12. The Phenomenal Handclap Band, “15 to 20″ - Official website. - From the album The Phenomenal Handclap Band The Phenomenal Handclap Band is a music collective / supergroup of sorts from Brooklyn – jeez, aren’t they all from Brooklyn now at this point? – and their debut album is a happy mishmash of different genres, psychedelic...
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13. Speech Debelle, “The Key” (2009). - Official website. - From the album Speech Therapy. This was my summer anthem of 2009, via a (still!) free mp3 from Amazon back in June. To be frank, it took a while for me to figure out the Cockney lyrics the lyrics websites to publish their iffy transcriptions, and even then...
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14. ComaR, “I Want You D.A.N.C.E.” - Official website. - From the Best of Bootie 2008 compilation (free download from bootieusa.com) Bad mashups are probably pretty easy to do: place a crowd-pleasing chorus over a familiar riff, add more than a dash of incongruity for effect. But good mashups, like good cover versions, aren’t just about beatmatching...
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15. Michael Jackson, “Happy” (1973) - From the 1973 album Music and Me. I’ve never been a big Michael Jackson fan, really. (I did tell my students once that “dance music was all about Side One of Off the Wall”, and was met with laughter — not because it was an album that came out at least...
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Continuing a series I more or less started in 2008 (here’s my 15 favorites from last year), I’ll be counting down the rest of the year and into 2010 with my list. (Best to start it now, because the order keeps changing, and many other songs — “Laura” by Girls, Parov Stelar’s “Blind Alley”,...
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And there I was, thinking I had somehow slacked off on my concert-going this year. (Movies are relatively low-impact nights out.) But in a few days I’m off to see my 20th concert of 2009 (Ben Kweller, who’s playing at a PTA fundraiser for Izzy’s elementary school), then Simian Mobile Disco again, and one...
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