20th Century Steel Band - Heaven & Hell

An amazing song by a steel drum group doing funk.

You can find this song on volume 5 of the much-coveted Ultimate Breaks & Beats albums.  The entire compilation— at 25 volumes— is definitely worth a listen.  You’ll probably find the source for every sample you’ve ever heard in a classic hip hop or dance song.  (For instance, Lyn Collins’ “Think (About It)”— found on volume 16— has been used by dozens of major hip hop players from N.W.A. to Run DMC.)

UBB albums only contain songs made from 1966-1984, spanning every genre from jazz to rock.  The common denominator?  Every song on UBB contains an iconic drum break, or danceable beat.  Each volume only contains an average of 8 songs, and were released by Street Beat Records in the mid-’80s.

I can’t find much information on “Heaven and Hell,” but if you’re a Doug E. Fresh fan, you might recognize this from 1992’s “Back in the Dayz.”

Louis Armstrong - The Skeleton in the Closet

A Halloween treat from Louis Armstrong to you from the year 1936.

Goldfrapp - Strict Machine

The first song I heard at My Birthday o’clock. Year 23 is going to be interesting.

Not to step on the toes of another FSM birthday from earlier this week.  Man, if you’d been born a couple days later, one of us could have been the other’s dormant, parasitic twin.  …That’s how it works, right?

Paul Simon - A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I Was Robert McNamara’d into Submission)

Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs birthday party cheesecake jelly bean boom.

…Wait.

Aim - Landlord

I went to my first yard sale a few weeks ago (well, I say yard sale, it was some guy with a load of boxes selling stuff on the side of one of the busyist roads in Manchester, England) and after I had gone through the entire CD collection with a friend, laughing at all the hilarious album art from bands noone has or ever will hear of, I finally happened upon something that peaked my intrest. I bought the album ‘Flight 602’ by ‘Air’ soely because of the artwork on the box being a NASA space rocket and on the back a mission control room. And although the album doesn’t have any connection with space or science at all, I was pleasently suprised by the smooth electronic sound and catchy beats. Ohter notable tracks on the album are ‘Peir 57’, and the title track ‘Flight 602’.

I didn’t strike gold with this album, more likely bronze, or a very worn silver. But that’s still very good for £2 spent on the side of a road.

And upon inspection of the booklet inside I found out the album was actually made in Manchester, England too. It’s nice when you find out something was made where you live.

Patience & Prudence - Didn’t I

This is quite possibly my favorite girl group of all time.  Twee harmonies!  Sunshine!  Kittens!  Matching dresses!

Sisters Patience and Prudence (their real names, 14 and 11 years old respectively, at the time of this recording), cut a handful of tracks in the 1950’s and then abruptly disappeared from the music scene.

Songs of theirs tend to pop up now and again, though…  In 2001, “A Smile and a Ribbon” was featured in the film Ghost World. Bernadette Peters and Steve Martin took a crack at the duo’s signature song, “Tonight You Belong to Me,” in 1979’s The Jerk; the sisters’ own version appeared on the 2007 compilation album, A Date with John Waters.

“Didn’t I,” like most of P&P’s tunes, can be classified as fucking adorable.  You can find it on a 24-track album called The Complete P&P. It’s out on compact disc, and I had to search for years before some kind soul posted the album online (although for the record, I would have bought it if I’d been able to find a single copy).

If you don’t like Patience & Prudence, you have a soul as black as night.  Just look at them:

The Zombies - Girl Help Me

It’s a little weird posting overtly depressing songs on an internet forum for sharing music because it feels like no matter how good the song is, you’re probably broadcasting your emotional health and truth of any kind on the internet makes people uncomfortable.  Luckily, I’m not in the business of telling the truth (ever) and I’m posting this Zombies song because it is amazing.  I guess saying I’m “not in the business of telling the truth” and then following that with a statement about how I’m posting a sad song even though I’m not sad may ring a little hollow or at the very least confusing but all I really want to say is this song is equally great and infuriating in that it would be perfect were it not for that terrible cringey “your love cut my soul like the blade of a knife” bullshit and seriously, guys, I could think of like 30 better rhymes.

The Pfister Sisters - It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)

For those of you who have been playing along at home, you’ll know that some of the F’s here at FSM have a weakness for vintage crooners.  We’ve covered plenty of stuff from pre-Nuclear America, so my interests were peaked when I heard the melodic strains of the Pfister Sisters on the overhead speakers at work.

To my delight, I found out The Pfister Sisters are not relics of the 1930’s— they are three (modern!) lovely ladies who put their own spin on the early sister acts, and have been doing so since the 1980’s.

They take a lot of inspiration from the Boswell Sisters, also a New Orleans group (who are said to be the inspiration for another legendary close harmony girl group, The Andrews Sisters).  From their website:

Holley Bendtsen, Yvette Voelker, Debbie Davis and Amasa Miller comprise one of the few groups that represent the New Orleans swing era, with their recreation of The Boswell Sisters arrangements, and the only act featuring vocal jazz harmony. The Pfisters have sung with the Neville Brothers at Angola State Prison, with Linda Rondstadt and Jimmy Buffet at the New Orleans Artists Against Homelessness and Hunger concerts, with Vet Boswell of the Boswell Sisters in New York and New Orleans and with Maxene Andrews of the Andrews sisters on the wing of an airplane.

On the wing of an airplane!

While listening to The Pfisters’ 2003 album Change In the Weather, this imaginative, quirky arrangement of “It Don’t Mean a Thing” really caught my attention.  Props to The Pfisters for breathing new life into an old standard.

Check out The Pfister Sisters’ albums, which you can get via CD Baby (links on their website), and their streaming selections on Myspace.  Also, be sure to catch them live if you’re ever in New Orleans— I’ve heard from more than one source that they put on quite a show.

PfisterSisters.com & Myspace