Bird Fruit Flower Fish

This is a great game, this, and perfect for a rainy Friday afternoon. It's a distraction. Seeing as I'm not going to get around to submitting for next weeks Contrast Podcast, on the theme of chickens and other birds, I thought I might as well do a bird-fruit-flower-fish for today's post. And why not? It's an easy game to play, just pick a bunch of categories then a random letter and get 10 points for a unique answer, 5 points if shared with one of the other players.

Work is really productive at the moment.

Note to colleagues: we didn't actually play this. Today.

Bird

A Hawk & A Hacksaw - In The River

Resisting the urge to post either Charlie Parker (good) or They Might Be Giants (horrible), I find myself asking: why on earth I haven't posted about these so far? I've had the mp3 in my inbox from Leaf for weeks, so sorry about that. Anyway: A Hawk & A Hacksaw have been on the road with Beirut recently, a pairing that works pretty well. While Zach Condon's efforts have failed to impact my life in the way I'd hoped (though there's still time), his collaborators on Gulag Orkestar seem to have gone that little further in the Eastern Europea gypsy-folk-indie hybrid.

Jeremy Barnes was, of course, drummer in Neutral Milk Hotel, an extremely credible addition to any resumé. Aside from violinist Heather Trost, Barnes plays most of the instruments himself, creating something of a madcap one-man-band image, which can't fail to be great, despite lacking the traditional three-legged dog in support. Their latest record, The Way The Wind Blows, has been garnering much critical acclaim and automatically interests me given their position on one of my favourite labels, Leaf (who've been kind of quiet on my radar this year, unlike Beirut's UK label 4AD who've had a quite genuinely barnstorming annum). So please enjoy the offering, and investigate Leaf further. Please.

Fruit

Apples In Stereo? The Lemon Song? No... How about some Belafonte? Yes... Who doesn't love the soft lilt of calypso's biggest star, and the gentle Banana Boat Song is one of the most famous. It's a work song at heart, originally sung by Jamaican dock workers lifting crates of bananas onto the banana boat (duh...) at night, hence "daylight come, and me wan' go home."

Of course, such is the media-saturated modern mind that I can't listen to "Hide the deadly black tarantula!" without thinking of Ubiquitous Teen Movie Grown-Up Jeffrey Jones making like a possessed spider in Beetle Juice.

Harry Belafonte - Banana Boat Song

Flower

Public Image Ltd. - Flowers Of Romance (album version)

PiL were great. I mean really good, have a listen to Metal Box and tell me that's not innovative, fascinating music. In a cool tin. John Lydon is clearly a joke these days, and kind of was in the Sex Pistols. Being born well after the implosion myself, I find it hard to judge but my feeling is that I would have found it hard to take him seriously even then, certainly not the threat to society as envisaged at the time. But Pil, those inbetween years? Those are great. Even if you just know Rise, surely that's enough to tell you how great they were, a monster of a song with falls and rises, and Lydon's inimitable hectoring, his oblique railing at the world, or anyone who would listen.

Photo by s76fitz

Flowers Of Romance (from the album of the same name) is based on, or at least references the band of that name, featuring then-Pil guitar hero Keith Levene (who's sound defined Pil on a number of occasions) and one Simon Ritchie (Sid Vicious to his ma). It reached #24 in 1981.

Fish

If you were hoping I would post Fish or Phish, sorry, that's just not going to happen. Think it through. What I will post is Red Snapper. If you love you some fried fish (and who doesn't?) then red snapper is the route to go down. If you love you some dubbby, jazzy, breaky, millenial London beats then Red Snapper's for you. Free from the Matador website, Some Kind Of Kink is apt an introduction as you could hope to have to this often dizzying act, with it's large bassline and congas, and somewhat claustrophobic, unsettling fx.

Red Snapper - Some Kind Of Kink

The 'fo
Artists: A Hawk & A Hacksaw/Harry Belafonte/PiL/Red Snapper
Websites: brokenheartfoundation.org.uk/wikipedia/johnlydon.com/matador.com
Recommended: The Way The Wind Blows/The Essential.../Metal Box/Prince Blimey
Label: Leaf/RCA/Virgin/Warp & Matador
Buy: Amazon AH&AH/HB/PiL/RS
More: Hype Machine AH&AH/HB/PiL/RS; elbo.ws AH&AH/HB/PiL/RS
If you like this you might like: anything...
Tags: bird; fruit; flower; fish; A Hawk & A Hacksaw; Leaf; Beirut; Harry Belafonte; calypso; Jamaica; John Lydon; Public Image Limited; Red Snapper; Matador; Warp