MIXTAPE MONDAYS: Melodies of the Jumping Fleas

(Every Monday at Tragically Hipster we'll feature a look at a band, performance, or vague musical concept, with an accompanying virtual mixtape for your listening pleasure. There's no need to thank us; it's just one more service we like to provide for you, our dedicated readers. Most of whom also write for this site.)


Depending upon whom you ask, the word "ukulele" means either "the gift that came from here" or "jumping/dancing fleas" (after how a performer's fingers appear when playing the instrument). Or, alternatively, it means neither of those two things.

While the etymology of the ukulele may be under some debate, Tragically Hipster's love of its sound is not. On this week's mix you'll find tunes drenched in uke-playing, only lightly glazed with uke-playing (deal with it), and lyrically obsessed with uke-playing; there are tales of true love lost and gained and painful and even an implication that it might be on occasion joyous; existential meditations from Sweden and Huckabees; pop songs from former Beatles and current Fires; and in general a wealth of uke-centric (and uke-tangential) tracks. Do we make mixes like this because we love you, or out of a nepotisitic desire to inspire our fellow Tragical Hipsters to learn how to play an instrument of such magnificence? Like the origin of the name "ukulele," we may never know for sure.

On the Mixtape:

1) "With My Little Ukulele in My Hand" by George Formby
2) "Taint No Sin to Take Off Your Skin" by Janet Klein & Her Parlor Boys
3) "Ukulele Me!" by Stephin Merritt
4) "When You Were Mine" by Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele
5) "Little Bit" by Lykke Li
6) "The Opposite of Hallelujah" by Jens Lekman
7) "The Boys Are Back in Town (KCRW Session)" by Jon Brion
8) "You You You You You" by The 6ths
9) "Ram On" by Paul McCartney
10) "Your Arms Around Me" by Jens Lekman
11) "Nothing Matters When We're Dancing" by The Magnetic Fields
12) "True Love is Not Nice" by Yayahoni
13) "Moana Chimes" by Jon Brion featuring Adam Sandler and Emily Watson
14) "Poison and Snakes" by Liz Janes
15) "Such a Color" by Shugo Tokumaru
16) "Keep the Car Running" by Arcade Fire
17) "You Keep Me Always Living in Sin" by Janet Klein & Her Parlor Boys
18) "Elephant Gun" by Beirut
19) "Knock Yourself Out" by Jon Brion

Quick Notes on Select Songs:
*George Formby, a legend with the Ukulele-Banjo, was no stranger to controversy. His song "With My Little Ukulele in My Hand" was banned for "lewdness of lyric" back in the 20's, because... well, let's just say that if you listen carefully, you'll find that the "ukulele" Formby keeps in his hand during this song is a largely euphemistic one.

*Stephin Merritt pops up three times on this playlist, under three different guises and with three different lead singers tackling his songs. Aside from "Ukulele Me!", there's "You You You You You", released under the name The 6ths, and "Nothing Matters When We're Dancing", possibly my favorite song on the mix, released with his primary band The Magnetic Fields. Merritt's unapologetic love for the bizarre and Byzantine naturally led him to a generous use of the ukulele in his various compositions.

*There's something of a glut of cover versions in the rarefied world of ukulelelism; it's an easy lure to take a song that is self-important or distinctively tied to a specific genre (dance, punk, etc.) and then twist it on its head by playing the whole thing on the toy-like ukulele (see Jon Brion's admittedly novel cover of "The Boys Are Back in Town" for a quick example). The problem is that the novelty wears off incredibly quickly. Covers that are still interesting songs in and of themselves, that use the ukulele's unique sound to enhance rather than detract from the song they're covering, are few and far between. But they do exist, as Dent May's cover of Prince's "When You Were Mine" and Yayahoni's take on Jonathan Richman's "True Love is Not Nice" attest.

*Janet Klein & Her Parlor Boys have a regular slot at the Steve Allen Theater on the first Thursday of every month. Klein obliges with the ukulele and vocals, while Her Boys provide the 1920's early jazz-pop backing flavor. "Taint No Sin to Take Off Your Skin" and "You Keep Me Always Living in Sin" are two excellent reasons not to pass up next month's show.

LINKS:
Melodies of the Jumping Fleas Mixtape
Listen to the Banned by Various Artists (including George Formby)
Paradise Wobble by Janet Klein & Her Parlor Boys
Showtunes by Stephin Merritt
Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele (MySpace Page)
Little Bit (CD Single) by Lykke Li
Night Falls Over Kortedala by Jens Lekman
Pieces of April by The 6ths
Ram by Paul McCartney
69 Love Songs by The Magnetic Fields
Punch Drunk Love (Score) by Jon Brion
Poison & Snakes by Liz Janes
Night Piece by Shugo Tokumaru
Neon Bible by Arcade Fire
Living in Sin by Janet Klein & Her Parlor Boys
Lon Gisland by Beirut
I Heart Huckabees (Score) by Jon Brion

MIXTAPE MONDAYS: Unofficial & Unreleased

(Every Monday at Tragically Hipster we'll feature a look at a band, performance, or vague musical concept, with an accompanying virtual mixtape for your listening pleasure. There's no need to thank us; it's just one more service we like to provide for you, our dedicated readers. Most of whom also write for this site.)

First, an apology.

Two weeks ago I averred that the 8tracks service wasn't quite the equal of Muxtape, and that as a consequence we might be putting our Mixtape Mondays series on indefinite hold. Since then, I've come to appreciate that 8tracks is in fact a vastly superior service to Muxtape, and -- added bonus! -- without any niggling doubts about its legality that might suddenly cause it to drop unexpectedly offline.

My initial reservations about 8tracks stemmed from my (mistaken) understanding that you were only allowed to upload eight individual songs to any given mix. As it turns out, 8tracks requires a minimum of eight songs per mix, but I've yet to discover an upper limit to the playlists. Additionally, 8tracks provides functionality sorely missing from Muxtape -- namely, the ability to embed your playlist on a separate page (as you can see below). Indeed, the only drawback I've yet found in the site is a two-song-per-playlist limit by any given artist. This is annoying, but apparently a necessity for legal operation.

Sorry, 8tracks. We misjudged your awesomeness.

And so, on to the mix:

One of the most exciting things about the internet -- other than its ability to let even the laziest of people transform themselves into full-fledged stalkers using nothing more than a keyboard and a Google search bar -- is that it has allowed recordings that have either been abandoned, suppressed, or radically reworked to finally see the light of day. This week we highlight a hodge-podge of some of the best officially unreleased tracks from artists famous and distinctly less-so, ranging the gamut from trip-hop to bastard pop to hip-hop, with a little slice of folksy alternative on the side.

On the Mixtape:

1) "Tomorrow is Promised to No One" by Straw
2) "Einstein on the Beast" by djBC
3) "Every Day I Love You Less and Less" by M.I.A.
4) "HYPNTZ" by Dan Black
5) "Red Red Red (Jon Brion Mix)" by Fiona Apple
6) "An Echo's Better Than a Sound" by Angie Hart & George Sarah
7) "One More Cup of Coffee" by Dusty Rhodes and the River Band
8) "Ironspy" by Splashdown
9) "Familiar (Original Version)" by Radiant Darling
10) "Jump Off" by Black Jack Johnson
11) "Evening High" by djBC
12) "Save Me" by Angie Hart & George Sarah

Quick Notes on Select Songs:

* Tales of bands that have spent months in the studio recording an album only to have their careers cut short by executives who don't hear any commercial prospects in what they've done are depressingly common in the music industry. Keepsakes, the second album from British group Straw, was intended to be their major-label debut. Unfortunately, Columbia Records decided that the disc didn't have quite the sound they were looking for, and the record has languished in the vaults ever since. There's a melancholy beauty to the opening track "Tomorrow is Promised to No One" that the rest of the album is never quite able to match, but which hints at what might have been to come.

Where to Find It: Unofficial fan site StrawOnline offers a three-disc CD-R set of Straw rarities -- including B-sides, radio gigs, and the entirety of Keepsakes -- for £5 (about $10 U.S.).

*It's tempting to simply dismiss bastard pop (or "mashups" as I hear the young people are fond of call them) thanks to the flood of half-baked mixes out there, but every once in a while you'll run across a truly unique offering like djBC's Glassbreaks album. A combination of various hip-hop acapellas with the music of acclaimed minimalist avant-garde composer Philip Glass, what really impresses is the intelligence with which djBC dissects and re-arranges Glass' work to naturally accommodate the raps he lays over them. The two tracks used here -- "Einstein on the Beast" featuring the Beastie Boys, and "Evening High" featuring Kanye West and Talib Kwelli -- are based around samples from the biographical operas Einstein on the Beach (about our boy Albert) and Satyagraha (about Gandhi) respectively. These are some of Glass' strongest compositions, rich and strange and affecting in equal measure, and if I have one complaint it's that a rapper as thoroughly middling as Kanye West doesn't really fucking deserve to be associated with the sounds of such beauty.

Where to Find It: There's this thing called "bittorrent". You've heard of it?

*Dan Black's "HYPNTZ" is everything a cover song should be: playful, inventive, and surprisingly insightful. It's easy to take a hip-hop song and then play it emotionally overwrought for cheap laughs; it's much more difficult to take the same song and play the emotion of it straight. Black transform's one of the Notorious B.I.G.'s bigger hits into a kind of tribute to the man's musical vision, basing his cover around excerpts from Jack Nitzsche's score to Starman. Black doesn't yet have a record deal, but as is to be expected in these situations, A&R reps are in hot pursuit.

Where to Find It: Dan Black's MySpace page.

*Of all the songs on the leaked version of Fiona Apple's album Extraordinary Machine, it's "Red Red Red" that sounds the most different from its officially-released counterpart. On the final album it’s a slow, almost torch-like song. This earlier version features a fiery, melodramatic string arrangement from producer Jon Brion, the better to highlight the passion of its lyrics.

Where to Find It: Bittorrent, or a bit of judicious Googling should do you right.

*The product of a collaboration between Australian singer Angie Hart (formerly of Frente! and Splendid) and Los Angeles-area composer George Sarah, "An Echo's Better Than a Sound" and "Save Me" were recorded as demos for a possible album which never materialized.

Where to Find It: For a while the unofficial fan site splendidtheband.com hosted a copy of the demo disc, but like the collaboartion between Hart and Sarah, it's now defunct. Your best bet would be to try Soulseek or a similar service.

*Dusty Rhodes and the River Band's excellent cover of "One More Cup of Coffee" showed up unexpectedly one day on their MySpace page, and then a few days later disappeared with an equal lack on fanfair. It hasn't cropped up on any of their self-released discs or on their SideOne Dummy debut album, so for the time being we're going to consider this one lost in the ether.

Where to Find It: Go to their Myspace page and beg.

*Splashdown is another band which fell victim to an apparent lack of confidence on the part of its label. Their unreleased second album Blueshift, from which "Ironspy" is taken, hails from that brief period near the end of the last millennium where trip-hop and electronica looked poised to be the Next Big Thing in American music, but instead wasn't.

Where to Find It: You can download the entire Blueshift album, along with everything else Splashdown ever recorded, at Splashdownloads. Unusually, this site has been given an official blessing by the band, so you can gorge yourself with a clear conscience.

*For Mos Def fans, the Black Jack Johnson project has reached near-legendary proportions. A rock-and-rap collaboration between Def and members of Bad Brains and Arrested Development (the band, not the show), it heralded the coming of a new era of live hip-hop, featuring original beats not smothered in samples. Unfortunately, the album never materialized, and other than a few bizarrely inappropriate moments on his album The New Danger, Black Jack Johnson seems to have fallen to the wayside. But in 2003 Mos Def did drop a white label 12" with a song called "Jump Off," featuring an appearance by Ludacris. A clear outtake from the Black Jack Johnson sessions, this track was later reworked for inclusion on the European release of The New Danger.

Where to Find It: The full album, if it exists, has yet to leak. But you can grab a copy of the "Jump Off" white label right here.