July 2020 New Music Playlist

2020.08.02
Candy
The Bouncing Souls
Rock cover.
from a playlist Boys Will Be Girls, maleish cover of femaleish songs



Live a Little
Florrie
Nice horns and drums and vocals.
Arun trying to zone in on the kind of music I dig - modern but with brass + good percussion is a good bet!



Lola
The Raincoats
Man, the idea that the original made it so big just blows me away. And also that Weird Al used it for a parody...
from a playlist Girls Will Be Boys, femaleish covers of maleish songs.



You Were Cool
The Mountain Goats
God, such a resonant song - I can also think back to the people being treated badly in high school, how we got to bear witness to people working out lots of things about their identity, and we were hardly ever kind enough about it. I hope the kids today are better.
I listen to John Green's The Anthropocene Reviewed podcast, and The Mountain Goats are profoundly important to him. I couldn't find a version to buy so I had to make a rip.
Righteous Rocker (Hard Rock Version)
Larry Norman
Not a bad funky 70s rocker. Why can't all Christian music be so light handed?
via the movie "Knives Out"



Uproar (feat. Swizz Beatz)
Lil Wayne
Excellent well-hooked new hip hop.
My friend Jonathan Z is probably the most adept at catching songs I'll dig...



Coolin' With Da Homies
Savan Kotecha
Kinda inane like everything in Eurovision (I keep my chains low (woo), they droppin' to the floor / They're really, really, really low, they're droppin' to the floor, uh / I don't need gin and juice, I got a caffe latte) but hella catchy
from the Will Ferrell‎ Eurovision Song Contest movie, in-movie done by Swedish act Johnny John John.



Only So Much Oil In the Ground
Tower of Power
Not my favorite Tower of Power song but not bad.
BABAM played a Filk version of this at an Extentinction Rebellion Die-In protest
You Gotta Hear This Funk Band
Key & Peele
Pretty authentic sounding Parliament/Funkadelic sound, even if the end joke falls a little flat.
Random Youtube recommendation
Got Your Money (feat. Kelis)
Ol' Dirty Bastard
Older hop hop, dig the "Blacksploitation" aspect of the video.
Random Youtube recommendation
Land of the Living
Kristine W
Clubby Pop.
Another from Arun's set of music
Mbube
Lebo M
From the new CGI Lion King.
Mentioned in Cracked's Black Creators Who Got Their Material Stolen though sadly I liked the percussion in the Disneyfied version better.



Power to the People (Ultimate Mix)
John Lennon & The Plastic Ono Band
Probably don't need another white dude protest song but I do dig the percussion of this.
Ibram X. Kendi's "How to Be an Antiracist" mentions the Black Christian group Soul Liberation as their famous song, but I couldn't find reference to them doing it.

I just finished "Art of Atari" by Tim Lapetino, about all the art that tried to push the clunky pixels the Atari 2600 could offer into new worlds of drama. (Also with a side trip into the industrial design of some of the hardware.)

I learned my favorite Atari artist was Hiro Kimura. Probably the best find of the book's author was this unused art for Pac-Man- I just love the weight of the ghost monster concept.


He also did Yars Revenge and Joust and a bunch of others. But growing up it was the B+W illustrations inside the manual for "Berzerk" that really grabbed me, the nod to Da Vinci and then the internal workings diagram that I think is a nod to some classic Astro Boy:



Another specific influential (on me) cover was Terry Hoff's art for Star Raiders (reused for Solaris) - I must've drawn starfighter cockpit interiors based it dozens of times as a kid: