Ever since I was a little kid, when I thought “Leader of the Pack” (vrrrm! vrrrrrrm!) was the greatest song in the world, I’ve loved girl groups. They never seem to get too much respect, probably because they didn’t write their own songs, and they were mostly just manufactured by their producers. So? When the producer was Lou Christie, who cares?

The Tammys were one of Christie’s first groups, and I guess he went all-out on them. As much as I love the Bangles’ hit “Walk Like an Egyptian,” nothing can stop the Tammys’ “Egyptian Shumba” from being the greatest ancient Egypt-themed pop song of all time. Don’t even talk to me about that Steve Martin song. “Egyptian Shumba” is so bizarre that it’s almost a parody. The first squeaks at the beginning of the song sound like some Austin Powers thing, but nope, it’s a legit, amazing girl-group song, replete with screams and sighs. Handclaps must not have been invented yet by 1963, because this is such a perfect song that if rhythmic handclaps had existed, they would have been all over this song.

I first heard this song on Girls Go Zonk!, a nice one-disc compilation, but you can also get a whole CD of just The Tammys, called Egyptian Shumba: The Singles and Rare Recordings 1962-1964. The best idea, though, is to invest in the mondo box set One Kiss Can Lead to Another. It’s packed with about 75,890,279,852 amazing, unknown girl-group songs, from favorites like the Shirelles and Petula Clark and unknowns, as well.

This has nothing to do with “Egyptian Shumba,” but I may be posting less often here. I’m about to leave for a year in India, studying Urdu in the northern city of Lucknow. I’ll have an Internet connection, so I’ll try to continue to post songs. I might also start writing about my travels, here or somewhere else. We’ll see.

The Tammys - Egyptian Shumba

OK, I’ve had way too long a string of namby-pamby, nicely-nicely instrumental songs here recently. Here’s Nina Hagen, to change that with new wave beepy screechy (she belongs to the Neue Deutsche Welle, or German New Wave, but the name’s also a play on the German national radio station). According to my old German textbook and the German Wikipedia, she was born in 1955 to an actress and was partly raised by her composer stepfather, Wolf Biermann. She escaped from East to West Germany, via England, in 1976, when she was 21. She described herself as, “Nina Hagen, international punk star, UFO specialist, passionate mother, engaged protector of animals, dwelling: Berlin, Hamburg, Ibiza and the rest of the world.” You can hear the animal thing in “Don’t Kill the Animals,” a duet she did with Lene Lovich, who wrote “Lucky Number.”

Lucky for you, dear reader, Hagen’s cover of that song, “Wir Leben Immer…Noch” (”We Always Live… On”) doesn’t have lyrics like, “Animal testing is a dangerous game, / Our systems are different, we’re not the same.” Instead, it has crazy orgasmic screaming and possibly Lotte Lenya-inspired hammy vocal gymnastics.

Her children are named Cosma Shiva and Otis.

My German’s not so hot these days, but let’s see if I can give it a shot without risking an excessively accurate translation:

Wir wandern bloss und nackt in die Unendlichkeit,
We wander [something] and naked in the unendingness,
Wir schweben auf dem Pfade in die Ewigkeit,
We [something something] in eternity,
Wir glauben was wir wissen und wir fürchten uns,
We believe what we know and we fear ourselves,
Wohl weil wir sterben müssen das beängstigt uns,
It frightens us that we must die,
Wir sind die Lebenden,
We’re the living,
Nach Leben strebenden.
Striving after life.

Jeder neue Tag kann gut und böse sein,
Every new day can be good and bad,
Wir stellen unsere Viberationen selber ein,
We make our own vibrations,
Und wenn wir morgens früh an unser ende denken,
And when we think about our end in the early morning,
Dann kann uns dieses wissen durch die Tagzeit lenken,
Then we can [something] know this through the daytime,
Weil wir leben können,
Because we can live,
Und uns das Sterben gönnen.
And death [somethings] us.

Wir vegetieren und wir rasen durch die Lebenzeit,
We vegetate and and we [dunno] through our lifetimes,
Wir verblassen und verpassen die gelegenheit,
We [no idea],
Wir haben keine Zeit, tun uns selber leid,
We have no time, to say sorry,
Wir vegetieren und wir rasen durch die Lebenzeit.
We vegetate and we [something] through our lifetimes.

Wir verstecken unsere ängste in der Zwischenzeit,
We [mumble] our fears in the interim,
Wir zittern immer noch vor der Vergangenheit,
We always shiver before the past,
Wir entwickeln uns nicht weiter, weil Erwachsen sein,
We grow[?] broader, because we’re awake,
Uns einzwängt in die Zwänge der Gesellschaft,
[Something something] society,
Nein, so wollen wir nicht sein,
No, we don’t want to be like this,
Oh, nein dass muss nicht sein!
Oh no, it can’t be!

You want accuracy? Use Babelfish.

You can get the song as a bonus track on the bargain $10 ’80s bathhouse fave Nunsexmonkrock, or in its original context on the slightly more expensive Unbehagen.

Nina Hagen - Wir Leben Immer… Noch

Whoops, it seems I forgot to post this one when I wrote it almost 2 weeks ago. Sorry for the delay!

