Funk Friday

Funk Friday: “Joyful Noise,” Breakestra

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Funk Friday in spring?  With the funkiest band this side of California?  Yes please.

I’m sending this groove-tastic track to all of you Tune-Up fans from around the world.  Did you know you represent five continents?  You all tune in from 18 different countries – from Brazil to Germany to Singapore and back again.  That’s amazing.  I am so happy, grateful, and excited to share music with you all.  So crank it up!  Let’s have ourselves an international dance party!  Make a joyful noise and groove on, Tune-Up fans.  Groove on.

REMIX WEEK! Funk Friday: “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head,” Kylie Minogue meets Patrick and Eugene

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Oh my sweet, sweet readers, I feel badly about pulling such a fast one on you like this.  I bet you were expecting a funk cover of a non-funk song, or a funk-oriented remix or mash-up.

YOINK!

I had a lot of options to choose from, lest you incorrectly assume a paucity of musical ideas.  Au contraire.  It’s just…well, let me put it this way.  A good re-working of a song is like seeing an actor do a particularly fine job portraying a character: you can’t so easily see that person’s face and not think of the emotions their character made you feel.  So too with this song.  I adored Kylie’s song when it came out.  It was slick, sexy, and had a great beat.  …Then I heard this version.  And poof!  Bye, Kylie, thanks for trying.  For better or for worse, Patrick and Eugene’s bizarro-world, klezmer carnival version supplanted the original.  It’s possible the reason is – and this really is a curse, let me tell you – I tend to be way more interested in things that are weird than I am things that are easy.  Kylie’s song was a very well-constructed, well-packaged, dull song.  Standard girl-sees-boy, girl-wants-boy fare.  P and E’s version is unsettling, difficult to read, and absolutely hilarious (I had a really hard time mood-tagging this one).  When they get to the “stay forever and ever” lyric, I feel oddly compelled to shout “IT PUTS THE LOTION ON ITS SKIN OR ELSE IT GETS THE HOSE AGAIN.”*  Like I said: it’s a curse, being more interested in weird things.

*”Silence of the Lambs” reference?  Anyone?  …Anyone?

Original song here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB578q9zjrM

Funk Friday: “In The Air,” The Apples

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDGkfqRFUzM

The First Funk Friday after the first day of spring calls for this breezy, warm-weather track from the great band The Apples that hails from Tel Aviv, Israel.  I listen to this and I see myself throwing around a frisbee on the Mall, grilling at a friend’s place, inviting my crew to my roof deck, playing boozy croquet in the park – really doing anything that involves good friends, warm sun, cold drinks, and solid tunes.  Spring, you ol’ so-and-so.

Funk Friday: “But I Do,” Poldoore

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I.  Cannot.  Stop.  Playing.  This.  Song.  This is a remix of O.V. Wright’s Song “I Don’t Know Why,” which, as you’ll see is much slower.  By speeding it up and adding a new drum track, Poldoore skews the track way more towards funk – and hip-hip – and away from soul.  I love the very 60’s era chord progression and lead guitar riffs (vaguely Buffalo Springfield-esque), the tempo, the rhythm track layered on top, the horns, the way it builds – everything.  It’s flawless.  Check out more of his stuff on his Soundcloud website.  Groove on, Tune-Up fans.

Funk Friday: “Summer Rain,” BoomBox”

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BoomBox is a fun band formed by a couple of friend from Kyiv in 2004.  When I was in Ukraine a few years ago I saw their posters everywhere I went and I’m glad I took the hint.  Their songs are really solid and run the musical gamut from synth-heavy funk to mellow instrumental.  This song is one of my favorites by them.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Ukraine’s Interim Prime Minister, rejected Crimea’s vote to secede from Ukraine and join Russia.  Here are some interesting Russian and Ukrainian perspectives on Crimea.  And finally, it doesn’t look like the U.S. has much leverage over Russia – or, Putin wants to make the world believe that.

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My memory doesn’t sting anymore, my thoughts don’t strike on my hands
I accompany you to other shores, shores
You are a migratory bird, you look for happiness on the way
You come to say goodbye and leave again, leave again.

Chorus:
The summer rain, the summer rain started early today
The summer rain, the summer rain washes my soul’s wound
It mourns together with me by the blind window.

The summer rain, the summer rain whispers to me softly and simply
That you’ll comme, you’ll come, you’ll come, but it’ll too late
Untimeliness is the eternal drama, where he and she are.

I’ll soon stop dreaming of you at all, but then
I’ll have a new dream about our cold house
You ‘ll understand with time that one doesn’t look for love out of love
But you listen for now and you won’t bring yourself back, you won’t.

Funk Friday: “I Got The…,” Labi Siffre

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It’s too damn cold this week for me to be in an uptempo funky mood, so I pulled Labi Siffre off the shelf for today’s funk offering.  I love how spare this song is at first and then builds to a simple richness.  A nice and mellow sound while you pour yourself a drink and curl up indoors.

Funk Friday: “Concentration,” Quantum MC’s

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This song is so wacky.  (Then again, it was 1999.)  It’s gotta be the most mild-mannered rap song I’ve ever heard, layered over a tight rhythm and feel-it-in-your-bones baseline.  I recommend starting any conversation with, “Yeah-yeah, yeah, yeah…oh yeah.”  Also, this has got to be the only song written ever, in any genre, that uses the lyric “flowing like soy milk over sweetened cereal.”  Quantum MC’s were a great group that included two favorite artists of mine – Cut Chemist and DJ Shadow.  I find that I tend to start the song fairly soft and then crank it by the time it gets to 3:37.  What-what!  Happy Friday, Tune-Up Fans.

Funk Friday: “Make Me Believe In You,” Patti Jo

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Happy Fear Day, Tune-Up fans!  (Or, Valentine’s Day, if you’re committed to living a life of mindless literalism and social norms and having people actually understand what you’re talking about.)

Before you all inundate me with messages about the glories of love and life and birds and bees and whatnot, let me pause for a second.  Love is great.  Love is glorious.  Love is also terrifying, difficult, and a royal pain in the ass.  Think of all the hundreds of billions of inputs that endlessly feed into making you who you are – the person who takes their coffee black, who prefers staying up late to getting up early, who prefers big groups to small gatherings, and will never under any circumstances wear pleat-front pants.  You and everyone you see every day are Olympic-sized swimming pools of memory-infused preferences and experience-born trigger points, some conscious and some so parked in your subconscious you don’t even know it.  In a way, there are seven billion unique languages on the planet.  And yet, in the midst of all of this, we meet people, we fall in love, and, sometimes, we find our languages have a common root.  Amazing.

This is what I ponder every February 14th that rolls around, and it always makes me think of those people who are in the beginning stages of the whole love saga.  No matter how much sang-froid one was born with, it’s impossible not to wonder about the future.  And because, in my mind, V Day is also Fear Day, it does kind of put one on the offensive.  Hit it, Patti Jo.  “You’re gonna be downright in shame if I find that you’re playing any game.  Make me believe in you.”

Funk Friday, Part II: “(There’s A) Freeze On Funk,” Olympic Runners

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OH SNAP!  Didn’t see that coming, did you, Tune-Up fans?  I had to split today into two parts.  Part One: Normal funk Friday to get you in the mood.  Part Two: Funk appropriate for the Winter Olympics Opening Ceremonies!  The only people I could call on to help us get down to the Sochi groove is, obviously, the Olympic Runners.  This song in particular is apropos – not only because it’s mind-bendingly cold in Sochi, but…how to put this delicately…Russia’s government has been an active participant in every aspect of planning for these winter games.  (See: euthanizing roaming packs of dogs, hotel rooms so unfinished the guests are bartering lightbulbs for door handles, the whole “there are no homosexuals in Sochi” thing, the list goes on.)  I for one am extremely curious to see how Russia will portray itself during the ceremonies tonight.  As a serious aside, let’s all toss in some good thoughts that things will stay safe and calm.

Funk Friday: “Straight Fire,” The Jive Turkeys

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Damn, I love The Jive Turkeys.  This awesome, relatively new quartet is from Cincinnati, Ohio, one of our funkier states.  There isn’t a single song they’ve put out that’s been dull or sub-par.  I highly recommend going on a YouTube walkabout to discover their other stuff.  “Straight Fire” is a pretty solid place to start.  I mean how can you resist that organ?  You can’t.  It’s not possible.