Pat's James Brown post from yesterday made me think of this.

Before Eddie Murphy made a career out of making really crappy comedies, he made a career out of - making halfway decent comedies.  Before that, he was merely one of the best stand-up comics that ever lived.  If you're a male in your late 30s-early 40s, chances are you've either heard his Comedian album or seen the accompanying Delirious video.  Perhaps you imitated a gay Mr. T.  Maybe you once exclaimed "Now that's a FIRE!"  It's possible you heard someone use the phrase "gooney goo-goo" without even giving it a second thought.

And maybe you even marveled at his impressions of various singers, including the Godfather of Soul himself.  If not, here it is.  Go be marveled.

Watch the "Singers" segment from Delirious on YouTube.  Four-letter words abound.  Like I need to tell you.

Earlier today, Pat introduced the concept of "Funky Funky Friday" while posting a James Brown song.

That's a damned fine idea.  So here's a little number I recently picked up from William's blog, from the Slapmaster himself - Larry Graham and his Graham Central Station.

Hear "Pow" on YouTube.

Watch a lip sync performance from Soul Train.

Hadn't planned on posting yet another Alan Parsons Project song, but something, well, came up.  Namely, a 2-disc APP compilation that I just downloaded.  Nestled within its bowels is a tune called "Don't Answer Me", from 1984's Ammonia Avenue.  When that track came up, a huge light bulb came on.

It was 1984.  I had recently moved to a new town, a rather small one with a population of around 4000.  And God be praised, we were finally getting cable.  Of course, one of the channels I was most jazzed about getting was - wait for it - MTV.  Imagine that, you don't just listen to the radio, it's like you can actually WATCH the radio.  All music videos, all the time.  Couldn't wait.  Eventually, the guy with the big tool belt came by and got us all situated.  Before long, we had glorious cable television.

And MTV didn't work.  The channel had nothing but static.  The cable company said it had "problems."

Well, crapola.  I was so disappointed I went out of my way to look for alternatives.  VH1 didn't seem to cut it.  There was that old MV3 show, which was kinda cool, but that was only on for an hour a day.  And of course, there was a little weekly late-night dealie on NBC called Friday Night Videos.  Usually I would tape it with our newly purchased Beta VCR.  All hail format war obsolescence!  Saw quite a few clips for the first time on that show, and as you've most likely deduced by now, "Don't Answer Me" was one of them.  Really liked both the song and the video at the time.  Even with the relative cheese factor, they also had this overall compelling quality to them.

Eventually MTV started working and I watched it regularly throughout my high school years.  And I completely forgot about "Don't Answer Me."

Now the song comes up again, 25 years later, and it all comes back.  That chorus.  That sax solo.  That Spector-esque reverb.  Hell, the song itself reeks of Spector.  Then I watch the video on Der Tube von Du and IT all comes back.  That whole cheaply-animated film noir comic book romance schtick.  Wow.  Big time flashback.  Oodles of nostalgic warm fuzziness.

There's still a cheese factor.  But it's still strangly compelling.

Watch the video for "Don't Answer Me" on YouTube.

This post obviously ties in to yesterday's.

Like so many of the groups I've posted here before, I first discovered the Alan Parsons Project through my older brother when I was a pre-teenager.  Well, maybe I had known about the radio-friendly stuff, like "Breakdown", "I Wouldn't Wanna Be Like You" and "Damned If I Do", but I never really paid much attention until he brought home two vinyl records, 1977's I Robot and 1979's Eve.  Never really took to the albums as wholes, but rather their instrumental openers:  I Robot's title track and "Lucifer" from Eve.  Posted the former yesterday, and I'm posting the latter today.

You listen to both of those and it's hard to believe these guys are also responsible for "Eye in the Sky", isn't it?

Watch a YouTube fanvid for "Lucifer", featuring some phat battle footage from Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith and Star Trek: First Contact.  What you're hearing towards the beginning is the word "eve" in Morse code.  Highly recommend the high quality version.

Quick entry today.  I'm on a service laptop right now because the Intarweb went out again on my work desktop.  That's seemingly happening about once a week now.  It's only my workstation that it craps out on, and no one knows why.

So, here's a cool technology-related tune from the APP.  It sounds pretty much like how you would expect a 1977 song called "I Robot" to sound.  You know, all techy and stuff.

EDIT:  OK, I'm back on my desktop now.  But hot damn, this is getting irritating.

Watch a fan-made video for "I Robot" on YouTube.

Bah.  I came up with a few theme ideas for this week, but I decided I wasn't ready to commit to any of them.  So I'm putting off doing the theme thing for another week.

In the meantime, here's another Vandals song.

Yes, it's ANOTHER Vandals song.

Yes, I'm not even trying anymore.

Watch the video for "43210-1" on YouTube.

For the second straight day, I am posting music from a computer game.  Not that I totally want to rehash a gaming theme, because I think both of my readers get bored and turned off when I do that.

Screw it.  Here's another one of the Protoss themes from the original Starcraft.  God, I love that stuff.  Kinda like Jerry Goldsmith meets Pink Floyd.

Hear "Protoss 2" on YouTube.

Today I just felt like getting my funk on.  I first posted a track from the superb Interstate '76 soundtrack when I did two weeks of music from computer games.  Now I just wanna groove on something so funky I can smell it.



(again, if someone sees fit to make me a better Seal of Approval, knock yourself out)

Play/download "They Call Me Swinger"