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We got the sad news yesterday that Lightning, the male half of the awesome Milwaukee-based Neil Diamond/ABBA/Patsy Cline tribute band Lightning and Thunder, has passed away. We had the full on L&T experience at Gregg & Molly's wedding a few years ago, see pictures here. Check this video and you'll see -- in my opinion Lightning was more Neil Diamond than Neil Diamond himself. The band/couple has a very interesting story full of crazy tragedy and triumph. We all send Thunder our deepest condolences. It's too sad for words.

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Happy summer! WMFU's Beware of the Blog has many mp3s of Ice Cream Truck Music here and here. Which one goes through your neighborhood?

And, how they get that signature tinny, underwater sound.

In elementary school my friend and I came up with an idea of having an ice cream truck that sells an narrow selection of grown-up stuff -- e.g. milk, toilet paper, smokes. Wouldn't that be awesome?

My hero April Winchell is podcasting, hooray!

For your clever playlisting ventures: 500 Songs About Food

LBJ orders pants. I know this has already made the rounds, but it's especially poignant to me, being a Texan and a seamstress.

Hey patriots! Listen to the George W. Bush Singers. I especially like Deep Thoughts Part I.

Off blast with Zlad! (video link) (thank you, J.R.)

Ghosts are maybe only naturally occurring ultra-low frequency sound. I know what you're saying: "Yeah, whatever, SCULLY." But really, this is interesting, and testable, or at least the premise for John Cusak's next horror movie. (Via Reenhead)

This is probably really lame because everyone has already seen this site, but here it go anyhoo...

Y2Khai makes me laugh everytime I go back for seconds or, maybe, if you will, thirds. With hits such as, "Ain't Nuthin' But a Khai" or "Dear Girl", you too will soon become a Y2Khai-lovah, if you have not already been made privy to his righteous flow. Is that how you spell privy? I don't know. I'm not a lawyer. I'm just a white boy who loves Asian internet hip hop stars. Call me Khai-Z! Ladies and playas, it's Y2Khai!

Even if you've never played Animal Crossing (Nintendo Gamecube), KK Slider's songs are mighty enjoyable. He's a little dog who busks every Saturday night in front of the train station. After his show he gives you a tape of the song you just heard to enjoy at home. My favorites of these mp3s are KK Love Song, KK Western, KK Safari, and KK Dirge ... anything with howling and whistling in it.

Have you heard the CIA's anti-Sadaam rap-oganda? Man oh man. Thanks Stan Turbanhead.

Another of the war's greatest hits: "Let the Eagle Soar," remixed

Here's one messed up mp3: Please Don't Go Topless, Mother by one Troy Hess, off the album "God Less America" on Crypt Records. Thanks Sam!

"When you hear the DRUM BUDDY (unless it is one of those rare moments when it is performing its "violin" or "flock of witches" sound effects) you will know that it is the DRUM BUDDY - it can be nothing else. This is not an old fashioned or "retro styled" instrument. This was even suggested to me by one of my first patent lawyers who was immediately released. The DRUM BUDDY represents the future of electronic instruments."

And the site has the happiest splash page on earth! Be sure to stick around for duration of the music loop. (via Coudal)

"Her Vagina" by an unknown barbershop quartet. It's a "folksy ode to sexually transmitted diseases" ( -- April Winchell)

It might be too little too late at this point, but give James Kochalka's Show Respect to Michael Jackson a listen. He's so right.

I've been enjoying Vagabonding, a chronicle of one dude's one-year trip around the world. This video of a Tuesday night wedding parade in the streets of Bodhgaya, India made me cry. Does anyone know anything about this Indian music played with marching band instruments?

"Earlier in 2002 we were hired by the largest advertising firm in the country to write music for a Pizza Hut commercial. Pizza Hut had hired them to come up with a whole new image to promote their new Pizza, 'The Insider' which had all the cheese inside the crust. In keeping in line with their new cutting edge image, the agency hired Ween to do the music, and we delivered in a big way. Unfortunately, they didn't like a single piece of the 6 tunes we submitted and they had us rewriting the song every day for a couple of weeks before they hired someone else. In my opinion, it is one of the best tunes we wrote all last year."

Indeed! Get your Ween "Where the Cheese At?" jingles here. (via Otis Fodder's 365 Days Project's National Cheese Day celebration)

Listen to this NPR story and visit these websites [ 1 | 2 ] about shortwave radio transmissions that broadcast strings of numbers, weird underwater-sounding music, and cryptic sentences, which are likely encoded instructions to spies. This global phenomenon will make you believe (or at least think twice about) every conspiracy theory in the world. The fact that this stuff has been broadcast for so long, from so many places, with so little way of knowing where the signals are coming from, who or what they're going to, or what they're saying ... it's completely chilling, but so beautiful and ridiculous too. (Unsurprisingly via Sharpeworld ... who has a particularly terrific song of the week this week as well)

It's been weeks! Hi, and happy Christmas from the Excitement Machine. I just heard this song on VH1 and had to find it on the Internet and share it with you. It's Weird Al Yankovic's "Christmas at Ground Zero," highly inappropriate and dark in hindsight. I stole it from here, where lots of other devious Christmas songs live, such as Virginia Keegal's "I Want a Boob Job for Christmas."

