Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears – Tell em What Your Name is.
I run the risk here of falling headfirst into #116, but I don’t give a damn because this is a great great album. It’s not blues, it’s not rock, it’s not soul, it’s not funk. It’s some crazy bubbling amalgamation of all of the above.
Basically, if they redid animal house tomorrow, Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears could stand in for Otis Day & the Knights. The whole album has that rip-roaring juke joint feel to it that makes you want to drink like a fish and run off and do questionable things with questionable people. I can’t speak to the authenticity of Joe’s lyrics but I also don’t think that really matters. It’s not a cerebral album , it’s a fun one.
It’s an absolute steal right now for 5 bucks on Amazon. I can’t praise this enough. Go get it and let it power your more raucous summer evenings.
I hate the term northern soul. It’s one of the few terms that has less to do with where the music originated and more to do with the audience it later garnered. It’s a strange anomaly. That being said, Smoove and John Turrell made names for themselves in that whole little scene and have transcended it with this new album. Jalapeno is always stronger than strong but this latest offering goes above and beyond. It’s a great, funky, soulful piece of music that, even with its fair share of covers and samples, doesn’t come off as too derivative or forced. Be sure to check out “The Difference” which takes the Second Crusade sax sample from Queen Latifah’s U.N.I.T.Y. and turns it into an updated doobie brothers song; and their driving, funked up cover of 80s acid madness “Don’t Go” by Yaz.
Back in the days before trademark infringement suits and internet record shops, labels used to use RIYL stickers on the jackets of their albums. RIYL stands for “Recommended if you like…” meaning that a person who liked a particular artist would likely enjoy the music of one such other artist. Come to think of it, Pandora runs almost entirely off an RIYL engine.
There’s a metric fuckton of good music coming out lately, and lots of it can be related to other artists. I figured I’d take a second and shed some light on the stuff i’m digging the most right now. I’ll be doing this all week.
Now I’ve made absolutely no secret of the fact that I am decidedly not a dubstep fan. I don’t get the appeal, but I know great music when I hear it. This is great music. All the artists I listed up top are wonderful, groundbreaking musicians, but they can get a little bit too “intelligent” from time to time, which makes the music a bit less palatable. The same could be said for boxcutter’s earlier work. This one is much more down to earth and is just a great, listenable album with a variety of different shapes, tempos and moods.
1. This is easily the best article I’ve read about the evolution of the music industry in all of 2009. Seriously, it hits so many good points that I have very little to add. If you have any interest in music and how to monetize it in the future, I recommend giving it a read.
2. Mexico looms. Less than a month away from my trip and I am busting ass to get in shape. To help me stay focused, I joined the April Body of Work Challenge over at Social Workout. Catch me blogging over there about how fat I am trying to not be. If you’re into it, join up and you may be able to win some prizes.
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The ridiculousness in that photo is unfathomable. Is it just me or does Berlusconi bear a striking resemblance to Dick Vitale?
Earlier this week, I managed to reconnect with a friend in Spain who I lived with as an exchange student 10 years ago. We got to reminiscing about the trip, and later on I happened to remember an art print that I bought at the Prado. It was “Saturn Devouring his Child” by Goya. For some reason, the painting resonated with me at the time. Instinct says that as a 16 year old high school student, it was probably just because it was a dude eating a kid, but I like to think that I was a bit more refined than that. It just so happens that the painting is still resonating really hardcore right now. Anyhow, by some happy coincidence, pop surrealist Luke Chueh has remixed the Goya painting into his trademark style for his new show, “From Light Cometh Darkness” out in LA. Chueh has long been one of my favorite contemporary artists so to see him take on, and do justice to, a classic like this warms my cockles. I’m not gonna be able to get out to LA to see this stuff, so hopefully they’ll have prints available. Superb blog Arrested Motion has more preview pics.
Great piece of music right here. Jimi Tenor’s a Finnish musician with a rather extensive discography. For his 18th [jeez] album, he teams up with German afrobeaters Kabu Kabu to churn out a hell of a release. Jimi’s got a very distinctive, whiny voice that somehow doesn’t get annoying. Grind! is a particularly killer cut that’s an early favorite for me. The album’s yet another disconcerting instance of German’s droping the funkiest of the funky. But hey, whatever works.
Thanks again to Billy and Al over at undulate recordings for having me on. Here’s a tracklist and download link.
Tracklist: 1. The Foreign Exchange – Daykeeper 2. Freddie Cruger – Keep on Knockin 3. Nicole Willis – Blues Downtown 4. The Bamboos – Move On 5. The Sweet Vandals – Nites Lites 6. WAR – The World is a Ghetto 7. Lee Sankey – The Man (Abstrakt Knights rmx) 8. Jon Kennedy – 110% 9. DJ Day – Manha 10. Lizzie Parks – Ode to St. Cecile 11. The Natural Yogurt Band – Chapter One 12. Luniz – I Got Five On It 13. Hardkandy – My Morphine 14. The Ranjahs ft. CeeLo- InspHERation 15. Aldo Vanucci – What Would I Do (JP’s Edit)
I prepared a special guest mix for di.FM’s Exposure NYC radio show that will be airing tomorrow, March 3rd, at 2PM. It’s an hour of old and new deep funk and mellow soul with some other choice downtempo goodies throw in. Big shout to DeepSpell for giving me the opportunity.
Anyhow this is what happens when they get glockenspiels and set off to recreate the work of some other famous duos. Namely Hall + Oates and Justice. It’s so wacky that it just plain works. Hit the jump afterward for two more.
