Borrow to buy, shopping for happiness and meaning...

Yes, we confess that with the Steely Dan song Black Friday in mind we predictably pondered how and what to write to be able to get that song as our Weekend Music yesterday. Whatever we came up with felt a bit ... contrived, as Steely Dan's Black Friday has nothing to do with the Black Friday shopping spree.

Cue Wikipedia:

Black Friday is the after Thanksgiving in the United States, where it is the beginning of the traditionalChristmas shopping season. Because Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday in November in the United States, Black Friday occurs between the 23rd and the 29th of November.

We've "imported" a lot of stuff from the USA and Radio Dupree suspect and expect that some stores sooner rather than later will try do foist a shopping-Black Friday upon us here as well.
Not that we need to learn the finer points of shopping...

Like clockwork buying stuff, stuff and more stuff is up for debate here in Sweden each and every year as Christmas closes in and the Handelns Utredningsinstitut/Swedish Retail Institute like clockwork delivers the suggestion for Christmas Gif of The Year and predicts that the Christmas shopping will once again set a new record.

It's Saturday November 29 and we read this:

Link to full story.

And finally:

Weekend music: Win The Beatles covered

How about a chance at winning two CD's + magazines by just answering one simple question by mail?

Here's the deal:
Our Album of the Month is the 40 year old White Album from The Beatles. As Album of the Month we've played songs from it all through November.
The British music magazine Mojo decided to mark the anniversary by asking mostly "youngish" and somewhat "unknownish" artists/bands to cover The White Album. One song per artist.

The final recordings was pressed on two CD's that grace the October and November issues of Mojo.
And to make things even more interesting Mojo did 30 pages on The White Album including a brand new interview with Paul McCartney.

Now, to be fair, how often do you find a cover version that beats the original of a song? But with The White Album being the veritable pick and mix of music that it is, a bunch of new versions can be a good thing. At least for the curious.

What does it sound like? Some versions are close to the original, some stray far away. Some are bad, some are great and a few are so-so. It's a mixed bag. But one you might want to check out.

Go to the Radio Dupree homepage, scroll down and read the question. Find the answer and mail it in before December 1, 2008 and you could be the winner that get both copies w/ CD's of Mojo Magazine.

Somebody has been kind enough to add a few songs from The White Album Recovered on YouTube. Feel free to check out the new versions of Glass Onion, Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da, Wild Honey Pie and Bungalow Bill here:

(There are links to a couple more excerpts once you click the above to get to YouTube!)

Frank Zappa Memorial Barbeque!

Next week it is 15 years since Frank Zappa passed away. To commemorate his memory it's the most natural thing for us here at Radio Dupree to run a special show of Zappa music.
You can expect a couple of surprises here, rare tracks but also rare edits and mixes provided by our sound engineers.
The one hour show will be broadcast twice a day.

Elliot Randall guitars up for auction ... today!

Thanks to Carsten who alerted us to these videos of Elliot Randall talking about two of six guitars that are up for auction in London today. The starting bids are between £500 and £2000 (770-2 300 US$).

See and read more here including links to place your bids (if you should feel so inclinded...)

Sign of the times: Digital outsell CD/vinyl for Atlantic Records

Legendary record label Atlantic Records was started back in 1947 and has been the record compnay for many legendary artists.

This year Atlantic reports that for the first time that the sales in the USA of music on various digital sites has passed the sales of traditional CD/vinyl records. A first for a major label and a sign of the times.

Read the full New York Times article.

Weekend Music: Happy Hour

A bit late, but it'll work just as fine this coming Friday... Have a happy week and enjoy your next "Happy Hour".

Joe's Menage: Rough but funky!

Some weeks ago we promised a review of the new Zappa CD, Joe’s Menage.

Well, here it is:

This odd release was recorded live at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA, USA on November 1, 1975.

The disc starts off with two songs that we have heard several times before: Honey, Don't You Want A Man Like Me and The Illinois Enema Bandit.

The first song has one interesting detail about it that some fans may have overlooked: At this early stage the "hippie chords” (just after the lines “they saw a real hippie, who delivered their dinner”) were played in a different key, and also more bars of it, thus making it sounding like it’s the start of a now song.