One of my favorite new bands of 2004 was the Ditty Bops, who are an adorable duo from my hometown, Los Angeles. My friend Rachel and I went to go see them at Slim’s, in San Francisco, last Saturday, in the midst of a weekend of art pileup - previously that day, I’d seen the superb 1983 PBS graffiti documentary Style Wars, then Nick Cave’s disappointing new Australian Western The Proposition for $3 at Oakland’s fabulous Parkway theater. After the Ditty Bops show, I met friends at the Cat Club for Club Gossip, the monthly 80s video dancefest. Aside from fishing around in a trash can for pieces of my broken glasses, the highlight was probably going to the 24-hour King Diner for chili cheese fries before running to barely make it onto the 3:20 BART train (open late for construction). The next day was calmer; the only major media stimulation was the Al Gore movie, which was fairly good despite the heavy layers of self-promotion. For a superb, and much shorter, movie about Al Gore, check out the sometimes frustrating and often excellent Wholphin DVD that came with the 18th issue of the usually frustrating and rarely excellent McSweeney’s.

OK, maybe I just wanted to talk about all the movies I saw last weekend. That’s not counting the tremendously boring, emotionally unengaging, but very beautifully shot The Weeping Meadow, which I saw on the premise that a three-hour Greek movie about decades in the life of a family would be as good as The Best of Youth, the amazingly great six-hour Italian epic about forty years of an Italian family. It’s also not counting the other movie I saw earlier in the week, Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro (Don’t Cry About Salim the Cripple), which is a moving 1989 Hindi film (although not really Bollywood, since it was short, realistic and had no songs) about how it sucks to be Muslim, sucks to be a gangster, and really sucks to be a small-time Muslim gangster in Bombay.

You can tell that I like movies. I also really like old jazz, and I think it’s a shame that it largely only remains on record and in the performances of earnest bands who play at county fairs and folk-music clubs. The Ditty Bops are a lovely exception. They have the veneer of an indie rock band, and their fans are the same people you’d see in the crowd of one of the friendlier indie bands, like the Decemberists. But when you look at it, they actually turn out to be more of a ragtime and early jazz band. One of their best songs is even a cover of the Fats Waller song “Sister Kate,” and they played a catchy Boswell Sisters cover, too. Their own songs are much in the same idiom, although of course they aren’t just mindless imitators, mooching the glories of past virtuosi. “Wishful Thinking” is my favorite of their endearing original songs, and comes from their self-titled first album, which I prefer to the new one. Just to spice it up a little, this is a bootleg from a 2004 show in LA, a few days before I saw them at Cafe Du Nord in San Francisco. If you’re in the US and east of California, you’ve got pretty good odds of being able to catch their delightful live show; since they’re biking across the country, it’s going to take them a while to work their way over to New York.

The Ditty Bops - Wishful Thinking

Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci - Spanish Dance Troupe

The only real problem with Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci is their name. It’s pretentious to start with, and when you find out that the last word is pronounced “monkey,” it’s insufferable. They have no connection to either Arshile Gorky, the Armenian-American abstract expressionist, nor to Maxim Gorky, the Russian novelist. Actually, they’re a Welsh pop group, folky and psychedelic. Although their recordings are all very sunny and shimmery, they have a much harder sound live, or at least they did when I saw them in 2002. They’re a great live band, anyway. This song comes from an album with the same name; the Blue Trees EP and How I Long To Feel That Summer In My Heart are also very good. I don’t know what’s up with Wales and Scotland, but they seem to breed a disproportionate number of good bands - Super Furry Animals, the Beta Band, Belle and Sebastian, and so forth.

Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci	“One Year the Milkweed,” by Arshile Gorky	Maxim Gorky

Kaizers Orchestra - Bak et Halleluja

I heard about this band from Tom Waits, who wrote one of those my favorite 20 albums things in the Observer (UK). Some of those are great, but it’s also worth looking at the other 9 that he put in the online addendum. All he says about this album, Ompa til du dør (Ompa Till You Die) is, “Norwegian storm trooping tarantellas with savage rhythms and innovative textures. Thinking man�s circus music. Way out.” And that might be the most that’s really sayable. Once you’ve listened to the music, it becomes obvious why Tom Waits likes them - they’ve obviously listened to Rain Dogs more than once; the album even begins more or less the same way as “Jockey Full of Bourbon.” But they’re much dancier and excitable than him. “Bak et Halleluja,” especially, is frenzied and relentless. I had to go somewhere immediately after the first time I heard it, and I was jittery and talkative like I’d done more than just listen to a really fast song.

Kaizers Orchestra sell lots and lots of records and win tons of awards in Scandinavia, but they have crap distribution outside Europe. In North America, you can get it for pretty cheap (US$20) from the Canadian company MusicSelection. I got mine from them, and it came quickly, with no hassles.

