Go be thankful for stuff, eat like a pig, and I'll see y'all on Monday!

Hear "Thank You for Sending Me an Angel" on YouTube.

Watch a live performance.

Quick entry today, I just felt like posting something really FUNKAY!!!  This track from the 2000 Infectious Grooves release Mas Borracho is so Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow funky, I'm giving it my newly christened LATFAP Seal of Approval.



(if anyone more Photoshop inclined sees fit to make me a better Seal of Approval, be my guest)

Watch a fan-made video for "Borracho" on YouTube.

I honestly can't believe it took me this long to post a Dread Zeppelin track.  Oy.  I suppose I could have done one during one of my covers weeks, but I didn't even do that.

Anyway, Dread Zeppelin is a band that quite literally made a name for themselves by playing reggae covers of Led Zeppelin songs.  And, as if that weren't enough, they are fronted by an Elvis impersonator named Tortelvis.  Yes, it's as crazy as it sounds.  Scoff if you must, but they sound freaking great.

For their 1996 Fun Sessions album, they covered several other classic rock staples not performed by Zeppelin, like "Baba O'Riley", "Feel Like Makin' Love" and "Born on the Bayou."  But I think I have to give the nod to the Deep Purple standard "Smoke on the Water."  This is just one of the absolute groovinest tunes ever.  Seriously, the grooviness is actually tangible on this track.  It's like you can bathe in it.  Immerse yourself in it.  Jump right into the hot tub full of bubbly grooviness.  Then you get up and dry off the grooviness, but it's like, it never really leaves you.  As if you've been permanently infected by the Grooviness Virus.  You tell your doctor about it, but it's hopeless.  He says "There's no cure for grooviness.  That'll be $40 at the window, see you in six months."

Groovy.

Watch a fanvid for "Smoke on the Water" on YouTube.

Dread Zeppelin on Wikipedia

No new theme as of yet.  Seeing as how I just did a two-week theme, I'm gonna put off doing another one.  So here is another week of random tunage.

Before Sirius/XM gave their Beyond Jazz channel the heave-ho, it was a great outlet for more eclectic and modern sounding jazz music.  One artist I discovered through Beyond Jazz was Norwegian pianist Bugge Wesseltoft, when they played a track from his 2001 album Moving.  I can't remember which track they played, but I think it was on YouTube at the time, and it doesn't seem to be there now.  There is, however, a fan-made video for "Yellow is the Colour", so here it is.

Moving is out of print now, but here comes Amazon to the rescue once again with some cheap MP3s.

Watch a fanvid for an abbreviated version of "Yellow is the Colour" on YouTube.

Craig Hundley turns either 54 or 55 today.  There seems to be some conflicting information in that regard, and I don't know which only moderately reliable Internet source to trust.  In any case, I think it's a pretty safe assumption that no one who is reading this has any idea who Craig Hundley is.  Fret not, I will explain thusly.  I am about to go into Super-Ultra Nerd Mode now, so prepare yourselves accordingly.

Craig Hundley is an Emmy and Grammy award winning musician who began his career as a prolific TV child actor in the 60s.  He is perhaps known best for two appearances on the original Star Trek series - he played Captain Kirk's ill-fated nephew in the "Operation Annihilate" episode, and he was also one of the persuasively empowered kids in "And the Children Shall Lead."  You know, the tall red-headed one?  That was him.  But even at that age he was already an accomplished jazz pianist, and later formed the altogether youthful Craig Hundley Trio.

He eventually took the name of Craig Huxley and expanded his musical skill set to include the invention of his own instruments.  One of which was called the "Blaster Beam", a massive string instrument that made use of guitar pickups and a long metal beam to produce a very ominous and distinctive CLAAANG!! when the strings were struck.  The Blaster Beam has since been used in several sci-fi film scores including, you guessed it, the Star Trek series, and in The Motion Picture particularly.  You heard it like crazy whenever anyone encountered that huge blue "Vejur" cloud.

So, I am posting an appropriate track from the mega-fabulous Jerry Goldsmith TMP score, called "Vejur Flyover."  I know lot of people didn't like that film, but I enjoy it more than most, and the incredible music is a big reason why.  You can hear that Blaster Beam right from the onset on this segment.

CLAAANG!!  Man, that really is a cool sound.

Hear "Vejur Flyover" on YouTube.

Craig Hundley article on Wikipedia

Yeah, I guess I'm not even trying anymore.  I'm posting yet another Tomster Music parody.  Here he's tackling the Journey standard "Open Arms."  But unlike 99.9% of the karaoke types who butcher this song routinely, Tom is doing it pretty goldurned well.  That guy can really sing his ass off.

He's selling CDs on eBay.  Granted, most people are probably content with hearing his stuff for free on the Tube of You.  I, for one, am looking forward to nice sounding uncompressed versions of his songs.  Audio compression can be so LAME*.

Watch Tom's video for "Lucky Charms" on YouTube.

*(ha ha ha, oh, I kill me.  Bonus points if you get that joke...)

Here's another cool track I heard on Sirius XM 1st Wave (formerly XM Fred) this morning.  Hopefully they'll keep it up.

Sirius XM, listen up.  Your stock is trading at $.16 a share (no, that was not a misplaced decimal, I meant SIXTEEN CENTS) and your company is swimming in debt.  Don't crap all over the cool niche channels that really make your service viable!!!

Watch the video on YouTube.

Hear a longer, better sounding version.

OK, this isn't actually a "song."  It's just a rant from actor/comic Denis Leary, from his 1997 comedy album Lock 'n Load.  Nothing overly insightful here.  No socio-political posturing, no "message."  Just a guy pissed off about coffee, and some other things only somewhat related to coffee.  Yes, I know the whole "www dot something dot com" bit is somewhat dated.  Remember, this was 1997.

But you know what's not dated?  PULL UP YOUR PANTS!!  Yes, people still wear their pants that way.  God, I really hate that.  PULL UP YOUR PANTS!!

Watch the "Coffee" segment on YouTube.  F-bombs galore.

P.S. - PULL UP YOUR PANTS!!