Something Saxy

Something Saxy by Fausto Papetti will always have a special place in my heart. I have listened to this record so many times while hanging out with my friends in college. Back in 2011 I got this record in a bargain bin at some record store that has since closed its doors. It was really cheap and I really didn't expect much. I listened to it a few times and forgot about it. It wasn't until my sophomore year of college that I heard it again. My roommates really took a liking to it and soon I realized that it was indeed a gem. I would listen to this record every day after class while smoking with my friends and talking about the conspiracy theory du jour. This is one of the few Fausto Papetti albums not to feature a sexy lady on the cover, this is something he was known for. That being said I really like this cover, though it lacks a sexy lady it features a sexy sax. Fausto Papetti's Saxophone is elegant and crisp and the band accompanying him sounds distinctly Italian. Most of the songs on this album are covers of Jazz and pop standards, now I'm not usually one to listen to cover albums but Fausto Papetti's reimaginings of these songs is a nice change of pace from the usual set of boring covers. Papetti adds his own unique flare to each of the songs without straying too far from the original to render it unrecognizable.

This is a vinyl rip that I ripped myself, I've gone through and cleaned up most of the really noticeable pops but there are still a few artifacts as you would expect.

MP3 192 VBR
Download

Nino Rotta - Toby Dammit

Sorry for the three year absence guys. Gee has it really been that long? Well I can't say I will be posting regularly anymore but I really wanted to share this album as it is the soundtrack to my favorite Federico Fellini film Toby Dammit.

Toby Dammit is such a wonderful little gem that is relatively obscure. It is a forty minute film made in 1968, is one of three short films adapted from stories by Edgar Allan Poe that were distributed together in Italy as Tre Passi Nel Delirio, in France as Histories Extraordinaires, and in England and the U.S. as Spirits of the Dead. The other two short films are William Wilson and Metzengerstein adapted by Louis Malle and Roger Vadim respectively. Fellini’s film is an adaptation set in contemporary Rome of Poe’s Never Bet the Devil Your Head published in 1841. Poe’s work is a brief comic satire of the transcendentalist movements that were then popular in Europe and America. Fellini’s work takes two elements from Poe’s story: First the plot of a drunk who confronts a mysterious stranger on a bridge and bets him his head; the man fails to see that the stranger is the devil who subsequently wins the bet. Second Fellini takes the name Toby Dammit, Toby being an English slang term for ass in Poe’s time. In short Toby Dammit is a dammed ass.

The soundtrack is what I am sharing with you and it is truly remarkable. It was composed by Nino Rota who composed the scores to most of Felini's films. He also composed the score to the first two Godfather movies. A lot of this score is different variations of the same few themes but they are enchanting themes that mimic the dreamlike quality of the film.

Download Toby Dammit OST

Gus Cannon - The Best of Cannon’s Jug Stompers

The Best of Cannon’s Jug Stompers

Biographical information from the now defunct collective blog Music A-K-O
Translated from Spanish by yours truly.

Gus Cannon was born on September 12th 1883 on the plantation of Henderson Newell in Marshall Country, Mississippi. His father had been a slave and Gus was the youngest of ten children. In 1895 Gus went with his brother Tom to Clarksdale to work in cotton fields. At that time Gus started to become interested in music. He built a banjo out of the neck of a guitar and a kind of pot used to bake bread. Gus began to pick up on the songs of the people of Clarksdale and he was taught some musical techniques by a musician named Bud Jackson. Gus got his first real bajno from his brother who he beat in a game of dice.

They say that jug bands started at the beginning of the century in Louisville, Kentucky, and that they played a mix of early jazz, country, and songs with ragtime roots. By 1910 Gus Cannon had gone to work at a plantation near Ashport, Tennessee, where he formed his first jug band with Jim Turner. Jug bands were very popular at the time and usually consisted of a jug, violin, banjo, and sometimes a guitar or mandolin.

