I was about to write up a post on how I broke down some spider webs today, and about an hour later I found a hearty scout troop of ants marching along the same area, well, looking to see what they could see. I wanted to find some verbiage on the epic power struggles in nature, so I opened up my favorite web browser, but was ultimately denied.

I ran in to a very weird glitch with Google Chrome (5.0.375.125) where, when Googling “power struggle”, without the quotes, returned absolutely no results. The search from the homepage works fine in Safari and Firefox, but for some reason Google Chrome wants to keep me in the dark.

I’ve tried all sorts of things, even copying and pasting the search URL from Firefox into Chrome, and I still get nothing. Adding words to the search works fine, and misspelling it event suggests it… but still, no results found. Is there a message in here I’ve been chosen to bear?

That dastardly Unheard Playlist… will it ever be vanquished? As you may have noticed, there was a slight silence that had taken hold of the project. Suddenly, and perhaps a bit unexpectedly, the wife and I whisked ourselves away to the Portland area to begin setting up shop in our new home. Setting up a new home turned into a 16-hour return drive, which in turn morphed into a sudden realization that many things must be packed and purged. So, the project, for now, is put on hold.

One thing I’d like to note though: The 16-hour drive, we did straight. I prefer a straight drive as opposed to breaking it up over two days, and another one of my smart playlists came through the trip with shining colors. My “Forgotten Gems” playlist (anything with 4 stars or more that hadn’t been heard in the last month), had stocked up quite a nice assortment of tracks during the race towards zero, and there was plenty of music on it, more than 16 hours worth, to pass the time.

When we’re resettled, the project shall continue, but for now, I must press ‘pause’.

How is it that artists aren’t as “epic” as they once were? Is it that there’s just too many voices on the field for any one to stick around for a while? Did the internet break stardom? Have we gone from the era of massive super stars to an armada of 15-minute-ers? And with recording technology as wide-spread as it is, shouldn’t people be producing even more music than before? Shouldn’t that make musicians even more epic?

These are the questions that come to mind when I find someone like Tino Rossi. This French crooner recorded over a hundred records and popped up in more than 25 movies during his career. According to Wikipedia, he is the second most popular person to come from Corsica, second only to Napoleon Boneparte. Bruce Springsteen is up to about 25 albums over 37 years. Elvis had the best chance, with 52 albums in 17 years, but we rarely see the sheer volume of work we see from past artists, and that fascinates me.

Sociological rant aside, enjoy this chanson from the past, “Mia Piccolina” from Tino Rossi.

I don’t really have too many nice things to say about either of these artists, but what’s way more interesting is the album this is off of. Dark Was The Night is a compilation released to benefit the Red Hot Organization, “dedicated to fighting AIDS through pop culture”, and the album has a very impressive line up. It features tracks from The Decemberists, Sufjan Stevens, Andrew Bird, My Morning Jacket, Yo La Tengo, Arcade Fire, and others, but equally as seductive are the collaborative tracks. Dirty Projectors with David Byrne? Cat Power & Dirty Delta Blues? Conor Oberst (of Bright Eyes) and Gillian Welch?!!? An impressive compilation album in my book.

USA and Canada shake hands in this track from Brooklyn-based Grizzly Bear and Alberta, Canada’s waif popstress Feist, “Service Bell”, but really, you’ll want to check out the full 2-disc set though, if you get the chance.

Last night I saw a fascinating documentary on The Manhattan Project—the real Manhattan Project. “The Moment In Time: The Manhattan Project”, created for the Local Legacies Project of the US Library of Congress, took a stroll down atomic memory lane, from the fear and uncertainty in the beginning of WWII to the first tests in New Mexico, and on to the opinions of the scientists involved after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Though it wasn’t a big budget documentary, it was absolutely fascinating, and can be seen in it’s entirety online at UCTV from the University of California here.

However with this song, serendipity strikes twice! Tom Glazer & Dottie Evans recorded three albums in a six-album series called Singing Science Records, perhaps most famous for “Why Does The Sun Shine?”, later covered by They Might Be Giants (who, incidentally, were no doubt inspired by this set to create their own educational discs such as Here Come the A-B-C’s and Here Comes Science). This particular track, off of Energy Songs, highlights key moments in atomic energy history, almost a musical accompaniment to the Manhattan Project documentary. The song itself seems eerily upbeat though, in wake of having seen the film, but it includes a redeeming ominous message at the end, having been recorded about 15 years after the bombings in Japan.

The second odd case of serendipity here is that in my research I discovered that Tom Glazer moved to Washington DC early on, began working at the Library of Congress, and actually worked with none other than Alan Lomax! His work with American folk music was a great influence on him, and ultimately jump-started his musical career.