Bryan and I recently discussed the topic "Which is worse: traditional or original Christmas songs?" My immediate instinct was "original, and and version of 'Jingle Bell Rocks'," but now I feel I must reconsider. Although now that Xmas is almost over, you really don't have to give this question a first thought, much less a second. So I won't even ask what you think.

Das erste wiener gemŸseorchester (SAY IT!) makes music with vegetables and the occasional kitchen utensils. Go straight for the mp3s, they're psychotic! This one reminds me of that old b&w cartoons where little elves are working factory-style to change the season from winter to spring, or the Residents. (Oh how I missed Sharpeworld.)

I am a willing shill for EMusic. It appears that Shanachie/Yazoo just joined their ranks, so now available for download are albums such as Ruckus Juice & Chittlins: The Great Jug Bands -- Classic Recordings Of The 1920's And 30's (on which you'll find songs titled "What's That Tastes Like Gravy" and "Fourth Street Mess Around"); The Roots Of Rap (very deep roots), The Half Ain't Never Been Told (intense old gospel); Juke Joint Saturday Night: Piano Blues Rags & Stomps; and Please Warm My Weiner: Old Time Hokum Blues, and that's just the beginning of what's filed under various artists. They also have Charlie Patton, R. Crumb and His Cheap Suit Serenaders, and Washington Phillips, a preacher active in the mid-1900s who accompanied himself with a dolceola, a rarely-heard miniature-piano-like instrument. I believe he died in the mental hospital in Austin. Emusic also just made available a five-album retrospective of the Carter Family on the JSP label. Anyone can listen to the song samples; sign up and you get a free 50-song trial. It's so worth the $10/month we're paying. I may just have to say up all night downloading this stuff in case they decide to take it away.

Dolly Parton's first publicity photograph, another shot from her early days, and streaming audio of her first single, "Puppy Love," that she recorded in 1960 when she was all of 13 years old. That's only the beginnings of the treasures on University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill's Southern Folklife Collection site dedicated to Goldband Records, an influential cajun-zydeco-blues-country-rock label out of mid-century Louisiana.

Happy 7-11. It has nothing to do with convenience stores or free Slurpees, but the Mothra Song is quite enjoyable, as is the site that offers it. It sure makes you think.

"Silophone makes use of the incredible acoustics of Silo #5 by introducing sounds, collected from around the world using various communication technologies, into a physical space to create an instrument which blurs the boundaries between music, architecture and net art. Sounds arrive inside Silo #5 by telephone or internet. They are then broadcast into the vast concrete grain storage chambers inside the Silo. They are transformed, reverberated, and coloured by the remarkable acoustics of the structure, yielding a stunningly beautiful echo. This sound is captured by microphones and rebroadcast back to its sender, to other listeners and to a sound installation outside the building. Anyone may contribute material of their own, filling the instrument with increasingly varied sounds."

In other words, upload a sound file or phone in, and hear your contribution 40 seconds later with Realaudio. I wish you could see if anyone was in the silo and how they were reacting to your sounds, but it's cool nonetheless to transform this space from thousands of miles away. (via the Sharpeworld Grab Bag Archives -- just call me "sharpefilter")

On Aprilwinchell.com: An mp3 of Michael Jordan trying unsuccessfully to record the slogan "Gatorade: Is It in You?". Note the marketing hacks in the background totally kissing his ass as he fails to understand he needs to stress the "in" instead of the "you."

Don't delay, listen to this mp3 today. (Thanks, Mike "Shizzy" Linnen!)

It's official ... Lee Hazlewood is a nut!

The Lost Art of Hollerin'. I wish people would find it, so when I scream out "ca-CAW!" in the grocery store to locate Bryan when we get separated, it won't look so psychotic. (Via The Ultimate Insult)

The Ewok Song is the extra-special mp3 of the week (click the link to your left there). Acoustic unplugged version performed on The Late Late Show. Here are the words. Read that translation! Ol' McCartney shoulda sung that instead of his dumb freedom Superbowl song.

That NFL or "the NFL on Fox" theme song is a total ripoff of "Sleigh Ride."

Giddyup, giddup, giddyup,
let's go, Let's look at the show,
We're riding in a wonderland of snow.
Giddyup, giddup, giddyup,
it's grand, Just holding your hand,
We're gliding along with a song
of a wintry fairy land.

Only the words would be:

Giddyup, giddup, giddyup,
let's go, Let's pass and throw ...

That's the best I can do because I don't know any football terminology. Please, if someone can do better, do.

If it isn't turning out to be an obscure wacky music sort of day. You can download whole entire albums of said genre at the The Interstellar Cafe (this week it's something called Product Music, with songs such as Exxon's "Up Came Oil" and Clark Equipment's "Hooray for Human Engineering"), read the proprietor's weblog called Otis Fodder's Funderland, and listen to streamy web radio show Friendly Persuasion. (Gracias, se–or Scrubbles!)

Driving back from San Antonio a couple weeks ago I heard a year-in-review edition of a radio show called The Lost Tapes, on which the host, George Gimarc, paid loving tribute to many obscure musicians who died in 2001. Well howdy, turns out Gimarc is the co-author of a book that I happen to own, Hollywood Hi-Fi, about celebrities who made records. Some sample chapters on Gimarc's website include Robert Michum, Herve Villechaize, and Hugh Downs. Comedy gold!

If you've ever wanted to know what your name or your favorite passage of literature sounds like in Morse Code, well, be my guest.