Cool & Strange Music Vol. 4

It's time once again for another version of Cool & Strange Music! Yippee!!!

Let's start of the show with a Brigitte Bardot video from 1968 that has a great remix along with the original video. This song is called "Contact."

Here's what Wikipedia says about the very outspoken and fascinating Brigitte Bardot:

Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot is a former French fashion model, actress, singer and animal rights activist. She was one of the best-known sex symbols of the 1960s. Starting in 1969, Bardot's features became the official face of Marianne (who had previously been anonymous) to represent the liberty of France.

Bardot was an aspiring ballet dancer in early life. She started her acting career in 1952 and, after appearing in 16 films, became world-famous due to her role in her then-husband Roger Vadim's controversial film And God Created Woman. She later starred in Jean-Luc Godard's 1963 film Le Mépris. Bardot was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress for her role in Louis Malle's 1965 film Viva Maria!. Bardot caught the attention of French intellectuals. She was the subject of Simone de Beauvoir's 1959 essay, The Lolita Syndrome, which described Bardot as a "locomotive of women's history" and built upon existentialist themes to declare her the first and most liberated woman of post-war France.

Bardot retired from the entertainment industry in 1973. During her career in show business, Bardot starred in 47 films, performed in numerous musical shows, and recorded 80 songs. She was awarded the Legion of Honour in 1985, but refused to receive it. After her retirement, Bardot established herself as an animal rights activist. During the 1990s, she generated controversy by criticizing immigration, Islamization and Islam in France, and has been fined five times for "inciting racial hatred".

Next up is a cover song. Now, usually I hate covers, because I think it's rare when a cover song is better than the original. But sometimes people can do a cover and make it all their own. I think the String Quartet Tribute does that with their Tribute to Led Zeppelin album!

A few years back, they changed their name to "Vitamin String Quartet." Here's what Wikipedia says:

The Vitamin String Quartet (VSQ) is a musical group from Los Angeles, California that is widely known for its series of tribute albums to rock and pop acts. Their albums are released through Vitamin Records and primarily performed by a string quartet, though other instruments have been used. "Vitamin String Quartet is about applying rock n' roll attitude to classical technique," says Tom Tally, a violist and arranger who has performed on and produced over fifty Vitamin String Quartet albums.

Their albums honor a wide variety of genres, including pop and rock, techno, country, and rap, and a wide variety of groups, such as System of a Down, Bruce Springsteen, Led Zeppelin, Coldplay, Adele, Lady Gaga, Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, Paramore, Muse, Linkin Park, Avenged Sevenfold and many more. Their discography includes 261 albums.

And at this week's number three is our usual Japanese number. This time here's a see/listen to a lady who is probably Japan's most famous female singer in history, Misora Hibari! Misora Hibari was a singer, actress and TV star. She is the definitive Japanese star for the post-war years.

Misora Hibari is so famous she even has an English Wikipedia page!

Hibari Misora was a Japanese enka singer, actress and cultural icon. She received a Medal of Honor for her contributions to music and for improving the welfare of the public, and was the first woman to receive the People's Honour Award which was conferred posthumously for giving the public hope and encouragement after World War II.

Misora recorded 1,200 songs, and sold 68 million records. After she died consumer demand for her recordings grew significantly and by 2001 she had sold more than 80 million records. Her male contemporary was Michiya Mihashi and although he was more popular as a singer, Misora's movie career made her more popular with the general public. Her swan-song "Kawa no Nagare no Yō ni"  is often performed by numerous artists and orchestras as a tribute to her, including notable renditions by The Three Tenors (Spanish/Italian), Teresa Teng (Taiwanese), and Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlan (Mexican).

Each year there is a special on Japanese television and radio featuring her songs. A memorial concert for Misora will be held at the Tokyo Dome on November 11, 2012.

OK, so that's probably not that cool and strange, but I think it is very interesting.... You say you want strange? Oh, you got it. Here's Country Punk musician Jon Wayne and the song is called Texas Funeral... Yes, that's the way the song is supposed to sound. Jon Wayne always sounds like he didn't practice; is drunk; and is hellaciously hilarious!

You're kidding me! Jon Wayne even has a Wikipedia page?????

Jon Wayne was the name of a cowpunk, alt-country band in Los Angeles in the 1980s, made up of pseudonymous session musicians who decided to form a more underground band as a diversion. Their song, "Texas Funeral", appeared in Robert Rodriguez's film "From Dusk Till Dawn" as well as the song "I've Got Texas" in the film "American Strays".In 2010 the Texas Funeral LP was reissued by Third Man Records, which is a label owned by Jack White of The White Stripes.

Finally, here's something for the whole family. It is a classic sixties electronica album by Jean Jacques Perrey and Gershon Kingsley; better know as Perrey Kingsley. Here is the wonderful song, "One Note Samba."

Wikipedia says about Perrey and Kingsley:

The musical duo Perrey and Kingsley are pioneers in the field of electronic music. Before their collaboration, starting in 1965, electronic music was considered to be purely avant-garde. They were among the first to create electronic music for the general public.

The best thing about these guys is that when the Beatles hit the states and everyone and his sister were making music that sounded like the Beatles, Perrey and Kingsley were doing their own thing! Cool!

Well that's it for this week! See you next weekend!

Cool & Strange Music Vol. 3 - Top 5 for the Week of Sept 8, 2012.

We're back to another episode of Cool & Strange music. Welcome! This chart is the coolest and strangest music chart you'll ever see/hear...For those of you who like rock and pop music, please check out my friend George's Top 5 video chart here. (George Williams Top 5 Countdown: http://georgewilliams.jp/wp/category/ranking/)

Let's get started!

Everyone knows someone who can't sing, has no rhythm and is tone deaf... (Most of us see one every morning when we wake up and look into the bathroom mirror), but how about one who is a nice old lady and actually couldn't sing to save her life but somehow managed to get a recording contract with Columbia and sold over 1 million records! That's right! This lady sold over 1 million records!

Here's what Wikipedia says about Mrs. Elva Miller:

Elva Ruby Connes Miller (October 5, 1907 – July 28, 1996), who recorded under the name "Mrs. Miller", was an American singer who gained some fame in the 1960s for her series of shrill and off-key renditions of then-popular songs such as "Moon River", "Monday, Monday", "A Lover's Concerto" and "Downtown". Singing in an untrained, Mermanesque, vibrato-laden style, according to Irving Wallace, David Wallechinsky and Amy Wallace in The Book of Lists 2, her voice was compared to the sound of "roaches scurrying across a trash can lid." Nevertheless, "Downtown" reached the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in April 1966, peaking at #82. The single's B-side, "A Lover's Concerto", barely cracked the Hot 100 that same month at #95.

Here's Mrs. Miller doing the Buck Owens classic tune that was made popular again at the time by Ringo singing it for the Beatles:

Most of Mrs. Millers songs have been removed on Youtube by those douchebags at EMI who seem to be unable to grasp the fact that if people can't hear Mrs. Miller's music, they won't buy or download her CDs... Or maybe they're too stoopid to have heard of Monty Python. 

Did you know that when Monty Python started their own Youtube channel and started uploading their skits for free, their Amazon sales jumped by 23,000%! Don't believe me? Read this: http://boingboing.net/2009/01/23/monty-pythons-free-w.html... That proves just how dumb these major record labels are when they block sixties and seventies (etc...etc..) artists off the Internet and Youtube! Gee... If people can't hear the music, they'll forget and not buy...

And speaking of people who have no rhythm and can't sing, how about Swedne's own Elvis Presley impersonator, Eilert Pilarm?

