Fanzines Plethora

Everyone from Malcolm McLaren to Paul Simon heard something in South Africa's Boyoyo Boys that they wanted to appropriate. Their '80s records are lively and surprising, both original and emblematic of their time. You can hear where whole chunks of popular American music, from Graceland to Vampire Weekend, were born and raised. After listening to "Back in Town," you'd have broken a UN boycott to work with them, too.

Animator/composer Cyriak just posted this surreal video featuring infinite giant teddy bears climbing out of the sea at the Worthing shore and crossing the road. You'd think that this would be thin gruel for three minutes' worth of animation, but you'd be wrong: it turns out that the number of variations on the themes of pigeons, people, teddies, cars and shore is a lot greater (and weirder and funnier) than instinct would suggest.

Cycles (Thanks, Arthur!)

Jenise sez, "I work for Kiva Systems, a small robotics company in Woburn, MA, and the bots are amazingly fun to watch. A few years ago, one of our interns shot this video of the bots dancing to the Nutcracker Suite, and I thought it would tickle your ample sense of whimsy."

Ample whimsy: tickled.

(Aside: Whenever I hear the Nutcracker Suite, my stupid brain insists on supplying the lyrics from the "Smurfberry Crunch" breakfast cereal ad: "Smurfberry Crunch is fun to eat/A Smurfy fruity breakfast treat/Made with crunchy strawberries/They taste so sweet and [garbled]/Very fresh and very true/And very very Smurfy blue!")

(Bloody Smurfs.)

The Nutcracker performed by Dancing Kiva Order Fulfillment Robots (Thanks, Jenise!)

When she's not dropping everything to catch up on Twin Peaks, transatlantic troubadour Amy Rigby sings, writes, and performs some of the funniest and some of the most heartbreaking songs you've ever heard. Sometimes she does both in the same number. "Balls" is an all-out rock'n'roll barnburner that captures the frustration and excitement of desire with anger and several great punch lines. It's nasty, it's welcoming. It's as confusing and wonderful and awful as your life. Did I mention the slide guitar? Did I mention how Amy tosses off the aside "this one's gonna hurt"? Did I mention it's on two great albums: The Sugar Tree (along with "Rode Hard," another greatest song of all time of the week candidate and perhaps the most convincing argument for bad behavior on disc this side of "Dead Flowers") and 18 Again (a terrific greatest hits record, but all her records are greatest hits records)? WARNING: The YouTube clip below, however worthy, is not the version I've just raved about. It's a live solo acoustic version, the only take available on the Interwebs. Rigby's song is great in any context, but you've got to see and hear her as a bandleader to get the full sense of how brilliant she is. Anyone out there got any full-band footage to share? The rest of you: invest 99 cents and buy the song at your favorite online outlet. It'll be the smartest and longest-lasting buck you spend today (do you really need another cup of coffee)?

Over the past seven years, I've had the outlandishly talented country blues singer and guitarist Charley Patton looking over me. (Don't know Charley Patton? Hear him here and then buy what may be the greatest CD box set ever.) For many years, a photo of Patton was as hard to come by as a pic of Robert Johnson, and -- as with Johnson -- the legitimacy of the image has been challenged. For our purposes today, let's assume that this is Patton. I draw your attention to his left hand, how it is posed over the frets like crab legs. Patton's style has always felt a bit eccentric compared to other country blues purveyors, and I wonder whether he might have fingered the frets in an unusual way, too. Now I know there are plenty of other guitarists from the 1920s and 1930s who have posed in similar ways, but I wonder: does this photo reveal something about Patton's style. I know there are a lot of guitarists here (hey, the guy who let me in here builds 'em), so I'm eager to hear any theories, no matter how dubious. And to learn more about the fellow in the photograph, see R. Crumb's comix history of Patton. (The Patton pic above belongs to Blues Images.)

