Jay Lindsey has been making music in Memphis for over a decade in various projects: the Reatards, the Lost Sounds (if you haven’t heard Memphis is Dead, please remedy that immediately), Angry Angles and so on. His solo career under the moniker Jay Reatard, however, has produced the most critical acclaim. Last year’s Blood Visions is one of the most compelling albums I’ve heard in years, an almost perfect marriage of Raw Power-era garage rock and scathing, punk rock aggression. So, when Reatard started his own blog, ears perked up. And there, on his blog, was where he unveiled this little number. Few people could pull off an upbeat, happy sounding song about having a little house and a garden with a garden gnome, and then end it by screaming “stab ’em in the back!” It’s nice to see that rock/punk music staying at least a little bit dangerous: a rarity these days.

Audio – Jay Reatard – Tiny Little Home

— Post by Eli Russell

What’s a frankiphone you ask? A good question, especially if you’re not familiar with Phil Cohran, as he invented it. Essentially an electric thumb piano, Kelan Phil Cohran developed the instrumenet and used it to anchor the recordings on the album this song was pulled from, Singles. The album is a collection of songs that originally came out on Cohran’s own Zulu Records imprint. The instrument becomes a focal point on a couple of these songs, which get rounded out Chicago jazz legends like Master Henry Gibson and Pete Cosley. If Cohran’s work with Sun Ra was a little too out for you, this collection tones down the “out” just a tad and wraps everything up in a tighter package. If you like jazz and/or soul music even a little bit and don’t have this record, I guarantee that it will be a welcome addition to your collection.

— Audio – Phil Cohran and the Artistic Heritage Ensemble – Frankiphone Blues

– Bonus – Click here for a video of Cohran playing the frankiphone.

In keeping with our continued coverage of jazz and our love for good cover songs, this little nugget is from Nina Simone’s album of the same name. The tune was originally penned by Randy Newman in 1977 and Simone’s take on it – with its strong rhythm section, and soulful, lamenting vocal delivery – leaves little to be desired.

– Audio — Nina Simone – Baltimore

Wow… Is the perhaps the best support song for a politician ever?
Audio – Cocoa Tea – “Barack Obama”

Taking nothing away from Neil Young, his contributions to modern music, his impressive songwriting skills or his status as a rock icon — it’s just that, in this writer’s humble opinion, Merry Clayton’s cover of his 1970 classic, “Southern Man,” trounces the original in every possible way.
Audio — Merry Clayton – Southern Man
— Post by Ben Fasman

A start-of-the-week tonic from Lee Perry and the Upsetters. Drum break? Check. Dubbed out lazerface vocals? Check. The “Love and Happiness” opening guitar lick to set things off proper? Lee Perry literally doing an impression of a lion? Oh yes. If this doesn’t brighten your day just a little bit, I’m not really sure what will. A genie? You find a blog that has those, holler.

Audio — The Upsetters – Jungle Lion

Post by Ben Fasman

The latest free-music-on-the-internt gem we’ve come across is from the UK’s Heatwave collective. They’ve been putting out killer reggae / ragga-tinged remixes, mostly on limited edition 45s. Now they’ve posted a handful of them online, available as free downloads. If that isn’t a good way to start to your weekend, I don’t know what is.

Who knew that mid ’60’s Dutch rockers could be so funky? With Albert King, Lee Dorsey, Solomon Burke and Allen Touissant (among others) all claiming highly respectable versions of this song, this one might be my favorite. The wicked drum break at the beginning, the saxophone sqounk, the dirty swagger where there once was a bluesy crunch, they’re all elements of a what a good cover should be: the track should find a new twist without sacrificing the intention or integrity of the original. Where many other versions of this song seem like a plea, there’s almost a venemous undertone to this one, more of a warning than a lament. Whereas their Krautrock conterparts of the day were pulsing their own beat (formed largely by Klaus Dinger, who, sadly, recently passed away, R.I.P.), this Dutch quintet claimed Sam & Dave and Willie Dixon as their benchmarks, and did as good of a job as any American contemporaries of theirs at injecting their brand of rock with just a little more soul.

Audio — Q65 – Get Out of My Life, Woman

– Post by Ben Fasman

One of the things I like about digital music is the ease of categorization. When I alphabetize my record collection, it qualifies as an ongoing project. When I want to alphabetize my iTunes library, it’s one click. Similarly, just by seeing everything in one place, it allows music to be grouped in different ways fairly easily. For example, I was going through my iTunes while cooking dinner one night and decided to make a mix CD where every song had a type of food (or food product) in the title. The songs became abundant, so I had to come up with some rules. For example, “Walk Like a Duck” by Kurious Jorge did not make the cut, even though you can eat a duck. If his song was called “Walk Like a Plate of Tea-Smoked Duck with Orange Peel”, we would’ve been all good. But I digress. Today’s selection was one of the funkier cuts on the mix. An earlier single by the New Orleans born Eldridge Holmes, this 1970 cut features the Meters as the backing band. So funky.

— Audio – Eldridge Holmes – Pop, Popcorn Children

– Post by Ben Fasman

Originally recorded by the brilliant Oregon-based punk group The Wipers, this cover appeared on the 1993 compilation 14 Songs For Greg Sage and the Wipers. The compilation featured other great cover songs by the likes of Thurston Moore, Nirvana and Calamity Jane, but this one is the killer. Not the Nation of Ulysses’ most profound work (that would probably be this one), but it’s one minute and twenty-one seconds worth of unpolished pop punk perfection.

Audio — Nation of Ulysses – Telepathic Love

– Post by Eli Russell