Some mashups you just got to love because they make the material fresh again. Here’s a few in rotation for me from soundcloud.com.
Ryan Nellis Mashups – Owner Of A Misunderstood Heart (Santa Esmeralda vs Yes)
https://soundcloud.com/ryan-nellis/owner-of-a-misunderstood-heart
Loo & Placido – Safari Love (The Beatles, Elton John, The Pixies, Aretha Franklin)
https://soundcloud.com/looandplacido/the-beatles-vs-elton-john-vs
g4gorilla (Green Day vs Peter Gabriel)
https://soundcloud.com/mixesandmashups/green-day-vs-peter-gabriel?in=source-addiction/sets/best-of-mashup-2013
Soundhog – Led Zeppelin vs The Beatles – Whole Lotta Helter Skelter
https://soundcloud.com/soundhog/soundhog-whole-lotta-helter
Best Dude Sounds Like A Lady
Rhye – An L.A. based band with a velvet vocalist that’s hard to imagine is a dude. Mike Milosh hails from Canada, along side Danish composer and arranger Robin Hannibal have released their critically-acclaimed debut R& B release Woman.
3 Days
Best Christmas Music
Although not released this year, the album came out in 2009, but an honorable mention goes to Bob Dylan’s Christmas in the Heart. A gift for the true Dylanphile or someone you want to give the sound of sandpaper scratching glass.
Best Christmas Tradition
In England in the 1840s the term “dick” meant a type of hard cheese; treacle sauce was added and it became “treacle dick,” add a few currants and raisins for spots and the suet desert becomes “spotted dick.” Yep, so you can say to your Mummy “pass me the spotted dick” at table without getting slapped.
Egad.
Best Books
A couple of interesting books that came to my attention this year were the Book of Martyrdom and Artifice (Da Capo Press, 2008) – a collection of early writings from Ginsberg’s journals about his relationships and adventures with the other Beat luminaries, so candid Ginsberg insisted it not be released until after his death, and The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks (Grove Press, 2009), a noir style novel by Burroughs and Kerouac not released until after Carr’s death.
Best New Film
The Punk Singer — A fascinating documentary about Kathleen Hanna, lead singer of the band Bikini Kill and Le Tigre, and reluctant prime mover in the Riot Grrrl movement as an outspoken feminist in the ’90s.