Anyhow, if you’re not up to speed on your history of atomic energy, feel free to play this one over and over until it all sinks in. When I first found these, a Google search for “Singing Science Records” pulled up only one page, but it seems that in the last few years, these out-of-print gems have been “discovered”. The original page is no longer around, and the resourceful can find more tracks from the series online, but for now, here, enjoy “Thumbnail Sketch of Atomic Energy”:

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but I count myself extremely fortunate to have gone to a school that had a fantastic sound & image library, full of vinyls spanning the 20th century. I grew up listening to “oldies”, hip hop, pop and alternative, but I had absolutely no idea what lay out there in the unheard musical genres of the world.

Today’s pick comes from the Alan Lomax collection. Alan Lomax was an ethnomusicologist and field recorder who travelled the globe, recording thousands of songs covering an incredible array of styles, sounds, and nationalities. This particular song was recorded some time in the 1960′s near Virginia’s eastern shore, but I’m not sure exactly what album it’s from, as his work has been re-issued a few different ways over the years. Maybe “Voices from the American South” off Rounder Records.

There’s something simple and pure about this song, and it’s rich harmonies are like a relaxing massage on my ears, the ginger to cleanse my ear-palette before sampling another bite of delicious music. Give a listen and see if it does the same for you!

Todays cream of the crop was by far this Bollywood number from K3G (or Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham for the uninitiated), and I figured why simply stream the audio when instead I can take this opportunity to infuse a little bit of Bollywood sensibility into your day?

K3G is one of the modern classics of Bollywood, and the cast is pretty much like the Indian version of that “WTF??” action movie that’s coming out this summer, starring pretty much everyone who’s ever blown anything up before. Except with more music, and dancing, and is, I’m guessing, a whole lot more interesting. The stars include Shahrukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, and Kajol, who are kind of like the Bollywood equivalents of Brad Pitt, Sean Connery, and… Kajol. I could go on about this one, but I’ll let you jump on over to Wikipedia to read more about it. If you haven’t seen it, you should probably clear off a good couple of hours one day soon and check it out.

No audio today, just the Youtube video above for you to sit back and enjoy Bole Chudiyan from Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham!

Hey you watch Reno 911, right? You know Wiegel… well her real name is Kerri Kenney-Silver, and she’s also a part of the legendary comedy troupe The State, of MTV fame. You’ve probably seen her in everything else anyone in The State has ever been in, but what you may not have known is that, once upon a time, in the grunge heyday of the 1990′s, she actually had A BAND.

That band was called Cake Like, and though today, what with the tradition of comedy musical acts such as Adam Sandler, Flight of the Conchords and the like, you might expect it to be something similar, and indeed it is not. Cake Like was 100% authentic all-girl indie 1990′s alternative alright, and today’s pick from the unheard archives demonstrates that nicely. I present to you “My Guy”, off of Cake Like’s third and final album, Goodbye, So What?

One fine Spring day up in Olympia, my housemate and I found a flier for one of the many shows that went on seemingly every day in town. It said something to the effect of “Come to this address and bring cookies” and listed off some bands. We had cookies, and we wanted to enjoy some of Olympia’s finest music, so we headed to the address on the flier, ears at the ready.

We were a little surprised when we ended up smack dab in the middle of a residential neighborhood. It was quiet, and there weren’t any signs, and we wondered if the flier we had was old or something… but like a beacon of light, we saw a group of hipsters walking in the same direction, and decided to follow. (A note about hipsters in the Pacific Northwest: They’re not nearly as annoying as the ones you might find anywhere else in the US. They have a purity to them.)

Long story short, and cookies traded for admittance, we ended up in the backyard of Olympia-based artist Nikki McClure, who was hosting a mid-day show for everyone to enjoy. I forget who all was playing… I think it was The Microphones, someone else, and today’s featured artist, Thanksgiving, from Portland. He was excellently low-fi, and his performance had heart, and charm that wooed us all.

It was an incredibly surreal experience, being in the backyard of one of the papercut goddesses of our modern time, lounging in the grass next to Olympia icon Calvin Johnson, everyone laying down enjoying live music. I don’t know if the spirit of the moment is conveyed through this recorded version of We Can Be Bad, but it was above all today’s top Unheard Song.

Oh wow. Ok so today was easy. I’m sorry to have done two thrift store finds in a row, but the fact that a single track of the this album had gone unheard baffles me.

For a while I was in to what is commonly known as “exotica“. You know, Martin Denny, Les Baxter, Esquivel… like the music at the beginning of Pee Wee’s Playhouse. The soundtrack to the The Enchanted Tiki Room at Disneyland. Things like that. In my travels, I came across this gem, and what’s even better than the sultry, South Pacific, tropical majesty of it all is the story behind the man himself.

Eden Ahbez was a hippie. I know, you’re looking at the picture like “Uh, thanks for the update, Captain Obvious”, but no, I mean he was the prototypical hippie. We’re talking 1941 here (though hippie roots go back even further). Actually, I should call him eden ahbez—lowercase—because he felt that “only God was worthy of capitalization”. He ran with “The Nature Boys” who lived in the canyons of Los Angeles, who were raw foodists. Take that, Height/Ashbury!

Though he only put out one full album (a second was released posthumously), his life and work were extremely influential, so without further ado, I give you the title track from Eden’s Island: