My Favourite Mash

My favourite Mash Up is currently this one from Go Home Productions which combines the stellar riff from the Velvet Underground's rock 'n' roll with Christina Aguilera's What A Girl Wants to brilliant effect. There's even a touch of Communards dropped in at the end. It's been on repeat all week!

• Go Home productions - Girl Wants to say Goodbye to Rock And Roll

aaaaa

Basic Hip Digital Oddio

The most bizarre collection of musical and sound related goodies are here.... a site dedicated to weird, and not just oddball but mind-numbingly dull. But the design and inventiveness sets this apart. Beautiful enough to dive into wthout your preconceptions....

www.basichip.com

And now you can say: "That collection of whistling records is pretty damn impressive, by jove!"

Mapping 100 years of Music

The Guardian had an article about that history of 100 years of pop music on a map of the London Underground.

You've got to love the bravado of it - and the endless questioning it will generate (Maxi Priest? Was that the best reggae had to offer? Basement Jaxx, surely a footnote?) . You can download it here

Are there alternative versions? The Pete Frame Rock family trees were classics, but couldn't encapsulate a full historical treatise. Hmm, comments/ideas please?

Your introduction to Psych Rock rarities part 4

Final part of the first album's worth of scarce obscurities. Links to tracks to sample, and CD reissues to purchase, below:

01. Kaleidoscope - Hang Out (from La Ciruela Electrica, 1968)

02. Linda Perhacs - Delicious (from Parallelograms, 1970)

03. C.A.Quintet - Underground Music (from Trip Thru Hell, 1969)

04. McCully Workshop Inc - The Circus (from McCully Workshop Inc, 1969)

05. Morgen - Beggin' Your Pardon (Miss Joan) (from Morgen, 1969)

Definitely on the mega obscure side. Hang out is by the Mexican Kaleidocsope rather than the English band. The Linda perhacs (ex-Affinity) is from her ultra rare vertigo album. The McCully Workshop were a South African psych band.

See also part one and part two and part three.

House of the Rising Sun

One of the greatest folk songs of all time, and so easy to play on a guitar even Tony Blair does it in his quiet time (if he has any). Well, it's better than George Bush Jr's endless treks around the golf course of the western world (try getting out of that bunker in Kabul, George!)

Anyway, here's a few choice versions that illustrate the range of interpretation possible in a beautifully crafted song.

• Sinead O'Connor - House of the Rising Sun
• Bob Dylan - House of the Rising Sun
• Nina Simone - House of the Rising Sun
  
  and of course, the Animals who made this timeless song their own (literally, as the Alan Price credit on the sheet music shows).

If you want more versions, then this amazing page lists two hundred and fifty, and has mp3 files for many of them.

The lyrics and chords for simple guitar are available here. So what's stopping you - get strumming!

Real Live Simpsons

This really is just too good! I still can't quite work out how they did it all - and awesome of awesomeness this is also English! Brilliant!

Click on the faux-Dali picture or go to http://www.kingblind.com

Your introduction to Psych-Rock rarities part 3

Another bunch of psychedelic and progressive rarities. Most of these albums sold in the hundreds or single thousands and are exceedingly rare. Links to tracks to sample, and CD reissues to purchase, below:

01. Fever Tree- Death is the dancer (from Another Time Another Place, 1968)

02. Fairfield Parlour - Soldier of the Flesh (from Home to Home, 1970)

03. Geronimo Black - Let us live (from Geronimo Black, 1972)

04. Gila - Aggression (from Gila, 1971)

05. Goliath - No more trash (from Goliath, 1970)

Definitely on the mega obscure side. See also part one and part two.