Cod reggae #1

The playlist, more or less, now available through the magic of YouTube.



This isn't a perfect solution to the Mixaloo or Finetune conundra, of course. Ideally, if I were truly in the now, I'd use iTunes to create a playlist, but, if I'm not mistaken, you have to buy all your music through iTunes in order to create a public playlist in the iTunes player. In other words, you can make your own playlist but to share it with others, you need to have spent $0.99 each on songs you already have in your own collection. Ah, capitalism.

And this isn't the entire Cod Reggae #1 playlist either. I couldn't find a video for The Brothers' "Sing Me" (it's pretty obscure, even though it was a Top Ten hit in the UK in 1977 or so) or even any songs by them. I also couldn't find videos for The Kongas' "Jungle" or Midi, Maxi, & Efti's "Masenko," although in the latter case, I included a video for their song "Ragga Steady," which should give you an idea of what this Ethiopian-Eritrean-Swedish pop group from the '90s sounds like.

I did a similar thing for Serge Gainsbourg's "Aux armes et caetera." There are two "homemade" videos for this tune in YouTube, one which has a warning before you watch it about "adult images." I watched only part of it, and as best I could tell, the so-called adult images include shots of Vladimir Lenin and Abu Ghraib's excesses, which . . . well, the latter need more exposure, although the former, the snaps of Lenin, seem positively quaint in this day and age, my snide remarks about capitalism notwithstanding. Perhaps later we could don our Young Pioneers uniforms, join hands, and sing "The Internationale" or "The Red Army is the Strongest in the World." Just for fun.

The other video doesn't have any warnings but probably should: It features a beautiful Asian nymphette in a bikini running a bath (for herself, one would assume). I decided not to use that video either (and turned away before, perhaps, I was scarred for life by what was to follow), which, in reality, is pure Serge Gainsbourg, but then so is the one of Abu Ghraib. Instead, I opted for a homemade video of the dub version of his reggae number, "Lola Rastaquouère."

I did, however, choose the "skin option" for Timmy Thomas's recording of "Why Can't We Live Together," the homemade video featuring some scantily clad babe gyrating rhythmically to the tune. What she has to do with a song about world peace, I'll never quite fathom, but I can see how she might relate to the theme of "world piece" instead.

Enjoy . . . or whatever . . . while you can. This approach doesn't necessarily resolve the copyright issue, but to be sure, if anything does impinge upon someone's copyright, YouTube will take action, remove the offending video, and, thus, seriously interrupt my studies in mixology.

But fear not: Cod Reggae #2 is coming soon to a YouTube near you.