Party Hearty, Françoise Hardy

France’s greatest living pop artist turns 74 today! 

From 7-9 PM on Bodega Pop Live (WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio) we’ll celebrate with collaborations, cover versions, deconstructions, deep cuts, hits, homages, mashups, samples, and translations spanning the singer-songwriter’s 50+ year career. 

From 9-10 PM we'll focus in on tracks penned and performed by Hardy herself, from her 1962 debut to her final album of the seventies, Musique Saoule (1978). 

Listen to the show in the archives

Even More Rare Cambodian 60s-70s Rock

Listen to an awesome track from this magical disc of polycarbonate plastic

Reupped a second time by special request on Feb 15, 2015, here.

[Originally posted on February 24, 2013.] Tonight, as most of the U.S. tunes in to the Oscars, I'll be finishing up the latest "New Life" comic for Rain Taxi using text from Mellow Actions, a new book by an old friend of mine, Brandon Downing. I don't mention Brandon idly: He was, after all, the person who introduced me to Cambodian music of the 60s and 70s in the first place.

Today's offering comes to us via Thai Cam Video on Foster Road in Portland, Oregon (get volume 11 here and 13 here). I have a lot more stuff I brought home from Thai Cam that I'll eventually upload, but this is the last of the 60s-70s Cambodian collections.

Awrighty. I'd love to stay and chat, but I really do have to get back to this comic; deadline's tomorrow morning. 

Unknown Dimotika Band | Our Finest Folk Songs

Listen to the first track of this kick-ass CD


Reupped by reader request here.


[Originally posted in August 2012.] I found this collection of Greek dimotika, or folk, music nearly a decade ago in this odd little store in Bayridge just off fifth Avenue at around 79th or 80th Street. All I remember about the store was that it was actually two stores, which you could go back and forth from via a single door in the back connecting both. Oh, wait; no. It was three stores, one of which was a wedding dress maker? Right on the corner. I just Google mapped the area and it looks like none of this exists anymore. Anyway, there was the dress maker, then this weird sort of Z-level movies DVD place and then, last but not least, a small Greek music store. 


What was a Greek music store doing in Bay Ridge? Well, Bay Ridge hosts an annual Greek Cultural Festival, so I'm guessing there must be a Greek population there, although I don't think there were any restaurants or other Greek-related businesses, save for the CD store. I've always thought of the neighborhood as predominantly Arabic (there used to be half a dozen or so Arabic music stores dotted along Fifth Avenue), but this is New York, after all.


I picked up this CD on a lark for like $5-10, having no idea what it was, and have loved it ever since the first play. It sounds to me like gypsy music, perhaps because of the clarinet and the extremely soulful voice of the singer. But it clearly says "dimotika" on the cover and that, so far as I know and understand, means "folk." Oh, and if you read Greek, here's the back cover with the track list:

Sorry I seem to be posting more writing and links to writing than music recently, but I've been getting a lot of requests for writing and comics lately, so I've been admittedly distracted from the music bloggin'. I've got a stack of stuff I've been meaning to share with you, including Arthur H's first album, given that y'all seemed to love so much the song of his I included here. Soon!

Mandalay Thein Zaw | Burmese Folk

Reupped in 320 glorious KBPS, here.


Listen to the fabulous fifth track

[Originally posted on March 15, 2012.] Why anyone would listen to 20th century western classical/avant garde music when Burma exists is beyond me. Well, okay; in all seriousness: There really isn't any music quite like Burmese, at least Burmese music toward the more folk end of the spectrum. (They do, like everyone else on planet Earth, have their own brand of western-influenced pop and rap.)

As regular readers of this blog may remember, last August, Peter Doolan, who curates the insanely great Monrakplengthai , invited me out to visit Thiri Video, a Burmese media store in Elmhurst, Queens, that he'd gotten wind of a few weeks prior to contacting me. (Get the CD I found that day here.)

It took us well over half an hour to find the place, and this was after we had already unwittingly passed it. It turns out there is no store front; it's actually in a garden-level apartment. After confirming that we were, finally, at the right place, we removed our shoes and went in.

There is nothing like Thiri Video anywhere else in New York--at least, not that I'm aware of. I'm guessing there's nothing like it in the rest of the U.S. as well. (Please correct me if wrong; and include an address, as I would love to visit it, if it exists.)

Rather than rely on my groggy descriptive capabilities (it is, after all, not quite 5:00 a.m. as I write this), let's take a look at Thiri Video's promotional video, shall we?

