My Musical Evolution – Page 3 – Mapping Influences Over Time

My Musical Evolution – Part 393 21st Century Mash-Ups

I can’t quite remember how I stumbled across the Mash-Up phenomenon. I am fairly certain it was accidental. I am also reasonably certain that the song that started it was Rapture Riders.

If you are not familiar with what a Mash-Up is, I’ll try to describe it for you. A Mash-Up is when somebody takes two or more songs and combines them to make a third song. Actually, as I think about it now, remember me telling you about my Dean Martin dream where he was singing You Shook Me All Night Long but to the tune of My Lady Loves To Dance? That was a Mash-Up.

Anyway after the accidental discovery of Rapture Riders, I was briefly intrigued and impressed by Mash-Ups and found more than a few online. A quick search on Mashups will get you started. It takes a special talent to make a good Mash-Up. Well talent to visualize the product and then probably some software to enable it to happen. I don’t think you could make a good Mash-Up with just a turntable, CD player and cassette deck. It seems that the Mash-Up guys are able to isolate instruments or vocal components of audio tracks. The artist in me appreciates the skills.

Adam Sandler appreciates the Mash-Up too. If you have seen his movie Just Go With It, you’ll notice that the entire soundtrack is made up of Mash-Ups.

Blondie & The Doors – Rapture Riders

Pink Floyd & The Bee Gees – Staying Alive In The Wall

My Musical Evolution – Part 392 21st Century The Electrosoniks

What we have here is possibly the very first recording of Electronic Music. The Electrosoniks were Tom Dissevelt and Kid Baltan.. Interesting names for the 1950’s don’t you think? Was Kid Baltan from the future? You already know that I love electronic music. I find something fascinating about these tracks. Maybe it is because of the historical significance but more likely it was the haunted nature of how I found it.

It was near Halloween which for some reason is one of my favorite times of year. The fall colors are spectacular and I am a huge fan of old monster movies as well as It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. I was online just scanning around for Halloween related stuff when I found a website that looked like it used to house a bunch of old Halloween recordings.

I saw numerous album cover art from old records that I had as a kid and there were links to little Halloween themed videos. I was originally looking to a digital version of an old Halloween record we had as kids that feature a bunch of Halloween songs, poems and short stories.

I didn’t find that but I did find Boris Karloff’s Tales Of The Frightened. That became the conduit for The Electrosoniks. first I hear the tales then I found a link stating that the music in the background was The Electrosoniks just slowed down.

When I find myself unwinding over a couple games of FreeCell, I find that The Electrosoniks is my music of choice. I don’t know why. I really like the slowed down version used in the Karloff stories too. Maybe it is because they remind me of my summers in Vermont when ghost story books were king and the mists of the evening carried dark mystery from the edge of the forest.

The Vampire Sleeps – Tales Of The Frightened As Told By Boris Karloff

Sonic Re-Entry

Sonic Re-Entry As Used In Tales Of The Frightened

Song Of The Second Moon

Orbit Aura

Moon Maid

My Musical Evolution – Part 391 21st Century No More Mr. Nice Guy

Was it stupid luck or destiny? If you have been following along you know that I went through The Metal Years and you also know that I like the crooners and lounge acts like Bing Crosby and Dean Martin. Here is where those two worlds collide.

I was online one day doing some research and a search engine link took me to a site that had one of those automated playlist players. If you are not familiar with those, it is basically a little web based media player that cycles through a few music files that are uploaded to the site. They are designed to start playing when the page loads and usually they have a little graphical interface that sit on a navigation sidebar. There, you can adjust the volume, select a song fromt he available files or turn it off altogether.

They were really popular on sites like MySpace or other amateurish endeavors. For the most part they are annoying and slow down the page load. In this instance, I’m reading the content on the page and the music starts. At first, I don’t really notice it because I am engrossed in what I’m trying to find out.