Wikipedia says this about this true gem and once in a century talent:

Eilert Dahlberg (born April 4, 1953 in Anundsjö, Sweden), who uses the stage name Eilert Pilarm is a Swedish Elvis impersonator. He gained fame when he performed on Morgonpasset in 1992. Pilarm self-released several cassettes, before his debut CD Greatest Hits was released in 1996 on MCA. Eilert is Back! followed in 1998 and Live in Stockholm appeared in 2000. He stopped performing in 2002 after 600 gigs and six albums. Pilarm is one of several musicians featured in Irwin Chusid's book Songs in the Key of Z, which focuses on outsider music. His album Eilerts Jul ("Eilert's Christmas") frequently appears in internet lists of "worst album covers of all time". He used to own a Royal Enfield motorbike, but has since sold it, and at present it resides in Tavelsjö.

Pretty, er, um, amazing... The guy got so popular that many famous musicians in Europe wanted to be in his backing band...

Even more amazing when you realize that Eilert Pilarm also sold more than a million records!

Funny thing is, though, if you keep listening to Eilert Pilarm, the Elvis Presley covers start to sound like he's singing them correctly... OH, my GOD! Elert Pilarm and Elvis Presley have the same initials!!!! How bizarre!

OK, well, we probably have to adjust our ears and tuning after that classic... 

The best use for Eilert Pilarm and Mrs. Miller (besides listening and laughing) is if you have a big party and you want people to go home, just start playing this stuff! Hilarious how fast the room clears out!

Here's an instrumental band that I really like. They are called the Ramonetures, kinda like the Ramones meets the Ventures, get it? Here they are doing the Ramones classic, Rock & Roll High School

AllMusic says this about the Ramonetures:

Created by guitarist Mel Bergman, the Ramonetures are hard to define in simple terms. Essentially an instrumental surf band, the Ramonetures separate themselves from the pack by specializing in "re-imagining" established bands work as, well, instrumental surf rock. On their first release, they -- hence the name of the band -- "surfed up" the Ramones, and on the second, they rework the legendary Los Angeles punk pioneers X. While the first Ramonetures was a purely in-house affair, the second release, Johny Walk Don't Run Paulene, features X guitarist Billy Zoom and drummer D.J. Bonebrake.

Yeah! Rockin'! I could imagine "playing" with her!

Well, so far we've had two werid and twisted songs and one rockin' one. Let's now go to something a tad bit cooler and more exotic with Arthur Lyman.

After World War II, lots of guys came back from the Pacific with good memories of the islands. Arthur Lyman capitalized on that by making a sound that became known as "Exotica" and is probably the classic sound when it come to Cool & Strange music. 

Wikipedia says this about Arthur Lyman:

Arthur Lyman (February 2, 1932 – February 24, 2002) was an American jazz vibraphone and marimba player. His group popularized a style of faux-Polynesian music during the 1950s and 1960s which later became known as exotica. His albums became favorite stereo-effect demonstration discs during the early days of the stereophonic LP album for their elaborate and colorful percussion, deep bass and 3-dimensional recording soundstage. Lyman was known as "the King of Lounge music."

If that's not the definitive Cool & Strange sound then I don't know what is!

Finally, I like to always have at least one Japanese song in the Cool & Strange countdown. And this one is definitely cool and strange and is this week's number one. It is dedicated to my friend Jp Valentine.

These days there is a massive Japan boom all over Europe. It seems the Europeans are fascinated with this country and can't get enough. In France there's even annual Japan festivals! I used to think this was a recent craze but evidence shows that the notion is not true. It seems the Europeans (especially the French) are madly in love with Japan and all things Japanese and have been for decades. So much so that even the famed French songstress France Gall sang a song in Japanese and it was a massive hit in Japan in the 1960's!

France Gall, while not so famous outside of France, is a huge star in that country. Here's a brief from Wikipedia.... 

France Gall (born Isabelle Geneviève Marie Anne Gall on 9 October 1947 in Paris, France) is a popular French yé-yé singer. Gall was married to, and had a successful singing career in partnership with, French singer-songwriter Michel Berger.

Read more about her storied career at Wiki. 

Here she is singing that song in Japanese in a very rare video that I just found the other day. The song is called "Yume Miru Chason Ningyo" (Translation: "The Dreams of Chanson Dolls" - I think.....)