In 1928 Ralph Peer of Victor, which had recorded other popular jug bands in Memphis, went looking for other bands to record. Charlie Williamson, a man who at that time owned the Palace Theatre told him that he knew a guy named Gus Cannon who played in one. By that time Gus had attached the jug to the neck of his banjo and was able to play both at the same time. Gus called up a harmonica player named Noah Lewis who was known for being able to play two harmonicas at the same time. Gus had met him in 1907 when he worked at the Ashport plantation near Ripley, Tennessee. He also called Ashley Thompson and the three of them formed Cannon’s Jug Stompers. Later they would add more people like John Estes on guitar, Yank Rachel on mandolin, and various unknown musicians who would sit in from session to session. Gus’ band recorded a total of 26 sides between the 30th of January 1928 and the 28th of November 1930. You’ve got to hear this smokin’ hot music that just makes you want to live, soak up the sun, and smile. Listen to Going to Germany and you’ll see what I mean.

Image: Gus Cannon in 1963, via Memphis Music Stars

Stan Seymour - Everybody Loves Bermuda

Stan Seymour - Everybody Loves Bermuda
I got this record at 641 RPM in Boone, North Carolina. I was happily surprised when I heard it. The styles really range in this one, it isn't like Trinidadian Calypso at all. It's uniquely Bermudan.

01. Everybody Loves Bermuda
02. The Radar Trap
03. Emerald of the Sea
04. Woman in Space
05. Mister Pipe
06. The Diddley Bops
07. Ballad of Christine
08. Bermuda Buggy Ride
09. Blue Bird
10. Weather Bird
11. Sonny Liston
12. Scarlet Ribbons
13. World Crisis

Del Close & John Brent - How to Speak Hip and The “Do It Yourself” Psychoanalysis Kit

Download/Descargar

How To Speak Hip
01 Introduction
02 Basic Hip
03 Vocabulary Building
04 The Loose Wig
05 The Riff
06 The Hang Up
07 Put On, Put Down, Come On, Come Down, Bring Down
08 Cool
09 Uncool
10 Field Trip No. 1
11 Field Trip No. 2
12 Field Trip No. 3
13 Summary

The Do It Yourself Psychoanalysis Kit

14 General Introduction To Psychoanalysis
15 Psychological Testing
16 Diagnosis and Therapy
17 The Psychoanalytic Session
18 The Diagnosis of Dr Siegfried Gesalt

This is a 2009 CD reissue of the classic 1959 comedy record How To Speak Hip. It’s really a gas. I couldn’t post this without giving credit to Owl who posted his record rip at Holy Warbles. This reissue includes another of Close’s comedy records The Do It Yourself Psychoanalysis Kit (released the same year on Hanover) which is hilarious in and of itself.

Hi-Yo, Silver, Away! by The Lone Ranger

Lone Ranger (born Anthony Alphanso Waldron) is a Jamaican reggae deejay who recorded nine albums between the late 1970s and mid-1980s. This is his 1982 album Hi-Yo, Silver, Away!

Waldron spent much of his youth in the United Kingdom and began his recording career with Clement “Coxsone” Dodd’s Studio One label. He initially worked as a duo with Welton Irie, but soon began recording solo, having a big hit in Jamaica with “Love Bump”. He also worked on the Virgo Sound sound system. He had a number one UK reggae chart album in 1980 with Barnabus Collins. He is regarded as one of the most lyrically inventive deejays of his era, and was a major influence on British deejays of the early 1980s. He relocated to the United States in the mid-1980s, but returned to Jamaica in 1998, and began performing on sound systems once again.

Hi-Yo, Silver, Away!

01. Tom Drunk
02. Rub ‘N’ Scrub
03. Legalize The National Herb
04. Gunshot Mek Daughter Drop
05. Living As A Poor
06.Johnny Make You Bad So
07. The Clock
08. Lone Ranger and Tonto
09. Solomon
10. Love Affair Problem
11. Johnny Make You Bad So (12” Mix)
12. Taxi Gang Outside Right

My personal favorites are track #5 and #7.

Download/Descargar 320 kbps mp3

Psicotrónica! Spanish Cinematic Grooves & Funky Soundtracks, 1971-1976 Vol. 2

Download