Brain Drain

Soul upside down? In need of some brain food? Check out this special six pack to make them clouds disappear pronto. Clever - and slightly Gigeresque - artwork by Tinca. "You don't really need a brain, ducky..."

Steve Young - Brain Cloudy Blues
Burning Spear - Brain Food
Sly & The Family Stone - Can't Strain My Brain
Parliament - Presence Of A Brain
Soft Boys - Sandra's Having Her Brain Out
Tall Dwarfs - The Brain That Wouldn’t Die

Dodgy Now

Some more Robyn? Well, why not indeed. After all, he's one of the few true living heirs tot the throne of Syd Barrett. And on top of that, he's often very funny, too. You can't go wrong with a song that starts with "Your mother is a journalist, your father is a creep, they make it in your bedroom when they think you're fast asleep..."

Robyn Hitchcock - Sounds Great When You're Dead

As I mentioned earlier, Hitchcock started his musical career in the legendary, always eccentric Soft Boys. You're nowhere without their A Can Of Bees and especially Underwater Moonlight albums, trust me. Here's a track from each.

The Soft Boys - Leppo And The Jooves
The Soft Boys - Underwater Moonlight

Murmur Of A Prayer

No matter if you're in London, in gay Paree, or anywhere else in the world really. An impressive Dylan interpretation always hits home. Here's one of the darkest in the canon, delicately performed by a former Soft Boy.

Robyn Hitchcock - Not Dark Yet

Wild Weekend Vol. 8

Hola, amigos da musica. Time to put the old iPod in shuffle mode and see what surprises we´re gonna get this time around. It´ll be a Wild Weekend again, with yet another musical grab bag of goodies for your aural liberation. Because, as the Residents once rightly proclaimed, ´ignorance of your culture is not considered cool´. Right on.

To start off this week´s edition, the ghost in the machine picked a cool song by the Soft Boys. Fun late-seventies punky glamrock psychedelica - or was that the other way around? - from Robyn Hitchcock and company. Their albums A Can Of Bees and Underwater Moonlight have since become cult classics, and that´s totally deserved for once. And talking about cult classics, Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson´s terrific Pacific Ocean Blue definitely belongs to that category as well. Go for the deluxe edition, which comes with a second disc featuring the interesting sessions for the unfinished Bambu album. As a taster, here´s the rather strange He´s A Bum.

The Soft Boys - Insanely Jealous MP3

Dennis Wilson - He´s A Bum MP3

Don´t know about you, but I just can´t wait for the new Drive-By Truckers cd, which will hit the stores any day now. In the meantime, here´s one of their oldies but goldies. "If Mr. Phillips was the only man that Jerry Lee still would call Sir, then I guess Mr. Phillips did all of y´all about as good as you deserve..." Now that´s what I call a solid argument. After which we move to the (mostly) sunny island of Jamaica for some mento sounds from Lord Beginner, who delivers a delightful pre-reggae song about a fearful hurricane hitting Kingston. "A hundred miles an hour was an awful blow..." You can say that again. Thanks to my esteemed Groover´s Paradise colleague Nicolas for this one.

Drive-By Truckers - Carl Perkins´ Cadillac MP3

Lord Beginner - Jamaica Hurricane MP3

"I guess I missed my calling, ´cause I should have been a clown..." Yup, we´re talking prime southern soul and heartaches here. James Carr recorded many a scorcher, but the bitter Pouring Water On A Drowning Man was arguably his finest hour. And we´ll be off with a fascinating Stones rarity from the Exile On Main St. era, featuring some sharp barbed wire guitar by Keef. I wonder if this one will show up on the upcoming deluxe edition of Exile.

James Carr - Pouring Water On A Drowning Man MP3

The Rolling Stones - I Ain´t Lying MP3