Mining the Audio Motherlode, Volume 100

Give the Drummer Some's
Favorite Downloads from the MP3 Blogosphere

Crikey! Mining the Audio Motherlode has gone and hit the century mark. This week's installment marks this 100th since I began this great sound-scouring adventure two years ago. This series of posts began as a means for sharing all the amazing music I was tripping over while searching online for tracks to play on my radio show, Give the Drummer Some.

Since these Motherlode posts started, I've gotten laid off from a long-term job in publishing, gone back to school to finish the degree I started more than 30 years ago, pulled up stakes and moved from Brooklyn to Pittsburgh (two blocks away from Jerry's Records!), and launched a 24-hour freeform web stream for WFMU called Give the Drummer Radio (listen now: here). Through thick and thick, a new Mining the Audio Motherlode has been published virtually every Wednesday at noon, serving up my own highly personal survey of the best offerings throughout the album-sharing blogosphere.

Last June, I re-posted my favorite records offered in the Motherlode records through the first half of the year. So, for this post I'd like to resurrect my top selections of the past six months or so. Please take a moment and share with me in the comments your favorites of 2010.

 Here's to the next 100...

 

Ola Belle Reed  ~  "Ola Belle Reed"
(Blog: Bill's Blog: Great Bluegrass Music)

Voice of the Ages
"Ola Belle Reed possesses the rare ability to see the natural unity of an ideal and of its necessary translation into life-action. All her idealistic verbal expressions have their counterparts in the practices of everyday life.... Since any true radical's battlefield is provincialism and bigotry, Ola Belle has come to deplore many of the recent tendencies of country musicians to become ardently chauvinistic about their tastes in old-timey, bluegrass, etc. to the exclusion of all other music. This development runs directly counter to Ola Belle's affirmations of music as a unifying and comradely tie among people."   (From the liner notes)

 

Various  ~  "Rockin'  Hillbilly Series
Volumes 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
(Blog: Western & Bop)

Southern Fried
This massively appealing set has been dosey doeing on and off the Bloggernet for a few years now. Huzzahs to W&B for giving it a go. Ten discs. Thirty-two tracks apiece. Every one a killer. Well, what are you waiting for? Stop reading this and go git 'em. No really, I'm not going say anything particularly pithy here, so just go. Go already! (Unbelievable... you're still here.)

 

Tenore de Orosei  ~  "Amore Profundhu"
(Blog: We Love Music)
{Annoying pop-up ad, but worth it}

Sardinian Splendor
This ancient style of polyphonic singing originated on the island of Sardinia.  Otherworldly and breathtaking. (This is the second appearance by this group in the Motherlode. The previous entry appeared in the first-ever post.)

Tak Shindo  ~  Mganga!"
(Blog: Le Blog de Granulet)

Exotic, Ah!
A perceptive, meticulous ethnomusicologist, Tak Shindo paid the bills by writing  scores and assisting music production in Hollywood (he apprenticed with Miklós Rózsa). Born in Sacramento, Shindo had been interred in the concentration camp for Japanese Americas at Manzanar for two years before joining the service in 1944. Record collectors revere him for his string of evocative ethnographic releases, including this gorgeous treasure, from the late 1950s.

 

Lincoln Chase  ~  "Chase 'n You"
(Blog: El Reza)

Wooshp, Oom, Sff - Ahhhh!
Lincoln Chase, manager for and songwriting partner with Shirley Ellis, was the "Lincoln" name-checked in Ellis's playful, rhyming evergreen The Name Game (remember the lyric: "Lincoln, Lincoln, bo-Bincoln, Banana-fana fo-Fincoln, Fee-fi-mo-Incoln, Lincoln!") Chase also scribed hits for such headliners as Ruth Brown ("Mend Your Ways"), LaVern Baker ("Jim Dandy") and Big Maybelle ("Rain Down Rain"), but familiarity with any of these R&B tracks won't prepare you for this 1973 album—Chase's lone release—of twisted soul/funk oddities that sound inspired equally by Melvin Van Peebles and Eugene McDaniels.

Kent Gomez & His Orchestra  ~  "My Ghetto"
(Blog: Mo-File) Montuno Monster

"Kent Gomez's "My Ghetto" is a seriously whacked-out descarga-type thing where Kent's piano moves all over the place as he charges from classical to jazz then back to Richie Ray style over a pounding rhythm, very acid jazz."
(Dave Hucker, from The Beat ]

 

 

 

Listen to my radio show Give the Drummer Some—Tuesdays 6-7pm, on WFMU and Fridays 9 to noon—on WFMU's web stream Give the Drummer Radio.
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Comments

[Izzy]

Congratulations on the 100th volume, I check here every wednesday to see what you selected and always find something that intrigues me to explore further. So a big bear hug for you and here's to 100 more. Take care.

[DMillerMpls]

Seconding the congratulations, Doug. You find so much great stuff it'll take me the rest of my life to listen to it all...

[Chris]

Great work Doug - not only do you expand and challenge my musical horizons, you write in such a way as to inspire chuckles coupled with positive and zany mental imagery along the way. Thank you - may you have as much fun doing the next 100 posts - Chris at Electric Jive - Durban

[mistercaz]

That Rockin Hillbilly stuff is great. I'm starting with three of them for now, and that blog has some other decent stuff too.
and TAK SHNIDO. wow, excellent.

hey-
something has been drivin me crazy lately.
There was this lounge hit in the late 50's, a slightly spooky number, it shows up in the film "Apollo 13" (in the aquarium scene) and it's also in
the movie LA BAMBA (scene at the end- his mother and brother hear about his death on the radio, then that song comes on, but it's background.
It seems like its's not in either O.S.T. soundtrack...