The Illinois Enema Bandit starts off with a saxophone and guitar riff that is so ugly that it’s beautiful. Nonetheless Zappa seemed to have edited it out off the Zappa In New York version which was recorded a year later.
Carolina Hard-core Ecstasy...Frank's guitar intro sounds rough and not as "perfect" as on Bongo Fury. A hot guitar solo though...including Frank's Pippi Longstocking song quote (see elsewhere this blog).
Lonely Little Girl. I just can't get enough of this song with the tasty guitar intro. Why was the second half of this song left off the We're Only In It For The Money album?
Take You Clothes Off When You Dance...must be one of the earliest examples of rock artists picking up reggae elements. Great!
What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body? Something unexpected happens at the very end of this song. Some band member fucks up his or her part but Frank solves the problem with a "It Can't Happen Here" quote and quickly rips into...
Chunga's Revenge. Here is where we hear the "unknown" band member Norma Jean Bell...improvising on vocals and saxophone.
We also get to hear Frank announcing one of his own solos: “Ladies and gentlemen, I will now play a rhythm guitar solo". Very rare! Ain't it funky now! Overall this track is the highlight of the CD.
Terry Bozzio rounds things off with a drum solo. Here is actually the only part where I feel that the sound quality sucks. Distorted drums are no fun!
Zoot Allures is great but fades out in the middle of the song, probably because the sound engineer had to change the tape. Maybe they could have made a nice edit instead, but I guess the idea was to release this recording the way Frank edited it.
One could wonder whether this is a worthwile addition to your collection. Seven out of eight songs on this album also appears on FZ:OZ, but with way better sound. (Yep, this is a low budget recording, just two microphones hanging in the roof). But I still like to hear this disc through again and again. I guess I never get tired of hearing Bozzio's hard driving drumming along with Frank's guitar. And this set has more energy to it than FZ:OZ.
The package is also very nice with some neat pictures and the Danish fan Ole Lysgaard’s letter where he tells about his feelings when Frank put him down in an interview. Interesting to read how Frank reacted when Ole told him he was unfair. Moving!

//S.H.

The Ventures and Jeff "Skunk" Baxter

Sometimes this "Internet" serves up a surprise. We have via Google an automated search going for - amongst other things - "Steely Dan". That means we get an alert whenever Steely Dan is mentioned.

Today, thanks to founding Steely Dan member Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, we got a link to the blog written by Staci Layne Wilson. (Both Jeff and Staci pictured to the left).

She's the daughter of Don Wilson, who back in 1958 together with Bob Bogle formed what to this day is the world's best selling instrumental band; The Ventures.

The band was inducted into the Rock 'N Roll Hall Of Fame this year, and also played a tribute concert to Les Paul with Slash. Steve Lukather, Eric Carmen, Jeff Baxter et al.
Thanks to the Stacy we get a behind scenes report with pics, and suddenly Rock 'N Roll history and the room were we as kids sat and played records on the record player are one.

Text and pics here.

(Did you know that Jeff has a son named Fender? And what's the answer to the question we know you've asked yourself; Does Jeff ever shave that moustache? Read Stacy's blog entry for the answer...)

And how about a little Walk Don't Run from 1960?

Unreleased mythical Beatles track does exist

While talking to BBC Radio 4's Front Row Paul McCartney confirmed that the 14 minute track titled Carnival Of Light does exist and should've been included on the Anthology CD's if the other Beatles hadn't vetoed the idea.

It was inspired by experimental composers like John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Paul: "I like it because it's The Beatles free, going off piste."

You can hear 2:40 seconds of the interview by going here.

The whole interview will be aired on BBC Radio 4 this Thursday November 20 at 19.15 GMT. That's 1.15 PM ET and 20.15 CET. Just don't expect to hear even a second of Carnival Of Light.

So, some Beatles news this our Beatles month on Radio Dupree. Our Album of the Month is The Beatles so called White Album. It was released 40 years ago this month and we're giving away a brand new cover version of the album featuring various artists; The White Album Recovered. Read more on our homepage.

BBC Joni Mitchell interview

Come in from the cold is a two part interview where Amanda Ghost talks to Joni Mitchell. It was done before the release of her album Shine (2007), and aired for the first time in March of that year.

You can catch it online. Here are the local times for the two shows if you'd like to listen "live":

Saturday 15 November: 19.00 (2 pm ET, 20.00 CET)
Tuesday 18 November: 22.30 (17.30 ET, 23.30 CET)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/documentaries/jonimitchell.shtml

Weekend music: Another Steely Dan cover

When we started Radio Dupree a little more than five years ago we had two artists that we said would always be on the playlist; Frank Zappa and Steely Dan. And those two also played an important part in the name we picked for the station.

Our weekend music this time around is a Steely Dan cover by the one-man group Archangel from west London. His name is Nick Webber and here's a couple of quotes from reviews of his debut album How To Lose Your Best Friend:

"Eleven magnificently overwrought and dramatically fashioned songs that explore the lexicon of love with an epic sweep and neon glow that will remind you of all your favourite 70s and 80s groups while sounding utterly contemporary."
The Guardian

“the sound made by a young man with a serious record collection having monstrous amounts of fun, and almost bafflingly, it works”
Word Magazine

And say what you want about a cover compared to the original, but we thinks it is fun to see that the music of Steely Dan inspires new generations of musicians to record covers.

And on Radio Dupree you can hear not only the originals, but also covers like Nick's as well as music and artists with a close connection to Steely Dan. Right now we're spinning Sally Taylor's When We're Together from her album Tomboy Bride. A song that Donald Fagen and Walter Becker helped her record. And there's a couple of tracks from original Steely Dan drummer Jim Hodder's band Bead Game.

