Burl Veneer’s Music Blog

Chris Joss

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 11:49:56 -0700

To the elite group of musicians who have mastered the art of retro-disco-cop-show-funk-o-lounge-a-phonics (i.e. Skeewiff and Shawn Lee) add Frenchman Chris Joss, who since 1999 has built up an impressive catalog of recordings in that vein. His latest album, Teraphonic Overdubs, is out now on ESL Music. Now that I can embed a MySpace player I don't have to try to pick out one or two songs to share, I can simply present what he's sharing already. If you listen to just one track, scroll down to "Luna Rides Back" and listen to that one:

Amazon link:

Teraphonic Overdubs

Chris Joss

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Take a look overhead!

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 18:12:29 -0800

The Spiderman theme is fine as a jingle, but I've never thought of it as an actual cop-show theme. Until today, that is, when I found Norwegian electro duo Ugress's groovy remake:

Ugress-SpiderEyes(Spider-ManTheme)

Ugress

That's definitive; I doubt you'll ever hear a better version of that song. Who are Ugress and what are they all about? Rather than trying to paraphrase I'll just paste in the statement from their MySpace page:

Ugress is mad sound professor Gisle Martens Meyer and his groovetight percussive assistant, The Igor.
With a sexy crew of guest vocalists and instrumentalists, Ugress bloom with references to the last decades of pop, film and cult culture.
Symptoms of exposure include subtle drift towards the dancefloor, uncontrollable rhythmical movements, hightened auditive pleasure and a out-of-reality experience reported as "being part of an epic film".
On stage an überhybrid mash-feist of mad professorizing, cloned musicians, steampunk instruments and multiple synchronized video projections keep your eyes, ears and consciousness glued to an escapist reality of multiple dimensions.

Sounds like my bag! Best of all, they offer a whole slew of free mp3 downloads on their website. Second best of all is seeing Meyer sporting the notorious 8-bit necktie from Thinkgeek.

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Shawn Lee's Impossible Mission

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 07:43:08 -0700

I've been blurring the distinction between cop and spy music because they often contain the same elements, but a good rule of thumb is that, like the TV shows and movies they accompany, cop music contains more action, while spy music contains more intrigue. Illustrative of this distinction are the two theme songs that tower over everything else in their respective subgenres: Lalo Schifrin's Mission: Impossible theme on the spy side, and Mort Stevens' Hawaii Five-O theme on the cop side. Ultimately this post isn't really about either of them, but I'll lay the groundwork for the real subject with a rarely-heard version of "Mission: Impossible," performed by the Israeli Philharmonic and conducted by Lalo Schifrin himself:

34-Mission Impossible Theme (Orch)

Israeli Philharmonic

There's nothing like the oomph a full orchestra can give you! GNP Crescendo's The Best of Mission: Impossible Then and Now is scanty on the liner notes, so I don't know when this track was recorded, or who is playing the piano, though I suspect it's Schifrin himself. The CD does include a good selection of Schifrin's incidental music from the original TV series, and John E. Davis's from the 80s revival. Which brings us, incidentally, to Shawn Lee, previously featured here for his impeccable soul album Soul Visa. The multitalented Lee also has a penchant for incidental music, which he records in bulk and releases as by Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra. Needless to say, the albums are excellent and stand side by side with the work of the soundtrack greats: Schifrin, Morricone, Goldsmith, et al. He's not above a bad pun, as evidenced by tracks titled "King Conga" and "Das Booty." He's also not above playing around with standards; there's more than a little "Mission: Impossible" in "Changing Times" from Voices and Choices:

12-Changing Times

Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra

The Orchestra takes on the hits of today on the forthcoming Hits the Hits (October 9), and I can't wait for November 6 and the release of A Very Ping Pong Christmas!