For an extra treat, here she is singing the song in it's original French (written by Serge Gainsbourg):

Well that's it for today. Hope you enjoyed the tunes and I hope to see you back here next week!

Cool & Strange Music Vol. 2 - Top 5 for the Week of Sept 3, 2012.

Woooo-hooo! Woooo-hooo! It's time once again for Cool and Strange Music the coolest and strangest music on the internet. Today, like always, we have the Top 5 of the coolest tunes on the planet.

If Picasso was a rocker, this is what he'd have heard....

Why? because you are so lame and stuck in your rut (and FM radio sucks so much) that you don't get a chance to get out of your lameness and that rut to listen to some really cool sounds (Lady Gaga fans need not apply!)

Let 's get rockin', er, I mean jazzin' with the Nutty Squirrels from the 1959 space-aged album: 

Woah! It's a bad acid trip as there's even a Wikipedia page for the Nutty Squirrels:

The Nutty Squirrels were a scat singing virtual band, formed in imitation of The Chipmunks, that had a Top 40 hit in late 1959 with the song "Uh-Oh". The Squirrels actually preceded the Chipmunks on television in an animated cartoon, but with much less success. After the Chipmunks' initial success in 1958, plans were almost immediately made to make them into an animated cartoon series. Unfortunately, there were some initial art direction snags (specifically with the character designs) and the show was delayed. This gap resulted in a race between the Chipmunks and an imitative group created by jazz musicians Don Elliott and Alexander "Sascha" Burland, which they called the Nutty Squirrels.

Both musical groups featured the defining sped-up voices, but Ross Bagdasarian, Sr.'s Chipmunks favored popular music while the Squirrels favored jazz, particularly of the bebop variety. Ultimately, the Squirrels made it to television first, in the animated series The Nutty Squirrels Present (appearing in September 1960), but they were not as popular as the originals.

"Uh-Oh (Part 1)" peaked at #45 on the Billboard Pop Singles Chart, while "Uh-Oh (Part 2)" peaked at #14.

In 1976 Bob Milsap resurrected the act, at first with a novelty single based on the current CB citizens band radio craze, "Hey Shirley (This Is Squirrely)", and followed by two albums (one a Christmas release). Due to legal reasons, his version of the creation went credited under the individual character names, Shirley and Squirrely.

In the 2007 live-action/animated movie Alvin and the Chipmunks during the credits Ian Hawke (David Cross) is trying to get three squirrels to sing.

Next up, did you like Devo? So did I. For a long time it was rumored that Moog Cookbook was actually the Devo crew and I do see some of their names on the credits... But, well, watch the video first...

Moog Cookbook "Black Hole Sun":

Not Devo, but definitely inspired by the same thing. Here's what Wikipedia says about Moog Cookbook:

The Moog Cookbook is the name of an electronica band made up of Brian Kehew and Roger Joseph Manning Jr. (under the aliases Uli Nomi and Meco Eno) as a parody/tribute to the novelty "Moog records" of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The duo performs exclusively on analog synthesizers, especially Moog synthesizers. The liner notes from their first album proudly proclaims "No MIDI" to demonstrate that they played things by hand, rather than using computer sequencing, which is common for synthesizer music.

The Moog Cookbook released two albums in the mid-1990s featuring instrumental cover versions of alternative and classic rock tracks performed on vintage synthesizers. The pair reunited to record a track for the soundtrack of the 2004 film Moog.

In 2006, the pair independently released a collection of material recorded during their earlier sessions and as part of other projects. This album is Bartell.

The band's name is derived from a 1978 cookbook, Moog's Musical Eatery by Shirleigh Moog, the first wife of synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog.

Next up? Wendy Carlos. Wendy was once a guy named Walter... Oh, well, it's a long story.

Here's what Wikipedia says about Wendy Carlos, er Walter Carlos, er, Mr. Carlos, er, Ms. Carlos:


Wendy Carlos (born Walter Carlos in Pawtucket, Rhode Island on 14 November 1939) is an American composer and electronic musician.