I love that video. If my exhortations thus far were not enough to get you to watch it, or if a lack of subtitles frightens and intimidates you, I'll explain: A young Burmese man and what I gather are his or his girlfriend/wife's parents check out the time and wonder where Dude's significant other could possibly be.

As often happens in this kind of situation, a woman bathed in eerie blue light, whose midsection has been replaced with a midriff-sized chunk of silver, drops by, telling the young man to forget his bride/bride-to-be, and regaling him and the rest of the family with tales of Thiri Video (including numerous shots of the shop). Obviously, he doesn't, at least at first, believe her. For how could such a Paradise on Earth exist, even in fabulous Elmhurst, Queens?

Well, I'm here to emphatically tell you that it does, indeed, exist, as I just visited it for the second time last Sunday. I'm also here to offer you one of the most insane, shit-eating-grin-fabulous CDs I've ever found anywhere.

Chief Akunwata Ozoemena Nsugbe | Omenana

Reup by popular demand, here.

Another wonderful item found at Blessing Udeagu (99-08 Lewis Avenue, Corona, Queens).

Awutolo & Fada | Ogene Nkpakija Enugwu Ukwu

Reupped by popular demand, here. [Apologies for no longer hosting a sample; but trust me, you'll enjoy it.]

Unlike yesterday's post, this morning's features what I can only assume to be Nigerian folk music. The sample track above opens with what sounds like a homemade brass instrument of some kind, not uncommon in Nigerian folk, and Awutolo and Fada laying down a terrific, complex rhythm while singing at times in a kind of call-and-response and at times in unison. The total effect is of an intricate soundscape that snaps, pops, buzzes and honks far enough above the level of ambient to keep the listener's ear keen, while never swerving into catchy hook or melody.

I found this sublime recording, along with yesterday's offering and a few other things, at Blessing Udeagu (99-08 Lewis Avenue, Corona, Queens). Perhaps it's just a coincidence, but after I posted yesterday morning's--the first western African recording to appear on this blog--my traffic shot up to rather insane levels. I typically have about 600 visits in a 24-hour period; this morning, at not quite 6:30 a.m., I already have nearly 1,200, and the day still has about 17 hours left to go.

So, uh ... you like the western African music, yeah?

In other news, I'll be reading tomorrow night (Thursday) at 6:30 at RH Gallery with Catherine Taylor and Sandra Liu at this event, which is in part a celebration for the publication of Ernst Herbeck's Everyone Has a Mouth, which I translated from the original German (some poems in collaboration with Oya Attaman and Ekkehard Knoerer). While the book has not yet been officially released (they're still hand-stitching the covers), I'm told there will be about 50-60 copies there the night of the celebration.

And, finally, I reserved bodegapop.com, which I've currently set to redirect to this blog. Ultimately, I'll be creating something that I think is sorely lacking: a portal to music blogs and other sources of information about and samples of international musics. It seems insane that no one has yet put something like this together. Write to me if you'd like in some way to be involved at: bodegapop@gmail.com.

Sabahat Akkiraz | Turkulerle Cide Cide

Listen to "Saskin Yarim"


Listen to "Gor Nenni Nenni"

Get it all here.

A wonderful album by a leading light at the traditional/folk end of the Turkish music spectrum. I'm pretty sure I plucked this 1997 gem from the racks at Uludag Video, 1922 Ave W in Brooklyn, somewhere between 5-10 years ago. 

Born Sabahat Akkiray 1955, Akkiraz moved to Germany as a child, returning to her homeland in the early 1980s to record her first albums. She was, and perhaps still is, a member of Turkish Parliament.

A number of you enjoyed the other album of hers I posted a couple of years ago; perhaps you'll like this one as well.

La Merde Chaude! | 19 Hot French Trax

Listen to "Quai No 3"



Listen to "Le P'tit Clown De Ton Coeur"



Listen to "Sex Accordeon Et Alcool"



Listen to "Le Travail"



Listen to "Au Revoir"


Get the 19-song mix here.


Despite New York's reputation as one of the most expensive cities on earth, there is not a single day of the year that you can't find at least one totally free event to partake in--everything from live performances to gallery openings to street fairs. Today, of course, was Bastille Day on 60th Street in Manhattan, which is held annually on the Sunday following the actual Bastille Day. For several long blocks along 60th Street, just below Central Park, you can listen to free live music as you wander by stalls offering French eats, groceries, knick-knacks, books and--you guessed it--music. 

