Planning Ahead.

 

Ok, if you were to actually know me you'd be more than aware that besides the Fall, I really love the Everly Brothers and Duke Ellington. (I'll also go to great lengths to defend Elvis against the endless tide of bullshit there is out there about him. Dude deserves better.)

Anyway. Today as I type this I've found out Don Everly has passed. R.I.P. People get so stuck on the stuff he and his brother did as teenagers that they completely overlook the really fabulous things they recorded through the 60s. Really good stuff. I highly recommend diving in on some of that shit.

Anyway also. I've been binging again on Duke Ellington semi-bootleg records of radio transcriptions from the 70s and early 80s. He had a weekly radio show so there's tons of them. Plus when he toured Europe in the 50s & 60s he was always being broadcast. I got lots of these things already and have more than a dozen more coming in the next few weeks.
Right now I'm digitizing an Lp of the soundtracks for the Duke's film appearances starting with a twenty minute short he made in 1929.
Fucking brilliant stuff and the way the band plays in front of a paying audience of listeners and dancers is enlightening. Plus there's arrangements and tunes that never got studio recordings. (mostly popular numbers the Duke didn't write.)

So I've been toying with the idea of some future time devoting a few months to throwing these up on this or another blog. Shit needs to be heard.

But that's beside the point.

Here's the Judy's

Washarama (1981)

Yeah, this skirts that nebulous edge of New Wave and Punk -ish in terms of the time period as well as the fine and cynical line between joke and serious. It's very geeky and literate.

It's essential listening. I can well imagine the boys in They Might Be Giants spending hours poring over these songs with intent glee.

I think I posted Tullycraft doing a version of "She's Got the Beat" a while back. They would also go on to toss off a version of "Guyana Punch" on a food centric compilation that I'll get around to posting one day.

This is the good shit, baby.