This is the second Negro Problem song to pop up on Random Weekends in three weeks, not a bad showing considering I own 54 of their songs out of more than 13,000 in my iTunes library.
The odds of them showing up twice in such a short period of time are less than one in a quadrillion — wait, I’m sorry, those are the odds of Joe Biden defeating Donald Trump in each of the four battleground states mentioned in that batshit Texas lawsuit that got laughed out of the Supreme Court.
‘Hound Dog,’ Elvis Presley’s top-selling song, started out as a hit for the blues singer ‘Big Mama’ Thornton. Thornton’s 1953 version was a hit in its own right, selling two million copies and spending nearly two months atop Billboard’s R&B chart.
Thornton’s version was far more sexually suggestive, depicting a Black woman giving a no-good man the kiss-off. “You ain’t nothing but a hound dog, been snoopin’ ’round my door,” she sings, “You can wag your tail but I ain’t gonna feed you no more.”
When today’s Random Weekend selection popped up, I had absolutely no idea what it was or where it came from.
I was surprised to see I’ve actually posted a song by Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment before, nearly five years ago, when this album showed up on the 2014 Village Voice Pazz & Jop year-end poll.
As I wrote back then, quoting Pitchfork, the band is a project by “Chance [the Rapper], Donnie Trumpet (the alias of Nico Segal), Peter Cottontale, and Nate Fox.”
Today’s track is the fourth Random Weekend selection from Bob Dylan’s Whitmark demos, a collection of songs recorded in the early 60s to shop around to other performers.
This one is well-timed, coming on the heels of the news that Dylan has sold the songwriting rights of his entire catalog to the Universal Music Publishing Group for a sum reportedly north of $300 million. It is likely the largest deal of its kind ever made.
It’s been awhile since I’ve given Beck’s 1999 album Midnite Vultures a thought, let alone a listen. In fact, the last time was probably when it showed up on another Random Weekend nearly four years ago.
This is one of Beck’s wildest, most inventive albums, and one of his best. It found the versatile artist channeling Prince at one minute and Kraftwerk the next, and throwing the kitchen sink into the production mix. Sandwiched between Mutations and Sea Change, two very subdued and melancholy albums, this was a blast of pure adrenaline.
Meet Me In Montauk 