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The Real James Taylor

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 18:00:57 -0700

When I talk about James Taylor, some people think I'm talking about some weedy American singer-songwriter from the 1970s. I am not. I am talking about the modern British master of the Hammond B3 organ, the leader of the James Taylor Quartet, the New Jersey Kings, and more recently James Taylor's 4th Dimension. He's been playing cop show and spy music since the 80s, such as this original theme from the imaginary movie of the same name, "The Money Spyder:"

01-The Money Spyder

James Taylor Quartet

Get it? Spyder, as in spy? The 1990s saw the original quartet grow to a septet (at least) with the addition of horn players and a percussionist, but kept the Quartet moniker. 1997's Creation album included Taylor's first original theme for a real movie, "Austin's Theme" from Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. Also on the album were two cop music covers, Lalo Schifrin's theme from Dirty Harry, and the theme from Starsky and Hutch:

01-Theme from Starsky and Hutch

James Taylor Quartet

Creation was an important album for me, as it introduced me to the Acid Jazz scene that had been going on for years without my knowing about it. And it came out just when I needed it: my previous musical interests were all drying up, and I didn't like much of what I was hearing otherwise. My son Pierce was three years old when I brought this home (he turns 13 today!), and he liked it too, so we ended up listening and dancing around to it together a lot. He's too cool to dance now, but he'll get it back someday.

The JTQ was back down to a quartet in the 2000s, and the new James Taylor's 4th Dimension is a quartet as well. It's on my list of things to get around to.

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Cop show themes continued: The Pinker Tones

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 19:30:52 -0700

I look at all the online music maps, and all the retailer recommendations, but I still didn't learn about Barcelona's The Pinker Tones until I was at my neighbor's house and they were playing on his stereo (that's the boxlike device that sits on a shelf and shoots sound out into the air instead of directly into your ears). He had heard of them on the radio, of all places, although it was NPR and not an actual "music" station. Like Skeewiff, The Pinker Tones are a dynamic duo, Professor Manso and Mister Furia (and with aliases like that, who cares about their real names?); they are a little more stylistically diverse than Skeewiff (more lounge, ska, and synthpop), and much more linguistically diverse, with lyrics sung in English, Spanish, French, and German. Again like Skeewiff, they nail the cop-show theme genre, with "In Pea We Nuts" from The Million Colour Revolution:

08 - In Pea We Nuts

The Pinker Tones

"Love Tape" is the best examination of the role of the mix tape in relationships since High Fidelity:

The Pinker Tones - Love Tape

Finally, The Pinker Tones get bonus points for naming a song "Pink Freud."

The Pinker Tones MySpace page
The Pinker Tones on YouTube

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Cop show themes: Skeewiff

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 21:02:52 -0700

I haven't been very impressed with many online retailers' recommendation systems. Amazon, for instance, keeps suggesting to me items that I have already bought from them; it's a safe bet that I'll like it, but it's not a safe bet that I'll buy a second one. Emusic, though, delivers pretty well in that regard. What solidified my loyalty to Emusic is that it recommended Skeewiff to me. I'd never heard of them before, but in listening to the online samples I realized I had discovered kindred spirits: they make fake cop show themes! And car chase music! And funky organ jams! And breakbeats galore! Skeewiff is the London-based duo of DJs/producers/songwriters Alex Rizzo and Elliot Ireland and their circle of musical pals, releasing records and CDs through their own Jalapeno Records label. They've done a couple of explicit fake cop show themes--"Cop Show" and "Farsky and Crotch"--but I think they capture the milieu best in "Light the Fuse" from their 2006 CD Private Funktion (and the Wet Your Beak EP):

Skeewiff - Light the Fuse

Skeewiff

That veers pretty close to car-chase music too, so I've tagged it as that as well. Spy music too, to cover all the bases. Skeewiff make simply the best drum tracks around, I think the key to their sound is the liberal use of tambourine. Forget the cowbell, I want more tambourine! And how about that logo--an anthropomorphic jalapeno pepper in a sombrero, playing bongos! Is that super-cool or what? Someone at Murdoch College in Australia must like Skeewiff as much as I do, since they've used them for the soundtracks of several (well, three at least) videos on YouTube. You can listen to more Skeewiff songs on their MySpace page, including, finally, a club version of "Man of Constant Sorrow." Which reminds me of Rednex, but that's a story for another day.

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