LAST CALL FAT MAN!

It might be kind of late for "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" but it's still Christmas for a few hours so if Santa hasn't shown up, take it from gravel- voiced Bahamian singer Joseph Spence, he is coming to town. Granted, if you're in Australia or somewhere in the Far East, he's coming next year. For good measure, there's another version below from India by Jayram Acharya. That one is soaked in sitar, with all sorts of oddball percussion. It should have you WTFing well into the new year

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Listen:
Joseph Spence - Santa Claus is Coming to Town mp3 at Beware of the Blog
Jayran Acharya - Santa Clause Is Coming to Town mp3 at Radiodiffusion International
More Joseph Spence (streaming) at YouTube
Visit:
Joseph Spence at Wikipedia

MOOG? SURE. WHY THE HELL NOT.

Surprise surprise. This time the search for something entirely different landed on Ananda Shankar, a sitar slinger and Ravi Shankar's nephew. At first listen his cover of the Doors' "Light My Fire" seemed a little corny, not because it was a sitar playing a Doors cover, but because the accompanying synthesizer seemed to add a bit too much retro synth corn. Regardless, I bit. It turns out that it was not retro synth corn, but the real thing, retro synth pre-corn, Moog. 1970, pretty early too, which makes it amazing. Not really. Well, maybe.

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Listen:
Ananda Shankar - Light My Fire mp3 at Enmadolu (?)
Ananda Shankar - Jumpin' Jack Flash mp3 at Rock Town Hall
Ananda Shankar - Mamata mp3 at ATumblr (?)
Ananda Shankar - Cyrus mp3 at ATumblr (?)

ROLL OVER RAVI

I thought about these three songs and what attracts me to them, They're from a compilation titled Psych Funk Sa Re Ga!, They're supposed to psych funk or some other nonsense. I can hear little of either. What I do hear is weird. In a good way. Do you think you can go wrong with rock bands from India? You cannot. This is not Bollywood or sitar jams. They're twisting Western music to compete with others doing the same, all trying to stand out, somehow. Actually, that could apply to all rock bands. These may just be a bit more twisted.

They're all worth hearing, but you really gotta hear the Black Beats' "The Mod Trade", it sounds like some lost bootleg of Robby Krieger and Keith Moon jamming. And check that "Psychedelia" by the X'lents, which is not psychedelic in the least. In these parts we would call it rudimentary Ventures type stuff, which of course elevates it to a whole other level of weird appeal. The rawness of the recording, lack of effects, reverb or otherwise, and the kit bashing just add to it. The cymbals sound like tin cans, that should tell you, The third band below, Atomic Forest, do a Deep Purple cover. Yes, it's suitably twisted, It features someone who loves their fuzz more than their mother. To the max.

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Listen:
X'Lent's - Psychedelia mp3 at Clumsy and Shy
The Black Beats - The Mod Trade mp3 at Pop Matters
Atomic Forest - Mary Long mp3 at Stones Throw

JUST BE DONE WITH IT

The compilation these suckers came from (not the one pictured above) is called Psych Funk Sa Re Ga! and is described as psychedelic funk from India (1970-83).  How that pertains to the songs below I've no idea, because there's very little in the way of funk or psychedelia going on here.  "Psychedelia," by the excellent X'lents, owes more to no-name surf bands stretching their exotic chops than anything else.  It's something like the Venture's "Outer Limits" meets Al Garcia and the Rhythm Kings' "Exotic," and with a snippet of Dick Dale's "Miserlou,"  all bashed out in a gloriously cheap sounding studio.  Viola! A Bollywood surf proto-mash-up!  The Black Beats "The Mod Trade," has a similar sound, though borrows less in the way of pre-existing licks.  Atomic Forest's "Mary Long" is a Deep Purple cover that, though unusual, is not nearly as awesome as the band's name.  It doesn't sound like Deep Purple at all.  What it does sound like is one of those shredding shoppers in a guitar store, taking a fuzz box on a test run, with a drummer in the other part of the store making a similar spectacle of himself; and all the while, a woman singing along with a broke ass karaoke machine.

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Listen:
Psychedelia - X'Lents mp3 at Clumsy and Shy
The Black Beats - The Mod Trade mp3 at Pop Matters
Atomic Forest - Mary Long mp3 at Stones Throw