A Million Cows (Can You Imagine All That Milk?)

I spent all of last week convinced that last weekend included Labor Day.  So I've spent all this week out of sorts.  Hopefully this Monday will offer a corrective temporal shift, or something, or whatever, because I've been a slo-mo delayed reaction zombie traveler scratching dead itches.

Anyway.

Below are a quartet of unrelated tracks.  At least one of them should add some end-of-summer to yr step as you walk out the door.  Enjoy the holiday, Eugene Debs 4ever, etc.

fun. - All the Pretty Girls (mp3)(buy)

fun. (myspace) is the unfortunately named new group featuring Nate Ruess, late of The Format, and Andrew Dost, late of Anathallo.  Debut album Aim and Ignite starts off trying too hard; it settles, it grows on you, it might eventually seem a worthy successor to The Format's beloved Dog Problems.

Anna Waronker! - late of the similarly punctuated that dog. - guests on a couple tracks!

"All the Pretty Girls" is a summer dress stitched of Queen and Cheap Trick and Supertramp, plys ELO wink & hum, some lo-disco strings and oh, my, how it bounces.  Joy.  The band's only upcoming NYC show is already sold out.  Bummer.

Was (Not Was) - Tell Me That I'm Dreaming (Traditional 12" Remix)(mp3)(buy)

Strut Records recently released a 30th anniversary overview of NYC's mondo weirdo punko disco label Ze, and I defer to Mike Powell's familiarity with the catalog as defense for the standard this-missing-that-missing comp critique.  But as first exposure to the label's mindset, it's enlightening and exciting.  You will simultaneously skip tracks and wish the disc was a whole box set.

So it's both a starter set and something meant to be taken apart and reassembled elsewhere.  You will start raiding it for mixtapes.  Aural Exciter's "Maladie d'Amour" ("...just like a Duncan yo-yo), Material & Nona Hendryx' "Bustin' Out," yum.  Cristina's black Xmas narrative "Things Fall Apart" will leave you swaying in a basement bar with Griffin Dunne.  If you need something to lead into (and show up) your Vampire Weakened, Kid Creole and the Coconuts will do the trick.  Ken Collier's Was (Not Was) remix should never ever end, is probably the best thing Ronald Reagan ever did.

Howard Fishman - When I Grow Too Old to Dream (mp3)(buy)

Howard Fishman (myspace) has spent the last decade in other decades.  The gift here is that it's not shtick, the gift here's just great music capably refurbished and set out for presentation.  A lovely standard, enjoyed and undersold, the less said about it the better.

Bendaly Family - Do You Love Me? (mp3)(more)

Last but brilliant, a dizzying piece of Lebanese music that apparently originates in 1978.  It's a jumble of ideas - the drone, the beats, the arid guitar and groovy back-up chants, the love story and aggressively undefined helplessness ("thinking about the guys who made all the troubles"). And then just before the two minute mark it escapes into straightforward, disorienting soft '70s TV pop.  Amazing.  The video, which WFMU called the "best Kuwaiti beach music video of all times," reinforces the Partridgeness.

This version might be a remix; the electronic elements - not included in the video - are clear, the original material has a sun-baked cassette muddiness.  But that works for me.  I haven't found much information in English about the group/family - they were supposedly really popular, the kids might have grown into solo careers - or a domestic source for their music, but this (official?) site has a slew of mp3s.

tags: the format  fun period  bendaly family  howard fishman  ze records  

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