As the song goes along, I must have picked up on it subconsciously because I still wasn’t paying attention to it but something seemed a bit off. Eventually I could not avoid the music. The song was Dio’s Holy Diver but there was something wrong with it. I looked at the little media player and saw that it read Holy Diver – Pat Boone.

I knew who Pat Boone was and I was very curious about how he came to be singing Holy Diver. I quickly disregarded what I was looking for and immediately searched for Pat Boone Holy Diver. The result took me to this album Pat Boone In A Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy. I was at amazon as soon as I could and a few days later the CD was mine.

Again it is a humor thing only this time it isn’t about silly lyrics. it is about how Pat Boone was able to perform Vegas Lounge version of some metal songs. I love the look on peoples’ faces when the orchestra kicks in and you can see that their mind recognizes something but they can’t quite work it out until the lyrics start.

Smoke On The Water

Holy Diver

Enter Sandman

Paradise City

Crazy Train

My Musical Evolution – Part 390 21st Century The Most Beautiful Girl In The Room

She sorts out the recycling. That’s not part of the foreplay process but still very important. Again we see the cycle returning to humor in music. Flight Of The Conchords is a duo from New Zealand. The first time I heard of them it was a link to HBO’s website where I was able to watch the entire first episode of their short lived series. I thought it was completely brilliant.

It is about a pair of struggling musicians living in New York and their adventures in trying to succeed in the music business and with the ladies. Their songs seem to take the approach of taking the typical love song and being ridiculously honest as in The Most Beautiful Girl In The Room. Hardly what a girl wants to hear even if it is 100% accurate.

The series carries the pace and sensibilities of my favorite British comedies. I guess that is why I like it so much. Musically, Bret and Jemaine are both skilled composers and musicians. If you just listen to the music and disregard the lyrics, they are pretty good songs. They cover a wide variety of musical styles along the way.

Actually I had seen the guys years prior in different venues. Bret was an elf in The Lord Of The Rings and Jemaine was the spokesman for Outback Steak House. After watching a few episodes of their HBO series, I was able to acquire it on DVD the CD’s came soon after.

Business Time

The Most Beautiful Girl In The Room

Robots

If You’re Not Into It

Inner City Pressure

Tape Of Love

My Musical Evolution – Part 389 21st Century The Budos Band

My association with The Budos Band begins with my association with Verizon FiOS. In the summer of 2007 FiOS came to our house. With it came The NFL Network. The timing was cool because The Colts had just one the Super Bowl and The NFL Network was showing plenty of Colts stuff. At the time they also were showing a commercial for The NFL Network that featured a really cool song.

This was still in the time before Shazam and services like it were available. Fortunately I was able to use the fabulous internet to find out who it was. If I were smarter, I would have found out the song too but I guess I was lucky to guess wrong in this case.

I went on line and searched NFL Network commercial song. After combing through some results I found a post where somebody said It is The Budos Band. I jumped over to Amazon search Budos Band and a few days later I playing The Budos Band II ( the one with the scorpion on the cover). It was cool afro funk type jazz. The song from the commercial wasn’t there though. Again I search and this time found out that the song was called Up From The South. I went back to Amazon and searched Budos band and found another album. I confirmed that Up From The South was on it. It was there only other album at the time. A few days later and I was listening to The Budos Band I (The one with the volcano on the cover).

Again more great stuff! A year or so later and The Budos Band III (The one with the cobra on the cover) came out and found its way instantly into my eclectic collection. The Budos Band are really good and I have yet to find somebody who says different. Ken called them Budos Dudos. If you pay attention, you’ll hear snippets of Budos tunes in commercials all over the place.

Up From The South

T.I.B.W.F.

