Friday, December 31, 2021

New Year's Resolutions - #1 Don't Join A Cult


So...

I said I wasn't going to do a music post for New Year because I couldn't find enough good ones. 

I lied.

New Year's Resolution - Camera Obscura

Camera Obscura are amazing, aren't they? They ooze sophistication. If I had to define "Music for Grown-Ups" (Something I'm never going to do, though I wouldn't mind being asked.) I'd go here first. Maybe Joni Mitchell, then here.

New Year's Resolution - Otis Redding and Carla Thomas

Okay, if we're talking grown-up music I guess that's where we're going. Sixties soul. Did it sound this adult back then? Not to actual adults, maybe. I seem to remember they were always going on about "Do you call that music?" Hah! Didn't know when they were well off! Anyway, don't look at me - I was nine years old when this came out.

New Year's Resovolution - Donovan

It always seemed like Donovan saw himself as some kind of advanced being sent here to explain feelings to the rest of us but no-one would ever have accused him of being a grown-up. Just look at that title if you need proof. I bet thirteen year-olds all across the south of England were hella impressed. This came out about three years after the Otis Redding so I would just about have been one of them but I wasn't quite there, yet. You'd have had to have given me another twelve months and I'd have been bang on it.

New Year's Resolution - Lil Tjay

Crashing back to the present or something aproximating it, here's Lil Tjay. Donovan might appreciate the sensitive piano intro but it's a hippy-free zone from there on in. There's autotune and then there's AUTOTUNE! He put out a Christmas number this year and it's even better. I'd have used it, if I'd found it sooner. Maybe next time, if we're spared.

 New Year's Resolution - DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ

Remember that Camera Obscura tune? Oh, come on! You must do. It was only, what, about ten minutes ago and that's if you actually listened to all the other songs, which I know you did not. Well anyway, here it is again, in a fantastic remix by DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ. Is that the best name ever or is that the best name ever? I'm not giving you a choice. Doesn't sound so grown-up like that, either, does it? I guess that's the whole point.

 New Year's Resolution - Lootpack

Here's an odd thing. As I'm putting this post together, I'm flipping back and forth to YouTube, clipping the links and each time I do, I use the back button to refresh. I leave the same seed in the search field ("New Year's Resolution song") and every time I get different results. Is that meant to happen? This would be a whole other post if I'd done what I usually do, download all the songs first and work from there.

New Year's Resolution - The Limousines

I mean, c'mon, seriously? I'm not kidding here. There are way, way more songs coming up now than the first time I did it. What's going on? And there are some good ones, too! This is going to run long. Bloody Donovan wouldn't have made the cut if I'd known what was coming, that's for sure. (Okay, he probably would. I always find Donovan really funny for some reason, plus it's worth wading through all the hippydippy nonsense to get to that tabla solo.)

New Year's Resolutions - Meekakitty

Or something like that. It's a little confusing. 

At one point I was going to build the whole post around this one, until all that other stuff came up. Those other songs, I mean. First off, I don't even believe this one's called "New Year's Resolutions". That's just what the person who put it up has titled it. 

It's on a channel belonging to someone called xXFyesanXx, where it was posted eight years ago. It's a fragment of a copy of a cover of a song called "So Much" by Asiah Mehok. Here's the original.


It's lovely but the cover has it beat, possibly because of the arrangement but more likely because of the performance, which is by Tessa Violet aka Meekakitty... At least I think it is... Reading through the thread, it seems the full-length song used to be on her channel only now it isn't, for reasons unspecified. There are a couple of links in the comments that supposedly take you to that version but if they ever worked they don't now. I wish they did. I'd love to hear it all the way through.

I thought Tessa Violet was a new name to me but when I dig into it I think I've seen a couple of her videos before. Like this one, maybe? 

 Crush - Tessa Violet

I've seen quite a few videos set in supermarkets, though. I'm not sure. I feel like if I'd watched this I'd have it safely tucked away in my massive folder of YouTube downloads. (It's so big I've had to start a new one.) Anyway, with 90m views she's hardly obscure.

I've subbed her channel now, not really for the songs, good as they are, but for the videos, which are great. 

Told you!  I could jump from there to Titanic Sinclair to Poppy in some kind of six degrees deal but I'm not gonna. Okay, I am. I just did. 

I recently resubbed to Poppy's channel after a couple of years away. She seems to have gotten some of the metal out of her system and she's back to the kind of oddness I always liked.


Blow Away - Poppy

There's more than five minutes of that. It never does anything else. I've watched it twice already and it's playing in the background as I type this.

Begin the New Year as you mean to go on, eh? That's my resolution.

2 comments:

  1. My first thought what you wrote was "Don't join The Cult" to which I said out loud "Huh, I didn't know they were still around."

    Now that you just had to post Donovan there, I've just spent the last hour going down the rabbit hole via YouTube, playing a ton of Donovan.... Thanks, I think.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. According to Wikipedia, yes they are. Their most recent album was released in 2016. Never liked them although I did quite like the band that spawned them, Southern Death Cult.

      Also, don't drive or operate heavy machinery after listening to Donovan. You know it makes sense.

      Delete

Wider Two Column Modification courtesy of The Blogger Guide