Category Archives: Fun Stuff
Black Friday 2016
It’s that time of year again…. load up your machine guns and storm the stores for those Black Friday sales!
Stores should be required to play nothing but Steely Dan songs today. Maybe it would chill some of the more… frenetic… shoppers out. Well, at least until they got to “Don’t Take Me Alive!
Some Steely Dan for your shopper-survivalist weekend –
Trump Elected World President in Japan!
Swiped this, title and all, from John C. Wright, who notes –
It is not clear to me whether this charming weirdness is meant to mock Trump or applaud him, or just a neutral bit of fun that means nothing. For myself, I like Trump better, seeing this.
Saturday Night Stolen
This one’s heavy on video, yo. But it’s smooth.
In 1978, the Doobie Brothers released their album Minute By Minute, containing the song “What A Fool Believes”….
…and, of course, it became a hit. So smooth.
Comare and contrast with Robbie Dupree’s 1980 single titled “Steal Away”…
…which seems to be exactly what happened here. Very suspiciously similar.
According to this site, Dupree’s song also was, uh, inspired by Eddie Money’s 1977 song “Baby Hold On.” I can kind of hear it.
Doobie Bro Michael McDonald had this happen with another song, 1982’s “I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near)” –
The song was sampled in 1994 by Warren G and Nate Dogg in “Regulate” [mildly NSFW]-
A completely and totally 100% absolutely true and smooth account of how this came about was related on the internet series Yacht Rock [also a bit NSFW]. And “Hollywood Steve,” the host of the show, is a real life music critic.
However, “I Keep Forgettin'” itself is heavily inspired by Chuck Jackson’s 1963 song titled, amazingly, “I Keep Forgettin'” –
McDonald’s version is sometimes listed as a cover of Jackson’s song, but there are differences. Although sharing credit with the writers of Jackson’s song, McDonald does get a songwriting credit on his version.
Michael’s old friends in Steely Dan had their own run-in with this sort of thing. From 1977, their song “Black Cow” –
…which got sampled in 1997 by Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz for their single “Uptown Baby” [you know it’s NSFW]-
The opening of the song features another sample, Amores Como El Nuestro by Jerry Rivera.
Turns out The Dan weren’t happy with Tariq and Gunz sampling the song and causing Walter and Donald some difficulties. Peter Gunz discusses it here (a little NSFW language in there).
Not long after that, Tatyana Ali released her 1998 single “Daydreamin'” (lots of apostrophes in music, apparently), where Tariq and Gunz sampled themselves sampling “Black Cow” in some kind of recursive loop and rapped on it –
“I heard Steely Dan “Black Cow” and went wild!”
Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen completes and reverses the Mobius Circuit by sampling “Uptown Baby” over “Black Cow” –
Rocktober – Monster Mashup
Some truly monster-ous mashups for your Halloween.
One of the first mashups to go big was Steely Dan’s “Do It Again” crossed with Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” circa 1983 –
By the 90s, mashups were becoming quite the thing, and during the 2000s (especially with everyone having a computer and YouTube coming online), mashups exploded. Most are crap, but some are really good, such as this Daft Punk/Adele mix –
DJs and home remixers began digging up old classics to mix with more modern songs –
Nirvana is one of the more popular bands for mashups…. consider this mix with Amy Winehouse or this even better mix with No Doubt, both based around Nirvana’s “About A Girl.”
A Korn song was massively improved by combining it with a Cure song –
There was a real video for that song, but it’s gone now. Had a neat Escher ending, not to mention Robert Smith getting slowly eaten by the Spider Man (no, not that Spider-Man).
Disco is a prime fountain of pure unrefined mashup material. Especially when mixed with the most incongruous types of music –
Speaking of incongruities, this takes the cake right out of the rain –
It works so well!
Dance music goes well with more classically-influenced works –
Who knew Enya could spit rhymes like that?
If you feel like your childhood has been violated, your teen years touched inappropriately, your college years…. well, something involving microaggressions and a rape hoax, I’m sure… then this song is dedicated to you.
Rockitober!
Back around 1984, I used to watch a lot of MTV (which likely explains a lot about me). I also watched other music programs like Night Tracks, Friday Night Videos, and Night Flight. So I was often viewing strange music videos at 2 in the morning or later (Night Flight was especially damaging… they would show experimental movie shorts and bizarre comedy skits and who knows what other surreal stuff. It’s also where I first saw “Bambi vs. Godzilla.” I loved Night Flight!).
One such bizarreness was Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit!” –
Imagine being 14 years old in the 80s, when MTV and all this stuff was still kind of new, and seeing that at 4 in the morning.
The song was awesome, though – Herbie totally nailed the vibe of the time with the record scratching and synth sound. So awesome that he was nominated for a Grammy award, where he performed “Rockit!” live. I believe I saw it when it originally aired. Pay attention to this one –
Didn’t see that coming.
Also, watch after the song to see Michael McDonald announce the nominations for Best R&B Performance and see who Herbie was up against. Nice remix of the winning song (Spoiler: it wasn’t Michael Jackson) at the end.