Ghost Walk

The Volcano Song

Budos Rising

Ride Or Die

Mas O Menos

My Musical Evolution – Part 388 21st Century Easy Listening News Group

Before my access to the News Groups was cut off, I was able to score a couple more times. Again I find myself trying to understand exactly what it is that makes me like stuff like this so much. Is it the fact that it is so far under the radar? Could be it be tied to my dad’s choices in early FM has we drove to his house in Plymouth in his Oldsmobile? Whatever it is, I do find it very easy to listen to. What I find hard is locating samples to share with you. I guess that even a year ago, I expected this. YouTube has a bazillion videos but as we get to this portion of My Musical Evolution, the population who shares these likes with me dwindles into obscurity. Let’s see if there is anything out there…

Baja Marimba Band – Ghost Riders In The Sky

Baja Marimba Band – Do You Know The Way To San Jose

Horst Jankowski – A Sunny Day In Heidelberg

Looks that is about it. Horst Jankowski seems to have plenty of stuff on YouTube just not not much from this album.

Clebanoff And His Orchestra – Ela Me Deixou

Clebanoff And His Orchestra – What A Difference A Day Made

Clebanoff And His Orchestra – Mima

My Musical Evolution – Part 387 21st Century Roberto Delgado Full Circle With Hawaii 5-0

As you know, I was frequenting New Age Music News Groups to find out about new artists and music since I didn’t have any New Age peers. At some point along the way a couple things happened. I signed up for an Easy Listening News Group and Verizon announced that they were discontinuing News Group Support.

I had a month or so before they were going to pull the plug so I checked out some easy listening while I still could. As I scanned the post subjects, something caught my eye. Hawaii 5-0 Theme. If you have been following along from the beginning, you’ll recall that the Hawaii 5-0 Theme was one of my very first favorite songs. So I had to investigate. I downloaded the song and another by the same artist Roberto Delgado.

I had never heard of Roberto Delgado and to be honest, I was not very impressed by his version of the Hawaii 5-0 Theme. The second track though, Mas Que Nada was awesome! It was basically Austin Powers music except that it really was the 1960’s and they weren’t trying to be funny. This is one of my favorite albums of the 21st Century era. It is 20 tracks of groovy lounge style music full of marimbas and vibraphones etc.

It is hard to describe how happy listening to this album makes me feel or why. Whenever I hear it, I’m magically transported to a sunny place in the 60’s where there are those giant artsy flowers like on the old dating game set. I thought this album was a terrific find and it fanned the flames of my interest in that 1960’s FM easy listening lounge stuff. I hope I can find a decent set of samples for you, this album is really cool.

Summer Samba

Well this was disappointing. This was the only track I could find from this album in all of YouTube.

My Musical Evolution – Part 386 21st Century Stéphane Pompougnac and Hôtel Costes

Hôtel Costes is apparently and upscale hotel in Pais, France. Hôtel Costes is also a series of great music Compact Discs that were made for the hotel. Stéphane Pompougnac is a DJ and the creative mastermind behind this series. Again we have Ben Porter to thank for bringing this to our attention.

The music of the Hôtel Costes series is a blend of all kinds of stuff. It takes contemporary, vintage, jazz, funk, rap and whatever then blends it up into a rich mix of music that is perfect for the backdrop to your adult dinner party or wine tasting. It blends into the background yet oozes sophistication and nouveau. In a party setting, I think it works best if you turn off the shuffle of your media player and just start at the beginning of volume one and let them play in order all the through to the end of volume 15. Like superstitious hotel elevators, there is no volume 13.

You find that the mix will add something to your dinner party. Good beats and interesting musical choices will not intrude unless invited. I’m willing to wager that at some point or many points along the evening, your dinner guests will ask about the music. Yeah it is that good. You can tell you guest that the Hôtel Costes Series was commissioned by the hotel in Paris of the same name and artfully created by Stéphane Pompougnac.

Remember a couple posts back I mentioned that I have 4 playlists devoted to Artists one was Delerium another is Stéphane Pompougnac. Actually the Hôtel Costes series is very similar in texture in to Delerium only where Delerium breaks towards New Age, Hôtel Costes leans toward jazz. It will be impossible to select a best of to share with you her so I’m going to grab just a few tracks at random based on what may be available over at YouTube. I highly recommend the entire series to you.