Dukes of Stratosphear - Bike Ride to the Moon

The English band XTC are already rad when they’re playing with a straight face, not that a band that comes up with great lines like “She a laughing giggly whirlybird, / She got to be obscene to be obheard” is especially serious. But I just decided that what every great band really needs is to do an album under another name, with a half-hearted pretense that they’re not actually the same people, consisting of perfect pastiches of ’60s psychedelia. At least, that’s what XTC did, and it’s amazing, so I think everyone might as well do it, too. The Dukes of Stratosphear put out an EP called 25 O’Clock, after its perfect first track, and then an album called Psonic Psunspot, and then stuck them together in 1987 as Chips from the Chocolate Fireball, which is how you can get it now. Practically every song is a perfect imitation of its influences, but unlike the crappy parodies we all listened to in middle school, these songs are original themselves, instead of just renaming “My Sharona” “My Bologna.” ‘Cause face it, Pink Floyd is a good idea for a while, but after a while, they’re not worth the effort. What the world needs is psychedelic music made by people who are at least minimally in their own heads; enough to remember that most actual, authentic psychedelia is boring sober.

King Louie and the Swinging Monkeys - Loneliness

My friend Hallie is from Houston, and these are some kids she went to high school with. Most of their songs are good-natured love letters to drugs and that sort of thing, and fine, as far as they go. But this one’s the best, with a fantastic, murky sound and sleepy vocals, plus a groove that does the dancing for you, although it obviously wants you to help. Their web page and the guy in the picture’s Marley shirt say that they’re a reggae band, but they’re really not at all. The page is pretty 1997-core, and it doesn’t look like it’s been updated too much recently, but there’s some MP3s you can download. I don’t really know that much about King Louie, but I think maybe some of the members go to USC now. I want them to make a real CD, but I’m not standing on one foot or anything waiting for it.

Heavenly - Shallow

A few kids at Oxford decided to start a band called Talulah Gosh, after hearing a compilation that came with NME magazine, called C86. They got good, and then broke up for whatever reasons, only to reform, after all getting first-class degrees, as more or less the same band, but now called Heavenly. Later, they would be called Marine Research, with a slightly different lineup. All three bands, though, and the members’ other projects, played twee pop - jankly guitars and sweet melodies, with desexed lyrics and haircuts. Heavenly was the best of the three, and the whole album that this song comes from, Heavenly vs. Satan, is great all the way through. Some of the songs are fast and happy on the surface, but they all have the same sadness as “Shallow,” somewhere. I especially like this song, partly because of the Beatles quote in the guitar solo, but mostly because of its peppy loneliness. It’s like Amelia Fletcher, the band leader and lyricist, is saying, “You hurt me and I miss you, and it makes me want to sing, sing, sing!“

Hasil Adkins - No More Hot Dogs

There are a lot of good things about this song. The words, about how he’s going to cut your head off at half past eight, and then you won’t be able to eat any more hot dogs, are funny, and it’s impossible to take their misogynism and aggression seriously. The tune’s catchy enough, and the puttering, murky guitar is nice to listen to. But the whole point is the crazed laughter at the beginning. It’s amazing.

Hasil Adkins was a rockabilly, or really a psychobilly, in the ’50s, back when electric guitars was a threat; he just took that threat farther than other people. I don’t know if anyone knew how to handle him then, but they forgot him, anyway, until Norton Records rediscovered him a while ago. Turns out he’s still around, still wacky, and still obsessed with chicken.

This song comes from Out to Hunch. If you listen to vinyl, look for a 45 whose A side is called “Sally Wally Woody Waddy Weedy Wally.” It’s about 5 times as good as this song - just loony. Seems Sally was one of his numerous ladies, aside from his current girlfriend, whose name is Hazel, if you believe him.

UPDATE:
Hasil died on April 25. RIP.

Barbara Manning - Blood of Feeling
The 6ths - San Diego Zoo (featuring Barbara Manning)

Barbara Manning is cute, in an aunt-like way, and quiet, but she’s got brains and grit under her extremely red hair. Doing covers of a Tom Lehrer song (”The Irish Ballad,” renamed “Rickety-Tickety-Tin”) and of “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” one of my favorite Beatles songs, helps endear her to me, too, more than just any singer-songwriter shmoe. “Blood of Feeling” comes from her excellent album 1212, which has a fun song cycle about fire, from the points of view of everyone involved, including the arsonist and the match. There’s another good version on Under One Roof, a pretty solid singles collection, too. She’s got a lot of albums, with a whole bunch of bands, with weird track overlaps, and a lot of her stuff is out of print, but it’s not too hard to find in used bins, and it’s all pretty good. She also collaborates a lot with other bands. “San Diego Zoo” is one of those songs, from the 6ths, one of Stephin Merritt’s millions of side projects when he’s not writing another thousand songs for the Magnetic Fields. Aside from this song, Wasps’ Nests has a couple others that are pretty good, but most of the album’s value is the title, whose whole point is that it’s unpronounceable. The other 6ths album, Hyacinths and Thistles, is barely easier to say. That Stephin Merritt. What a joker. For some reason, Barbara’s really popular in Germany, and plays there all the time, but she’s from Chico, CA, and plays in California sometimes. I saw her play a lovely show, too short, at the Mile High Club in Oakland a few months ago. The extra bonus at that club is that they have tater tots, which go pretty well with a Fat Tire.