Ska – Page 4 – Tacky Raccoons

Saturday Matinee Halloween Edition – The Ramones, Sally Cruikshank & Oingo Boingo

First recorded in 1976, The Ramones‘ I Don’t Wanna Go Down To The Basement is sort of appropriate.

Sally Cruikshank‘s animations are Betty Boop on acid.
Face like a Frog (1987) includes the Cab Calloway-esque song Don’t Go In The Basement (starts at 02:26 ). In 2017, Cruikshank herself added this to the YouTube comments:

“Danny Elfman composed the track for this film. Period. Copyright mine. Then a year or two later I gave his agents permission to include it on a compilation LP, I guess put out by [David] Geffen. Now they claim I got the music from the album or something. They’re wrong. My film came first. My husband’s going to get into it with Geffen.”

“I don’t always listen to Dead Man’s Party, but when I do so do the neighbors.” – YouTube comment

Oingo Boingo was a standout band of the 1980s, combining ska, punk, jazz & rock, and Dead Man’s Party became a Halloween party standard. According to Wikipedia:

The lyric, “I hear the chauffeur coming to my door / Says there’s room for maybe just one more,” is a reference to “The Bus-Conductor,” a short story by E. F. Benson about a hearse driver, first published in The Pall Mall Magazine in 1906.

Video is from the 1986 movie Back To School. Yeah, 34 years ago…

Happy Halloween, folks!
This year I’m gonna scare half the neighborhood by NOT wearing a mask. Hope you get all the tricks you deserve and all the treats that you don’t.

[Paranoia moons previously posted here. More Halloween-related posts in the archives.]

The .Gif Friday Post No. 656 – Smiley Fireus & The Ska-letones

[Flaming emoji found here. Don’t remember where I found the other guys.]

Saturday Matinee – George Duke & Dweezil Zappa, MonoNeon & skArmy

George Duke showed up to play Zappa’s classic Uncle Remus with Dweezil Zappa‘s band in 2010. (If you like George Duke, this behind the scenes rehearsal from1978 is kinda fun. Jump to 02:50.)

Ignore the clickbait title – it’s a killer groove by MonoNeon. He’s right-handed, but plays left-handed on an upside-down right-handed bass. Dude can cover Zappa, too.

skArmy covers Save Ferris‘s cover of Dexy’s Mightnight Runners‘s Come On Eileen is a good one to wrap it up.

Have a great weekend folks, gonna do something tomorrow.

Saturday Matinee – The Big Lie, Bad Manners, Reel Big Fish & The Skatalites

The Big Lie (1951). Yeah, it was propaganda, but it was also true. I went to school with a guy whose family escaped from communist Hungary in a hot air balloon. You can laugh, say that “It can’t happen here,” but it IS happening here.

Bad Manners – one of my favorite Brit Ska bands.

Reel Big Fish. They were kinda awesome.

No one could out-ska the Skatalites.

1]Freedom Sound
2]Man In The Street
3]Guns Of Navarone
4]El Pussycat
5]James Bond Theme
6]Sugar, Sugar
7]Nice Time
8]Simmer Down / Turn Your Lamp Down Low
9]Rockfort Rock (El Cumbanchero)
10]Latin Goes Ska
11]Phoenix City
12]Freedom Sound – Reprise

Have a great weekend, folks. See you back here tomorrow.

Saturday Matinee – Fishbone, Ry Cooder & Justin Johnson

Fishbone was, and is, one of the tightest high-speed ska bands I ever heard. [The above is dedicated to Professor Christine Ford, whose evil testimony under oath has been proven to be fabricated in order to impune the character of an innocent man.]

One of the best slide guitar players in the business. Ry Cooder‘s 1988 swamp rock take on Elvis‘ “All Shook Up” was awesome.

Killer stuff from Justin Johnson. Turn it up. It’s the musical equivalent to stress on the 405 through L.A. at rush hour and I love it.

Have a great weekend, folks, see you back here after I tear up my kitchen tomorrow.

Saturday Matinee – Live From NorWay, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Fishbone & The Allman Brothers Band

LIVE CAM: Train Engineer’s Cab View in Norway [click here for local time]. Not sure which line this is, where it’s headed, or if it’s running above the Arctic Circle. Check it out in full screen view and I’ll see you back here in a couple of days.

Someday, I suppose I’ll go to Norwegia and ride that train. Meanwhile, I’ll listen to The Mighty Mighty Bosstones from 1993.

Or maybe I’ll roll with Fishbone, one of the tightest ska/rock/funk bands I ever heard. Those guys won me over a long time ago. (Check out this 1987 live version. Sound quality sucks, but the energy is killer.)

Let’s turn it down a bit with a cover of Bob Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower.” The Allman Brothers Band in 2011 always found a nice groove (presumed band lineup here).

Have a great Easter/Passover/Seder weekend, folks. See you soon.

Saturday Matinee – African Raccoons, Toni Tee and Liquid Wisdom & The Specials

Raccoons stirrin’ up sh*t.

Toni Tee & Liquid Wisdom on a bus. They play a cool variety of music (reggae, rock, funk, soul, hiphop, punkadelic) but it’s tough to find a vid with decent a/v on the Utoobage. [h/t Bunkessa – yeah she scored two hits this week; this one and the one above.]

Can’t fight corruption with con tricks;
They use the law to commit crime.
And I dread, dread to think what the future will bring,
When we’re living in gangster time.

The Specials performed their 1979 hit “Gangsters” (with Lily Allen) at the Glastonbury Festival 2007. (The music was lifted from Prince Buster‘s 1964 ska hit “Al Capone.” Have a listen.)

Have a great weekend, folks, and let’s see what happens tomorrow.

Saturday Matinee – Tito Puente, Mickey Hart & Todd Rundgren

Pure percussion by Tito Puente e Los TropiJazz All Stars. I could listen to this stuff all day.

Decades ago (in college) we attended an off-campus house party that seemed to have a live band. I asked the host about it and he replied, “That’s the Rhythm Section. They’re in the basement.” So I went downstairs and found people taking turns on vinyl trash cans, bottles, cans, buckets, with wooden dowels and spoons, and it all sounded great as it morphed, non-stop. No electronics, just ~~stoners~~ people grooving on impromptu syncopated rhythms.

Micky Hart‘s Planet Drum project got my ear as well. Hard to say what musical instrument came first, the bone flute or the drum. I’d guess the latter, because you can bang on anything to create a tempo, and everything else is secondary. (Vocals don’t count unless you’re talmbout Hollerin.)

Then of course there’s this RetroSka classic:

Have a great weekend, folks. We’ll be back here tomorrow whether you like it or not.

Saturday Matinee – Heavy Slabs in Tasmania, Puddles Painting Party, Manualist Extraordinaire & Fishbone

August 2016 – “Tasmania’s most famous wave comes to life to launch the Australian winter with a roar. When the southern hemisphere starts to rumble and shake under the weight of wild winter weather, The Stern, out there on the south-eastern tip of Tasmania, bears the full brunt of the conditions.”

[Found here.]