols
5. Pegz

Song of the Week : Digable Planets - Dog It

As for my favourite track this week, it's a cut from one of my 5 or 10 favourite Rap albums, Digable Planets - Blowout Comb. For my weekly work list, I try to avoid playing the same things all the time and keep it fresh every week. That leads to me deliberately avoiding great albums like this one and Pneumonia etc. Thing is, when my brain told me to slip Blowout Comb on this week's list, I checked back and found that August 2010 was the last time it made the cut. 

I chose this song, Dog It because it is "hella" funky. The brass and the bass on the track are as cool as can be and the whole thing puts me in the New York groove (won't Kiss be pleased!). The other reason I chose it is because all week I've had a bar of lyrics from it stuck in my head - because it's a catchy rhyme and because it's clever:

"Now, I'm making bacon,

Still saying wa assalamu alaikum" 

It's a good groove for a Friday afternoon. I hope it gets you dancing.

Okey Doke

Thanks for stopping by. That's it then. I best go away and try hard not to shrivel up with dehydration and die. I'll see you all next week, with a good deal more energy I hope.

Go Eagles. Because if you don't 'go', that's it for 2012. Hasla malakim

Brighter Imitation Fire Theory (April 9th - 13th)

Hello and welcome to Work Tunes.

It's Easter this week and that means Friday and Monday off with a chance of picnic. It also means the same amount of work tunes in a smaller space of time. More music per square inch. 

So, what have I got? I have dived into the Drive-By Truckers back catalogue after enjoying Jason Isbell recently; there's an old favourite acoustic compilation from Triple M; Justin Townes Earle's latest LP that I've been waiting with baited breath for; I grabbed the rarities disc from both Ben Folds and Prince's best of 3 disc sets; because April 4 has just been, I grabbed The Unforgettable Fire; a bonafide Hip Hop classic from Tribe; a Something From Kate LP I haven't listened to yet and the acclaimed Pet Sounds.

Check it out:

• Drive-By Truckers - Brighter Than Creation's Dark

• VA - Triple M Cordless

• Justin Townes Earle - Nothing's Gonna Change The Way You Feel About Me Now

• Uncle Tupelo - Anodyne

• Ben Folds - Best Imitation of Myself (Disc 3) Rarities

• Prince - The Hits, The B-Sides (Disc 3) The B-Sides

• A Tribe Called Quest - Low End Theory

• The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds

• U2 - The Unforgettable Fire

• Something For Kate - Elsewhere for 8 Minutes

Top Five Artists Last Week

1. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
2. Lucinda Williams
3. U2
4. The Beatles
5. (RAS) Riders Against the Storm

Song of the Week : Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five - The King

On April 4 1968, 44 years ago (4/4 44years… just realised that), MLK was assassinated in Memphis. The song I have chosen in respect of this tragic anniversary is Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five – The King.


The song was released in 1983 on the On The Strength album, but it must have been ’87 or ’88 when I heard it on 100FM during their Scratch FM hip hop show. At the time, I am ashamed to say I had no idea who King was. I had been told about slaves (and I remember not being allowed to watch Alex Haley’s Roots even though it was a huge deal on TV at the time) and segregation, but I didn’t know the first thing about the Civil Rights movement. This song made me look King and Jesse Jackson up in the school library. That quickly led me to reading about Civil Rights in the US, about the Freedom rides, the marches, the bus boycott, the lunch counter sit ins and everything else. 


Since then I have read anything and everything I can get my hands on about the movement, I've watched countless documentaries and listened to a lot of music that references the same things (from the Staple Singers to Tupac). With this, I learned that the line from this song: "He wasn't scared of any man, didn't have no fear" was in no way whatsoever an exaggeration. King knew he was a target, knew his life was in danger everywhere he went, but continually put himself in situations that risked his life because it would further the mission he felt he was on. I don’t know about any of you, but I don’t even have an ounce of that man’s courage. 


So in celebration of a life not wasted, please enjoy. 

Hasta La Vista

Thanks for stopping by. Please have a safe and outstanding Easter if that's your thing. If you find any new music, hook a brother up. 


Go Eagles! Actually, if West Coast do for some reason lose to Melbourne today, I won't be overly distraught, as Melbourne deserves some positive karma for ditching a sponsor whose CEO made racist and sexist Facebook comments - regardless of the fact that doing so cost the struggling club AU$2M. So, Go Eagles! but congratulations Melbourne. 


Hasala malakim.

Playlist : October 25 - 29, 2010

A new artist (for me), some old favourites and a couple of classics make up this week's list. It's probably just a tad funkier than usual with the compilation and some roots rap on board.

Here's what will be playing in my ears;

• A Tribe Called Quest - Midnight Marauders : A little bit of Native Tongues always goes down a treat. A friend told me she'd been hearing a bit of rap lately and it was full of the F and N words. Groups like Tribe and De La Soul were always and still are against that sort of garbage. Long live true Hip Hop.

• The Roots - Phrenology : More positivity to go with Tribe. It was great to hear The Roots as a full on Funk and Soul band on the recent John Legend collaboration. I'm going back to The Roots (haw haw) to keep up my fix, otherwise I'd just keep playing Wake Up! (the Legend collaboration) over and over.

• VA - 70s Funk n Soul Classics : A really great compilation which dishes up exactly what it promises - classics from the 70s. Some of the best tracks include The O'Jays - Love Train; Curtis Mayfield - Superfly; Kool & The Gang - Jungle Boogie and The Staple Singers - Respect Yourself. Get yo funk on.

• Something For Kate - The Official Fiction : It's been quite some time since I heard this album. It was the first I had heard of SFK. It's a solid set with stand outs like Deja Vu and Light at the End of the Tunnel. They probably should have done an Australian Classic Albums doco on it. I think it's in that lofty company, anyway.

• Ryan Adams & The Cardinals - Jacksonville City Nights : I've decided to play each of 2005's Radams releases. Last week I played the brilliant double that kicked off the year in Cold Roses. JCN is a lot more traditional country than Cold Roses. It's got a lot of pedal steel and it sounds more like a drunken moan in some bar.

• S.O.U.L. - Can You Feel It : With the rise of new Soul this year, I have been wanting to relisten to all the old stuff I have. SOUL are a sort of jazzy half instrumental collective heavy on the flute and the sprawling solos with some honey smooth vocals and a bit of politics for good measure.

• Paul Kelly - Live May 1992 : PK is the man. Since I'm not going to see him when he plays here soon, I'm going to listen to and enjoy this double LP live set from 92. This is the album I used to get my wife into Paul Kelly. We played it at our wedding. It came with a VHS of the concert that I still have somewhere at home. I really enjoy it, every listen. If you're Australian and you haven't heard it, be like Molly and 'do yourself a favour'.

• Bob Dylan - Blonde On Blonde : As the final chapter in the holy trinity, I had to give Blonde a spin this week. Last week's Highway 61 Revisited was a blast. Blonde features what I consider one of the best, lyrically, songs ever in Visions of Johanna, as well as the tracks everybody knows Just Like a Woman and Rainy Day Women Nos 12 & 53 (even if a lot of people call it Everybody Must get Stoned after the refrain).

• Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - The Boatman's Call : This album was a last minute inclusion on this list because a clever twitter friend (*waves fondly at @a_musedly) quoted (Are You) The One That I've Been Waiting For? this morning - reminding me of one of the main reasons this is my favourite Nick Cave release.

• Fyfe Dangerfield - Fly Yellow Moon : The first I had heard of Fyfe Dangerfield was this week when I came across the Billy Joel cover (Always a Woman). I quite liked that, so I went looking for the album. The cover is not on this set, but it's all I could find. Fairly dreamy indie pop.

I hope something there turns you on to a new musical journey. As always, be excellent to each other and remember the words of Edward Furlong's Danny in American History X : "Hate is baggage. Life's too short to be pissed off all the time."

Peace man, right on.