Last year, I picked up three French hip-hop records for $1 each, one of which I posted here. At today's fair, the Alliance Francaise Library was offering French CDs withdrawn from their library for 25 cents apiece. I happened to be at their stall the moment they opened. Fifteen seconds after they opened, I walked away with all 16 CDs they had out for sale. I knew it was a gamble; after all, these were rejects, la merde de la merde. I stuffed them all in my backpack and promptly forgot about them as I wandered around, taking in the sights and smells and sounds. Hours later, when I returned home, I plopped the first CD into my computer to have a quick listen (Arthur H's first album, Arthur H--that's an image of him from the back of the CD at the top of this post).

The opening track, "Quai No 3" (listen to sample above), had me sitting up and taking notice. I created a new playlist in iTunes, titled it "Merde," and dragged the song into it. Not that I thought every album was going to be a winner, or even have single listenable track. But I thought it would be fun--and appropriately French--to perform a kind of oulipian experiment using the Alliance Francaise Library's withdrawn CDs I had picked up this year and last.

When the second CD (Johnny Hallyday's Les Grands Success De Johnny Hallyday--second sample above) turned out to be as great as the first, I figured I'd just gotten lucky. When the third, fourth and fifth CDs all proved to each be as fabulous as the last, I almost started to cry. Really? I'd spent four lousy bucks on this merde. And all of it was kicking my ass.

In creating tonight's mix-tape I gave myself a couple of rules: (1) I could only include one track per CD and (2) I had to use EVERY CD I'd gotten at the fair, both this year and last. I admit that I broke the second rule--while I found a couple of tracks on Florent Pagny's Re:Creation that didn't make me want to do violence to myself, I also remembered how OuLiPo creators had embraced the "clinamen"--or "unpredictable swerve." In layman's terms, it means the Oulipians allowed themselves one opportunity to cheat. So I took mine.

That said, this is an effing supremely fabulous mix, especially considering the fact that I only passed on one of the CDs I picked up in the last two years at a street fair. Do note, however, that while I did stay true to the first rule of only including one song per CD, I wound up getting two CDs each by two artists Java and Dominique A, which is just as well, as they're both incredible. Also, JL Murat's Lilith is a two-CD set; I picked a song from each disc.

Obviously, this is not a representative sample of contemporary French pop. It seems skewed toward the experimental (Franck Vigroux's collaboration with Elliott Sharp!) and the music dates from as far back as the 60s to the present, with quite a bit of 90s action.

If there's anything you find yourself particularly thrilled by, let me know and I'll perhaps post a few entire CDs of the creme de la merde.

Fairuz | Best of Fairuz

Listen to "Mush Qasah Hay"

Get it all here.

This being a post about Fairuz, one of the greatest living artists on the planet, a woman with a voice so powerful, so soulful, it was capable of bringing moments of peace between Israelis and Palestinians, it seems manifestly appropriate that I begin this post by talking about the Music Industry.

Oh My Fucking God, please tell me, Gary, that you're not going to add to the Emily White slash David Lowery meme. We've already read dozens, maybe hundreds of articles, tweets and blog posts about it. Please, Gary. Please. Not that.

Look. I don't want to add to it. For one thing, I don't care about white alt rockers of the 80s and 90s and I most certainly do not care about anything involving NPR. For another, you've already made up your mind, one way or the other.

That said, I implore you to listen to the Fairuz sample above and tell me, even if it involves scraping the last honest layer of sentiment from your nearly emptied-out heart, honestly and truly whether or not this music has even the slightest bit to do with the White / Lowery debate. Right? Right. I mean, right.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with it. Because this song--as is true of most, maybe even all of the songs on this terrifyingly sublime CD--is neither yelp nor yawp nor for that matter 80s/90s ironicized yelp or yawp. It is an extended moment of formalized, yes, but extremely convincing emotive realization. It isn't, in other words, the kind of shit that the music industry is trying to sell you; nor is it the kind of shit that you ("you" being NPR interns) are illegally downloading. That shit is one thing and one thing only: Product. They know it. You know it. We all know it. And that's all it is. It isn't, by any stretch of the imagination, art. It feeds an immediate, gnawing need, like a cigarette. And, just as quickly, it's forgotten.

It absolutely sickened me to read David Lowery's suggestion that illegal downloading might have contributed in any way to the suicide deaths of Vic Chesnutt and Mark Linkous. Like David, I've had two friends, both artists, who have taken their own lives. Both were poets. One of them, oddly enough, wrote a book titled Product, which I--in my 20s in San Francisco--published two decades ago.

