Well, shucks, ma'am, maybe not a "great DJ" . . .

Let's take a quick break from politics for a mo'. Although I'm sure I'm developing an aneurysm, so eager am I to vent about the recent Pennsylvania Democratic Primary and various views from the Left side of the street, it's going to have to wait. Just for a little while. At least until I get beyond some travel fatigue and obsessing over what new car I might actually be on the verge of buying, after three years of saying I'm on the verge of buying a new car but not actually . . . well, you get the idea.

Let's turn our attention to what I seem to like to talk about best (or most) of late: pop music. Which I will remind you is not a crime but rather a fantastic plastic distraction from the daily doubleshot of dread and doom, hold the foam, that hisses and sputters from the overheated espresso-maker in this overpriced, down-in-sales coffeehouse known as . . .

Admit it--you'd really rather have me talk about pop music, now wouldn't you?

* * *

First up, my new favorite group--the Ting Tings.

Video #1 is for the first song I heard by them, played on NewNowNext on Logo, the queers-r-us channel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPNIYuDZZpU

(You'll have to view this one the old-fashioned way by following the link, rather than using the YouTube embedded player.)

This is as I guess iTunes would put it, the "explicit" version. The band actually sings the word (brace yourself) "high" in the video, referring to some pharmaceutically induced stupor that hippies used to strive for way back in the Sixties but which, like greed and intolerance, has fallen by the wayside in this progressive era. Thank goodness!

On a recent showing of NewNowNext, it sounded as if the censors dropped the word, not quite bleeping it out but erasing it from the soundtrack. Why, I don't rightly know. To prevent impressionable young teens from thinking about drugs? C'mon, they're watching Logo already, the Homo Queerectus Network; if your kid's tuning into Logo, you've got a whole 'nuther set of issues to ponder.

Video #2 is from their, appropriately enough, second single release, "That's Not My Name":



Yeah, they call me Stacey. Maybe Joleesa. It sure beats the heck out of Rap Licious.

This video is embedded for your viewing pleasure. Regarding embedding versus linking, there is no logic to YouTube or the corporate overloads of popular music who sometimes legally supply it with culture fodder--both videos are from the same source, TheTingTingsTV, or, if you prefer, their alternate identity, Sony BMG Music Entertainment (UK) Limited.

Very limited, apparently.

The Ting Tings get my vote for best new group heard in April 2008. Their tunes are very catchy, quite clever, and their look is pretty dazzling, too. Musically and visually, I think they do a good job of paying homage to the 1960s and the 1980s, while not being stuck in those decades, still managing to project a very contemporary image.

Oh, Democratic Party USA, are you listening . . . ?

* * *

Second up, my favorite new singer, Lykke Li, from Sweden:



I was driving home from a party on Sunday and heard this song, "I'm Good, I'm Gone," played on WRCT-FM, the alternative station from the one of those universities in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, which, so far, is a cut above most college stations. No endless hours of angry young man rock-and-roll but instead, truly alternative sounds, from classic, pre-1970 country and western to Southern soul to contemporary indie, the latter label of which definitely applies to little Lykke Li.

I heard this song as I was pulling into my garage after an evening of too much cake and cappuccino at a friend's house. At first, I thought, OK, it's the sugar talking, this song cannot be as good as it sounds. (Forget about the words--I'm all about textured sound. Although good lyrics and textured sound? As good as too much cake and cappuccino.) Rather than slouching toward home, I decided to wait the song out in my car; it was too good not to listen until the end. I figured, too, that the DJ would announce the artist after the song concluded. So I would know, go inside and blow another $0.99 of my retirement fund on iTunes, and sleep a very peaceful sleep.

But nothing doing--the DJ didn't announce the title or the artist, but instead played another tune. Rather than risk carbon monoxide poisoning, a dead battery, and calls to my local municipality's police station by concerned (or nebby) neighbors, I shut off the car and dashed into the house, turned on my computer, went to radio station's website to view the playlist . . . and discovered that, due to technical difficulties, the playlist wasn't available.

Cripes. Why are all the important things in life so difficult?

I maybe remembered may one full lyric from the song, one of the ones starting with "If you say," and something about a phone. After 45 minutes of Googling, I managed to come up with the lyrics, the artist, and then the YouTube video for "I'm Good, I'm Gone," as well as another hit of hers, "Little Bit," one I like almost as much:



So that's why I was late to work (again) on Monday.

Again, it's that whole "the hits of the Sixties, the Eighties, and today" thing with me. Lykke Li is produced by Peter, Björn, and John, another Swedish pop/rock group (who, stupid, stupid, stupid me missed when they were in concert in Pittsburgh last December), which, too, exemplifies that sound I seem to love of late:


Admittedly, that video is a bit Partridge Family-meets-the-gang-from-Scoobie-Doo to say the least. So make that "the hits from the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, and today," but thank the gods, no Nineties.

* * *

And finally up, my Electro Funk All-Stars mix has been troubling me for weeks now. I just haven't been able to let it go, feeling that some of the songs didn't blend together very well and that a couple of the transitions were decidedly wonky.

So, as a result, I've spent part of the last couple of weekends trying to give it a new listen and an honest appraisal, which has culminated in my cutting two songs from the mix, adding three more, and trying to make seamless some of the transitions.

It now sounds like so:

1. Morcheeba featuring Big Daddy Kane--"What's Your Name?"
2. Olive--"This Time" (Mel B. has been voted off Dancing with the Stars and now this mix)
   
3. Toni Braxton--"He Wasn't Man Enough" (extended version)
4. Kylie Minogue--"Obsession" (produced by Kurtis Mantronik)
5. Etienne Daho--"Me manquer" (new! besides where would I be without at least one French cultural reference in the things I do)
   
6. Pizzicato 5--"Love's Prelude"
7. Army of Lovers--"My Army of Lovers" (Concrete Ghetto Mix)
8. Vanessa Williams--"Happiness" (samples Nu Shooz's "I Can't Wait")
9. Mantronix--"Got to Have Your Love"
10. M.I.A.--"Galang"
11. Peter Brown--"Do You Wanna Get Funky with Me?" (this is a dodgy leftover at best, but who was I kidding thinking that I could stomach a Mariah Carey song for more than two listens?)
    
12. Nu Shooz--"I Can't Wait"
13. Kurtis Mantronik--"Push Yer Hands Up"
14. The Orb--"Little Fluffy Clouds" (Orbital Dance Mix)
    
15. Röyksopp--"Eple"
16. Richard X vs. Liberty X--"Being Nobody" (samples "Being Boiled" by the Human League while featuring the lyrics of "Ain't Nobody" by Rufus and Chaka Khan)
17. Annie--"Chewing Gum"
18. Change--"Change of Heart"
19. Jamelia--"Superstar"
20. The Human League--"Life on Your Own" (again with the Eighties!)
21. Mylo--"Emotion 98.6" (and today--or at least 2005, when I picked up this CD in the UK)
    

It's still not a perfect mix yet; the transition between Etienne Daho's "Me manquer" and "Love's Prelude" by Pizzicato 5 is still a little bit clunky, despite my efforts to sample a note from the latter and repeat it every few bars as a refrain in the former. It sounds good in the former; I'm just not sure it makes the necessary connection to the latter.

Ah well, I'm sure even Picasso and Fatboy Slim have had their off days. I'll go along for a couple of months like this. Then something will happen, I'll hear a new tune or become reacquainted with an old one, and bam, voilà, ándale, gesundheit, I will figure out a fix.

Or it may just be time to let it go and come up with some new inspirations for a mix. Maybe something like the Sixties . . . meets the Eighties . . . and today. Ándale.