Rocktober Saturday Night Studio – DOLBY!
Everyone knows Thomas Dolby’s classic song, “She Blinded Me With Science!” But he’s had quite a career since that song. A couple of his songs appeared in last weekend’s “No Static At All” post, “Radio Silence” and a live version of “Commercial Breakup.” Go give them a listen.
Before releasing his first album, The Golden Age Of Wireless, Dolby did synthesizer arrangements on Foreigner’s songs”Waiting for a Girl Like You” and “Urgent,” the latter also featuring saxophone by Junior Walker. Walker later recorded his own (Dolby-less)version of the song with his All-Stars, which can be heard here.
Kicking off this Studio proper is a 1983 “Live Wireless” concert in its entirety –
In 1985, he appeared onstage at the Grammy Awards with Units 1,2, and 4 in a synthesizer showdown –
“…the big surprise was I didn’t expect Thomas Dolby to come out in that amazing wig and tuxedo — which is so him, you know, and brilliant. And that tiny little keyboard!” – Howard Jones, who also explains why some of the performance was prerecorded.
A lot of it was prerecorded stuff that we’d already done in the studio because of the ambition of it, because it was using that amount of technology. I don’t think anybody would have been brave enough to play everything live! So we played some things over the top of it, and then the rest of it was pre-done in studio. I think that’s the only way to have achieved it for the Grammys. I think it would have been very risky otherwise!
Dig those keytars!
More recently, Dolby was involved with “The Toadlickers,” combining techno, bluegrass, and parkour –
He also worked on an online multiplayer game which coincided with his album of the same name, Map Of The Floating City, set in an alternate history. As he described it, “The Floating City is set against a dystopian vision of the 1940s that might have existed had WWII turned out a lot differently.”
Trailer –
Map of the Floating City playlist –
Finally, we finish with Dolby performing his signature song “She Blinded Me With Science!” at Moogfest in 2012, with some commentary about Magnus Pyke and the San Francisco Giants –
NightFlyRadio – No Static At All
Time to put the needle on the record. No sucker Djs, just two turntables and a microphone on the avenue by Radio City with a transistor.
Wdydfae commented on the last post about his memories of radio –
My inchoate fragments of radio memories don’t coalesce into a particular story. Radio wasn’t a big part of my childhood, as far as I can remember, unless I was riding in someone’s car and it happened to be playing.
…Then it moves into adulthood, and radio was in another country and language. Basically, lousy radio selection–just not a radio culture. Then I realized the radio riches I had left behind, with at least a channel for just about any genre you could want. So, belatedly I appreciated that the radio world of the States is vibrant–lot of stuff out there, and a whole way of talking, presenting yourself, presenting sound, pacing things.
Read the full comment here.
Kicking off with Steely Dan’s classic”FM” in spectacular style…. From the YouTube channel of the Empire State Building, followed by a big block of tunes to crank up to 11 –
“On October 29, 2015, the 50th anniversary of the installation of a Master FM Antenna on the top of the Empire State Building, the global landmark synchronized its world-famous tower lights to Steely Dan’s 1978 smash ‘FM (No Static At All).'”
Bonus points if you saw a young Geordi La Forge or maybe Tom & Jerry in there.
Hope you enjoyed the music.
Night Sky Radio Now On Gab.ai
Night Sky Radio begins broadcasting on Gab
Now I gotta learn how to use the thing.
Rocktober Saturday Night Studio – 10th Floor Cibo Matto
Extra sugar, extra salt, extra oil and MSG with a few bad words if you’re delicate like that.
Shut up and eat!
Sixteen years ago, one day*
I was walking down the street
I was looking for music
You know what I mean?
And I picked up this CD
I kinda want to know her more
Are you made or broken by the birthday cake?
2 for 1, but 3 For 2!
She talks like American, she walks like Egyptian
*Ok, it might have been 15 years ago. Somewhere around there I picked up Viva! La Woman at a used CD place.
Real Life Batman Chases Killer Clown
Not a dream, a hoax, or an imaginary story…. a man costumed as Batman went after a clown in Britain, where nutbars have been dressing as clowns to scare and hurt people.
The Telegraph reports –
A photograph has been shared on Facebook of ‘Batman’ seemingly chasing off a killer clown.
BBC Cumbria reported local company Cumbria Superheroes is behind the effort to rid the streets of clowns.
They have reassured that the costumed man is not a vigilante, but just trying to reassure local children who are scared of the ‘killer clowns’.
And elsewhere…
In another incident, George Birkbeck said he spotted a sinister figure holding a hammer in a Tesco car park in Plymouth on Friday.
The clown was dressed as Batman’s ‘Joker’ character and ran off after Mr Birkbeck brandished a beer bottle at him.
This is where we’re going – life has gotten so strange that dressing as a comic book character to fight bizarre crime actually seems like a natural thing to do.
There was a clown just a couple blocks from here scaring kids at a school recently. Maybe some of the locals should look into this cape-and-cowl idea…
nightskyradio 