Five Song Friday: Music is Magic
This Week: Kung-fu grips, sad soul songs and Middle Age aphids.
Music is magic.
But that’s only my opinion because I can’t make it.
I can’t sing a lick and there are no instruments that call me “master.”
My fingers are intimidated by the acrobats needed to navigate piano keys and go completely useless when faced with guitar strings.
The best I can do is occasionally keep a decent beat on my conga drum… until I realize I’m doing it and then my brain jams the signal to my hands and it all goes to hell.
I wish I could play. I really do.
But the very specific way that human hands, heads, hearts and ears need to function to make something called music? It’s not part of my operating system.
So in the meantime, I watch from the sidelines. Or the mezzanine. Or the mosh pit.
I envy the artists and appreciate their art.
I consume it. I crave it. And when it’s really good, I do what I can to share it.
So here we go again.
Happy listening. Happy Friday. Happy everything.
Love,
DJ Crankypete
“Heavy Sweet” - Karate Body
I read one of those blurby bio things that said Karate Body is the “laid back alt-pop side project” of LA singer/songwriter Zachary Kibbee.
I call bullshit. If you’re a singer/songwriter named Zach and you live in Los Angeles, you should be pretty laid back already. Whatever is stressing you out or winding you up is easily solved by stepping outside, strumming a guitar next to a palm tree and reminding yourself that your name is Zach.
The band name doesn’t sound laid back either. Getting a Karate Body is hard work.
I hear Karate Body and I imagine Bruce Lee, who was toned, hairless and something like negative 10% body fat. You don’t get to look that way by lounging and lazing.
Most of your waking hours are spent doing one-handed push-ups, 45-minute planks and chopping pine boards in half with the meaty side of your hand.
Aside from all that “laid back” bullshit, this is a perfectly delightful pop song. Please enjoy it.
“Money” - Caroline Rose
Before I heard a note of Caroline Rose’s music, I was hooked by this album cover. It features the singer in retro workout gear with more than a dozen cigarettes in her mouth.
More than a dozen! That’s a lot of cigarettes to smoke at once. I’m not a doctor, but that’s probably WAY too many.
In fact, most doctors will tell you that one is too many. They discourage smoking, even ironically. But I’m grateful that Caroline Rose ignored conventional medical advice and jammed all those cancer sticks into her pie hole, even if it was just for a photo.
After entering the music scene with a couple of albums that mixed American folk and country, Caroline Rose took a hard left into pop with 2018’s Loner. Co-produced with Paul Butler (The Bees), the album is catchy and cheeky with lots of sass to spare.
“Money” is a manic funhouse ride, with a serpentine surf guitar sound and breathless vocals delivered at a furious clip.
But don’t take that awkward, trying-too-hard sentence’s word for it. Just play the song and listen for yourself.
“Time and Place” - Lee Moses
Here’s a great song with a sad story.
Lee Moses started playing Atlanta soul clubs in the 1950s. Legend has it that Gladys Knight wanted him to be one of her Pips. But Moses said no thanks. No Pips for me.
He moved to New York in the mid 60s to work as a session musician. Moses released a few singles and none of them sold. He tried again in 1970 with “Time and Place.” Nothing. His debut album came out the following year. More nothing.
As the story goes, Moses was understandably disenchanted by the music business, moved back to Atlanta and faded into obscurity. He played some gigs locally, but died from lung cancer in 1998 at the age of 56.
After he was dead and gone, his work was rediscovered, declared brilliant and reissued.
In hindsight, it’s easy to think that everyone with ears in 1971 who ignored “Time and Place” the first time around was an idiot. But to be fair, the 1971 Billboard charts were dominated by the likes of Jerry Reed, The Osmonds and Lobo. Moses didn’t stand a chance.
Want some good news? Too bad. There’s even MORE sadness to this sad story—including drugs and a wheelchair)—in this great short piece from The Oxford American.
“The Beat Never Goes Off” - Tamer Nafar, Mc Abdul, Noel Kharman
The first gangsta rap I listened to was NWA.
I was a white teenager who parked cars at a Virginia Beach hotel. My uniform was all white with a light teal stripe. I wore a plastic pith helmet. It was so NOT gangsta.
Geographically and ideologically, my life was the farthest you could get from the violence of the Compton streets that Dre, Cube and Eazy rapped about. But I still got the gist. I understood that there was anger and fear and guns. Lots and lots of guns.
“The Beat Never Goes Off” is not about Compton. This song is about Palestine. A place that also has its fair share of anger, fear and lots of guns.
Palestine also has MC Abdul, who is 14 years old. He started writing and performing at nine and became popular at 12, when a freestyle rap about peace he did at his Gaza school went viral.
On paper, the subject matter of “The Beat Never Goes Off,” should be as alien to me as drive-by shootings and spinning rims. What do I know about Middle East conflicts? I’ve never faced the constant threat of violence. I can’t even understand the lyrics he raps in Arabic.
But as soon as MC Abdul name dropped Tina Fey, Malcolm in the Middle and the Wu-Tang Clan, I knew that we spoke the same language.
“Ladybug” - Garçons
There are two things you need to know about this song.
It is by Garçons, aka Deelo and Julian Strangelove, an Ottawa duo known for their funky, quirky and genre-hopping musical style.
This song has nothing to do with ladybugs.
It’s a great song. Would it have been better if it incorporated the story of how ladybugs got their name? I thought so.
Which is why I tried to sell the idea to Deelo and Julian, telling them it would add a surprising educational element to the number.
But those Garçons boys thought that a song about farmers in the Middle Ages who have aphid troubles and pray to the Virgin Mary for relief—which eventually comes in the form of a tiny red and black beetle—would not work.
It turns out (once again) that Deelo and Julian were right and I was wrong.
[shakes fist in the air]
I’ll get you next time Deelo and Julian (aka Garçons)!
Listen on Spotify
Listen on YouTube Music
That’s all for now.
Thanks for reading!
“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.” - Frank Zappa