My Funny Valentine

Cubafro Con Amigos

Galaxy

One Night Rio

Symphathique

London In The Rain

Why Did We Fire That Gun

My Musical Evolution – Part 385 21st Century The Porter Influence

For a few years, I worked with a guy named Ben Porter. Ben is a musician. He plays guitars and other similarly string instruments. He always seems to be playing in a band of some kind. He is a fan of a good coffee press and a bunch of unusual music. As you know, I too like unusual music but I feel that Ben and I have very different approaches. I think he see everything through the prism of being a musician where I like things just because I like them. sometimes I like the weird stuff simply because it is weird. Go see the post about Agony which I think is an excellent example of weird.

We have been to thank for our forays into The Flaming Lips, Balkan Beat Box, Hôtel Costes and the resurgence of Irish Drinking Songs among others. It would be interesting to see his Musical Evolution. I don’t really know what he liked in the mainstream area but I can’t think him enough for getting us started with Stéphane Pompougnac and Hôtel Costes. I’ll get into Hôtel Costes in detail in the next post.

Ben introduced us to The Flaming Lips. He told us about an album that was supposed to be placed on 4 CD players simultaneously. That sounded like our Echoes Experiment. We looked it up online and soon I had Zaireeka. Zaireeka is a very interesting piece. It is a 4 Disc Set but all 4 discs are meant to be played at the same time. The concept is an extension of something they used to do with car stereos in a parking garage. They would take a musical composition then break it up into a dozen or two cassettes then everybody would show up in a parking garage and start their tapes at the same time then listen to the result. Variances in cassette deck speed, volume, equalization stings and simply pressing start on cue meant that each performance would be unique.

Our experience with Zaireeka was unique as well. We only had 3 CD players so one of the 4 would invariable be omitted. It really is an interesting concept but there is no point in trying to demonstrate it here so I’ll just post a few other items from The Porter Influence. Unfortunately, I will no doubt have to omit some because they were songs from some of the bands he was in along the way.

The Flaming Lips – The W.A.N.D.

The Flaming Lips – Are You A Hypnotist?

Unlikely Alibi – What I Want

Balkan Beat Box – Bulgarian Chicks

Balkan Beat Box – Cha Cha

The Dubliners – Whiskey In The Jar

The Clancy Brothers – Beer, Beer, Beer

The Dubliners – Tim Finnegan’s Wake

My Musical Evolution – Part 384 21st Century More Influence From My Kids

It is interesting and enjoyable to watch your children on their own Musical Evolutions. Sure I provided some influence and guidance along the way but while I shared my favorites with them, I really tried to let them explore on their own as well.

I’ve been writing here on My Musical Evolution for nearly a full year. It makes me wish that my kids would do the same thing just so I could read about their Musical Evolutions from their point of view. How do they perceive the technology changes of their lives? They never went through cassettes or vinyl albums. When Arica was very young, 4 or so, she got some accessories for her Barbie doll one Christmas. It was a handful of pink plastic things that Barbie of 1995 might have in her Towne House. I asked her to identify the items for me. A microwave! A Boom Box! A TV! hmmmm? It was a record player. She had never seen one.

I feel fortunate that I’ve been able to enjoy nearly all the music that my kids have discovered. It makes me wonder if I like what they like because they were raised to like what I like? I’m having one of those bizarre time comprehension moments. My son is just a couple years younger than I was when I discovered New Age Music. Maybe it is My Musical Evolution project that is skewing my perception. In terms of this project, it was just a couple months ago but in real time that was 24 years. Will my son be a fan of New Age in a couple years? We’ll wait and see.

At this moment, I’m listening to Eminem. When Without Me was popular, that is when Zach was briefly interested in him. The result was a couple of CDs added to the shelf. As you know, I’ve never been a true fan of Rap music. I have a very few albums that I liked or that were gifted to me. I thought some of Eminem’s stuff was good to listen to. As I write this, I’m listening to the instrumental version of Without Me and I like it a lot.

So here are a few more tracks that I like because my kids liked them first.

Eminem – Without Me