Carlos first came to prominence in 1968 with Switched-On Bach, a recording of music by J.S. Bach painstakingly assembled, phrase-by-phrase, on the Moog synthesizer, at the time a relatively new and unknown instrument. The album earned three Grammy Awards in 1969. Other classical recordings followed. Carlos later began releasing original compositions, including the first-ever album of synthesized environmental sounds, Sonic Seasonings (1972) and an album exploring alternate tunings Beauty in the Beast (1986). She has also worked in film music, notably writing and performing scores for two Stanley Kubrick movies, A Clockwork Orange (1971) and The Shining (1980), as well as Walt Disney's Tron.

Carlos was born Walter Carlos in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. A musical prodigy, she started piano lessons at six, and at ten composed "A Trio for Clarinet, Accordion, and Piano." In 1953 (age 14) she won a Westinghouse Science Fair scholarship for a home built computer, well before "computer" was a household word. Carlos earned a B.A. in music and physics at Brown University (1962) and a master's degree in composition from Columbia University (1966). She studied with Vladimir Ussachevsky, a pioneer in electronic music, as well as Otto Luening and Jack Beeson, working in the famed Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center.

Remaining in New York after graduation, Carlos was introduced to Dr. Robert Moog and became one of his earliest customers, providing advice and technical assistance for his further development of the Moog synthesizer. Carlos convinced Moog to add touch sensitivity to the synthesizer keyboard for greater dynamics and musicality, among other improvements.

Around 1966, Carlos met Rachel Elkind, who went on to produce Switched-On Bach and other early albums. With the proceeds from Switched-On Bach, the two renovated a New York brownstone, which they shared as a home and business premises, installing a studio for live and electronic recording on the bottom floor where all subsequent recordings have been produced. Carlos took the unusual step of enclosing the entire studio in a Faraday cage, shielding the equipment from radio and television interference.

Carlos is also an accomplished solar eclipse photographer.

Now that you've had your dose of culture...Now it's time for modern, er, "culture." God bless America and God bless fast food. Here's a crazy Mo-Fo named Wesley Willis. This guy is nuts. He weighs about 300 punds and plays a tine Casio keyboard and screams out some really ridiculous stuff.

One listen and you'll never forget. Wesley Willis, "Rock N' McDonald's":

Disgusting! A perfect reflection of today's USA.... Wesley Willis? Yep! If you ever have a party and it's late and you want everyone to leave, then this is the perfect song for you!

And now, for this week's #1 Cool and Strange song: Michelle Simonal covering the Rolling Stones, "Satisfaction" from the album "Bossa n' Stones." This has to be one of the sexiest songs ever recorded!!!!:

That's it!

See you next week!!!!!

Cool & Strange Music Top 5 for the Week of Sept 2, 2012.

OK. I've been drinking. If you wanna see the Japan Top 5 presented by George Williams, see here: http://georgewilliams.jp/wp/2012/09/01/top-5-for-9112/

But this is the Cool & Strange Top 5.

I don't know what happened to Dana Countryman (respect) and Dr. Demento (double respect) but I do know that I am qualified to do this countdown as I have 10,000 CDs and a massive collection of weird-assed shit that the two aforementioned illuminaires don't have.

So, without much further ado. here's vol. 1 of the Cool & Strange Music Top 5 for the Week of Sept 2, 2012.

At #5: Jim Backus & Friend - "Delicious"

Remember that this was recorded in a studio so this woman's laughing is awesome and totally believable. 

At #4 is Japan's own Yo-Yo Hashi and Yo-Yo's Place!

Talk about having "Blue Balls!"

Next up, the standard stupid song about Star Wars :

Yeah! That's as about Cool & Strange as you can get!

Nope! Here's bongo genius, Chaino:

And since this is our first issue, here'e #1: Mary Schneider "Yodelling the Overtures." Listen carefully because you'll wonder, as I did, "When does this lady breathe?"

Awesome. See you next Sunday night (Japan time) for more virtual Cool & Strange music!