In the 60s, Columbia ran a "Nobody Sings Dylan Like Dylan" advertising campaign. It's absolutely true that Bob Dylan's unprecedented voice is the ideal way to deliver his unmatchable compositions, but it's also true that the guy is one of greatest songwriters we'll ever hear, so it's no surprise that a lost list of top voices have wanted to wrap themselves in his words and music. For example, everyone from Neil Young to Bryan Ferry have performed ace interpretations of Dylan's "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues," which I present here in Nina Simone's version. I recognize that Simone's RCA years aren't among her best, in part because she performed too many songs intended to ingratiate her with a young audience and this recording was probably part of that attempt. But this slowed-down take brings the original new places, most of them both luxurious and unsettling. I couldn't find a clip of Simone singing this song, but Jesse Dylan did locate a weird mashup on YouTube: Simone's performance as the soundtrack for clips from an unfinished Marilyn Monroe movie. (It's very mildly NSFW.) "Somehow it works," Jesse notes.

A few years ago, I produced The Sandinista Project, in which 36 performers each covered one song from The Clash's Sandinista! It was a fun and crazy project. Last summer, on Joe Strummer's birthday, as reported by Mark, I made the record free for a day. The free download was a great success although what I learned from the experiment was more mixed. I've been having a wonderful time here during my guestblogging residency and I'd like to say "thank you" by making the record free again, for a limited time. Instead of making it free for one day, which slowed the hamsters running the guterman.com servers to a crawl because everyone downloaded at once, I'm going to make the record, along with digital images of the packaging, available until midnight U.S. eastern time on Sunday night, so you'll have plenty of time to download this before it goes away. The Sandinista Project, once again free for a limited time

Amoeba Records is one of the world's greatest independent record stores, with many thousands of square feet of new and used vinyl, CDs, DVDs, and assorted rarities in film and music. They're in SF, Berkeley, and Hollywood. The kinds folks who run the joint invited me in to pick a handful of items I'm excited about, and the video that resulted is embedded above. I chose:

• The incredible Alan Lomax in Haiti box-set (we'll be blogging more about this one on BB soon!)
• Roots of Chicha: Psychedelic Cumbias From Peru (a tip of the chapeau to Susannah Breslin, and to my brother DJ Carlito for turning me on to this one)
• N.A.S.A. "Spirit of Apollo" (we've premiered a number of the music videos from this project on Boing Boing Video)
• Q-Burns Abstract Message and Eighth Dimension Records (we've used snips from his work as theme music for Boing Boing's audio podcast, and for our video project—I'm a longtime fan!)
• Wilco, "Wilco (The Album)" (I loved their latest record, and I believe they're one of the greatest live acts on the planet.)
• Pronto, "All is Golden" (Wilco keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen's side project. "The Cheetah," a digital-only download release, was glitchy electronic minimalism, but the release I grabbed from the bins in this video is "All is Golden," a paean to '70s rock. I also mispronounce Mikael's name horribly in this video... sorry Mikael!)
• Die Antwoord!

Amoeba Records: What's in My Bag? / Xeni Jardin

The complete "What's in My Bag" archives are here, with many interesting past guests.

(thanks, Rachael McGovern. Disclosure: I wasn't paid to appear in this video, but the nice folks at Amoeba gave me a $75 store credit which I plan to use on Radiohead vinyl and old Almodóvar movies!)

Alice Tan Ridley, mother of Academy Award-nominated Precious star Gabourey Sidibe, performs music — beautifully — in subway stations. Above, her rendition of "I Will Survive." Many more videos of her amazing street performances here, a pity the sound quality's so bad on all of them: The Subway Song Stylings Of Alice Tan Ridley! (stationstops.com), and a US Magazine story about the R&B singer here. (via Farai Chideya)

Related: Here's the raw audition tape that won Gabourey Sidibe her Precious role.

Balkan Beat Box have a new album coming out on April 27, Blue Eyed Black Boy, recorded in Tel Aviv and Belgrade during anti-Kosovo riots. The first video's out: "War Again," and was directed by award-winning animator Paul Griswold, who worked with Syd Garon on one of the N.A.S.A. Project videos featured previously on Boing Boing Video. Read more about the record at National Geographic (they're the record label!), and here's a YouTube link, and a Vimeo link. Amazon link for the band's previous releases here.