We're also busy compiling a Zappa special for December filled with rare remixes and stuff you'll have a hard time hearing elsewhere.

But here and now it's Steely Dan cover time! Thanks to the site thesixtyone.com we can give you a taste of Archangels and Do It Again:



(Do we detect a slight Elton John Bennie And The Jets influence in the break a minute before the end?)

And while we're at it:

An article from the The Onion, a "parody newspaper" as Wikipedia calls it. Donald Fagen defends Steely Dan.

"Look, I understand. It's an acquired taste," Fagen said after putting his group's 1978 hit "Deacon Blues" on the bar's jukebox. "I wasn't that into it at first, either. But when you really listen to the unbelievable production values and the wry, perfectly crafted lyrics—it's just great art, okay? You should definitely give 'the Dan' a shot."

"No one knows better than I do that this stuff can get extremely self-indulgent," Fagen said. "And, yes, I realize that all the preciousness and apparent awe at its own cleverness can be a little too much to stomach sometimes. Hell, some of Gaucho is even too goddamned smooth for me."

Funny! Read the full article here.

Mitch Mitchell dead

The Jimi Hendrix Experience:
Mitch Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix and Noel Redding.

Mitch Mitchell, drummer in the Jimi Hendrix Experience, has been found dead in his US hotel room.

He was discovered in the Benson Hotel in Portland, Oregon, in the early hours of Wednesday. A medical examiner told Associated Press news agency the death appeared to be from natural causes but that there would be an autopsy. Mitch Mitchell was 61.

Jimi Hendrix died in 1970 and the band's bassist Noel Redding died in 2003.

And it's over to Offenbach, Germany, May 18, 1967 to watch and hear Stone Free, Purple Haze and Hey Joe!

Kate and the rest of the women on Radio Dupree

Just heard Kate Bush playing on Radio Dupree, and once again I wondered why women have such a hard time getting the thumbs up from our listeners. As you may or may not know a listener to Radio Dupree can vote up or down, wish for or indicate an urge to buy a track playing on Radio Dupree. Alternatively ignore it and just listen.

After five years one thing is clear; a female voice will have a thougher time collecting the positive responses that a male one gets.
Right now there's three, that's 3 females in the Radio Dupree mid-November Top 50. Donna Summer, Rickie Lee Jones and Carole King. The 47 other songs are performed by male vocalists/artists.

Why? Is it because the music we play attract listeners that don't care that much for female artists? We wish we had an answer. And we wish that more of the female singers we play would get a thumbs up or another positive reaction.

Any ideas why it is the way it is?

/Neb

Weekend music: The Rutles

Our Album of the Month is The Beatles White album and by entering our competition you can win The White Album Recovered, so it's no surprise that this weekend's music is Beatles-like. A great sendup of the band from The Rutles!

Morph the President...

Translation: America's new face. Obama's mission: Save USA.

McCain or Obama?

Apparently there's some serious voting going on in a large country way out west today.
And while Radio Dupree have no official view on who should win this, a link we got in the mail earlier today seem suitable to share this Tuesday.
It may not say anything about our political leanings, but it does say a little about what makes us laugh.

Chica Musicovaginal - Funny video clips are a click away

Walter Becker: An ad and a cover

New on Walter's homepage is a hi-res version of the "cover" of the digital-only EP. There's also an ad for Circus Money supposed to be shared and spread. So we'll do just that:

P.S. And you can hear the tracks from the EP (and album) if you listen to Radio Dupree!

R.I.P. Jimmy Carl Black

Drummer and ex Mother Jimmy Carl Black died on October 31st. Jim suffered from cancer and had an operation a couple of months ago when he had a tumor removed from his lung.
Jim was born in Texas and in the 60's he was a member of Frank Zappa's Mothers Of Invention.
Later he had bands of his own and also played with The Muffin Men, The Grandmothers, Eugene Chadbourne, and even Zappa (as a guest vocalist). Jim lived in Germany the last years of his life.

On November 2nd Jim's son Gary told the world the sad news by posting to the Muffin Men guestbook:
"This is the Indian of the Group's first born. It is with great sorrow that I must report that JCB has at last gone home to that elusive rock and roll heaven. I have always been proud of my Dad and everything he accomplished during his lifetime. He was one of the few people that truly touched my life."

---

I had the pleasure to meet Jim at two occasions. First time in the early 90's with The Grandmothers. He was in a great mood. Ten years later he was more tired, maybe he knew he was sick. Put on a great show with Eugene Chadbourne nonetheless.
Jim was not the virtuoso drummer like Vinnie or Terry, but he was one of the strongest personalities in The Mothers, and those albums would not have been that strong without his playing...Freak Out, Burnt Weeny Sandwich...Rest in peace, Indian of the group.

/S.H.