REMEMBER... THE SHANGRI-LA'S AT THEIR BEST

America is awesome. The best. And nothing is more American than The Shangri-La's. Listening to them is like crashing in on Marty's sleepover in Grease. It's all about falling in love with bikers and sticking it to your square parents. This two-sets-of-sisters gang hail from the all-for-nothing days of dreamy '60s pop where everything sounded like Pet Sounds with a bit'o'motown. "Leader Of The Pack" and "Remeber (Walking In The Sand)" obviously deserve their place in the pop canon, but the quartet wasn't always shitsandgiggles (remember... Mary Weiss was packing heat while on the tour beat). Their epic "I Can Never Go Home Anymore" is a bummer of a cautionary tale about prideful Harley-chasers. It's also crazy-awesome and should've charted higher than it did. Oh well, what're you gonna do? How about you consider this compilation!

ALBERT MARCOEUR - ALBUM À COLORIER

Sniff around the internet about this guy and you're bound to come across a comparison to Frank Zappa. French mutant-jazzhead with a flair for every instrument ever (including a few he invented out of PVC piping). While the Mother of Invention applied the avant-garde to rock, Marcoeur did his thing in a pop context, switching keys and time signatures mid-song. The production here's insane: a lot of basic musique concrète, some clever double-track trickery. He'll let a few snorts casually pass by through his nasally shout-singing. Most of it seems to be in a sort of Inspector Clouseau-jazz vein, but motherfucker's not afraid to get into some punky basslines ("Le Fugitif") or some funky breakdowns ("La Cueillette Des Noix"). It's good enough to honestly merit that overused "ahead of its time" label. Keeps you thinking... this kinda sounds like Fiery Furnaces or The Residents or Amon Tobin or... Frank Zappa?

DANGEROUS MINDS OST

Hello. I'm starting a musical web-log.

I considered deliberating over which album to initiate this shit with. Something that'd please everyone while simultaneously presenting something novel and challenging. Then I decided to give you the soundtrack to Dangerous Minds.

There seems to be a lot of teachers-being-"radical"-with-tough-inner-city-youth films floating around in the '90s. Stuff like 187, The Substitute, one of the Sister Act movies. I never really saw any of them (save for High School High, which I guess kinda counts), but in the year '94 my lunchbox was raw with this gem. First CD I ever possessed.
This was around the same time "All That" was (mostly) having reputable hip hop and R&B acts on at the end of each episode. The gods had it that Coolio would be the show's Alec Baldwin, which invariably made me big fan of his big single, "Gangsta's Paradise" (A.K.A. the only reason why the above album sold anything).
There're some other SNICK regulars on this, too. Immature does his best Snoop Dogg in "Feel The Funk" while Craig Mack teams up with a Swing Mob-era Missy Elliott for Sista's "It's Alright". Miss E. is still awesomely crass this early on, spitting gold like "Oh if, I could bring sucker-suckertash. When I farts I poops cash from my ass."
For the most part, the album is neither magnificently terrible or excellent. Just magnificently mediocre. A lot of it seems to be plagued by cheesey Chronic-era Cali production. Rappin 4-Tay proves that no matter what year it is, MCs will always rhyme over "I Want You Back." Big Mike makes like Immature and imitates another Dre-affiliate, this one of the Cube variety. And I cannot stress this more clearly: avoid (Prince's) Revolution-refugees Wendy & Lisa like syphilis.
24K puts out an awesome go-go tribute to Aretha Franklin in their semi-feminist "Don't Go There." Tre Black gets weird points for sampling Gary Numan for "Put Ya Back Into It." And, of course, Coolio's reworking of "Pastime Paradise" is as eargasmically amazing as you remember. It totally validates this download.