The poet who wrote the book titled Product was seriously ill. His illness had much to do with his suicide. His economic situation had a lot to do with his suicide as well (he was on SSDI). But what ultimately led to it was his decision and desire to commit the act of suicide. There are plenty of poets who are or were in as dire or worse straights, physically and economically, who just kept on living, some of whom kept on writing poetry, despite the fact that it doesn't, ever, sell.

The fact that there are people, lots of people, with just enough twit of brain to cheer on  David Lowery's rant completely baffles and saddens me. Really? Really? Some unpaid laborer (cough!) at NP effing R admits to getting whatever she can for free (just like, uh, her "employer"), and this sets you off? Pushes you over whatever brink exists between sanity and the completely insane act of publicly making a connection between willful suicide and downloading crappy, forgettable pop and "alt" rock music?

Give me a fucking break. Where--in all of this insane debate--is the suggestion, anywhere, that the music industry might have some possible responsibility here? Or that musicians who willfully enter into contracts with these corporate scum have a responsibility to themselves? If you want to look at producing music as a livelihood, as a profession, as a job, then who is your employer? The audience? No, no, no, no, no. It's the music industry. It's your label. It's your label that isn't giving you vacation time. Who isn't providing you with health care. It's your fucking label who reaps everything you sow and maybe tosses you whatever coagulated bits are left after they've finished sucking the blood from your labor. If they even do that much. You signed the contract, dumbass, not the audience.

The music industry switched over to digital in the first place for one reason and one reason only: They saw that they could resell the same sad albums by Pink Floyd and Bruce Springsteen on this new format to the same poor suckers who had bought them on vinyl. Their greed led to the greed of everyone taking advantage of the fact that this new format is easily shared. Period, end of discussion. You want to make things right, by which I mean profitable, again? End digital and go back to analog. Or come up with some other solution.

I'm not sure what's worse: that people like David Lowery who imagine they are artists and not what they really are, freelance contractors, have never successfully fought for their rights as laborers and instead blamed everything on the general public, or that people like David Lowery and his employer have no idea who Fairuz is and why she makes everything they've ever done in their lives, beyond making or not making money, ultimately moot. What does it say that the crux of this debate is around making money and not making art?

If you want to make money and you can't make money making music, then do something else and shut the fuck up so people who care about music can hear people who are, like Fairuz, actually making it.


UPDATE: Another poet, a great one, and a great friend, Rodney Koeneke sent along a link to the video above in response to this post, so I thought I'd pop it into the mix. Thank you, Rodney!

Ketchup | In Love Again

Indie folk artist Ketchup is one of a handful of acts that make up the Hong Kong twee pop scene. He's released seven albums, of which this is the fifth. It's an absolutely gorgeous record, with minimal production, focusing on Ken Tsoi's voice and acoustic guitar.

I found this gem at P Tunes & Video, the little store on Chrystie Street in Manhattan's Chinatown shown in the header image of this blog. Alas, it's the only thing I've yet been able to find by him other than his contribution to this compilation.

Listen to "Spring Time"

Get it all here.

Silvio Rodriguez | Mujeres

Ten years ago today the first prisoners were locked up at the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. To mark this inauspicious date, here's a CD by Cuba's most famous protest singer, Silvio Rodriguez, one of the giants of "Nueva Trova" ("New Song").

I found this gem--the third of Rodriguez's albums, originally released on vinyl in 1978--at a sort of street fair thingy in a huge parking lot near Arthur Avenue in the Bronx.

I don't know what the fuck we are doing still holding hundreds of people there indefinitely without charging them of anything. I'm sorry, but ... what happened to the president I voted for who said he was going to shut it down?


Listen to the title song

Get the album here.

Dava Gjergji | Jane me mua djemte e Kosoves

The first Albanian CD I ever bought, found at a little Albanian bodega on Church Avenue in Brooklyn. I know very little to nothing about Gjergji, other than the fact that she is wildly popular and has a magnificent voice. Since then, I've found a few other outlets for Albanian music in other areas of NYC, including a bodega and a CD shop across the street from that on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx and a small selection of CDs at the legendary Euro Market not far from where I live in Astoria. Someday, a sociology or anthropology scholar somewhere will write a dissertation in English on Albanian folk and pop that will be published by some academic press somewhere and then, maybe, I'll have a bit more context for this music.

Get it all here.