Your Daily Song Fix

In honor of the New Orleans Jazz Festival this past weekend, here is a New Orleans classic originally written by James “Sugar Boy” Crawford.

You know the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin but The Flamin’ Groovies may have been crafting the most timeless music in San Francisco during the Age of Aquarius.  This song from 1970’s Flamingo hooks you immediately and pounds the rock fury home from beginning to end.  The guitar solo routinely makes a fool of me while I try the fingering in my car.

SPN

Oh and look, Incubus has a cover of this song. Thanks for the hat tip, Google video! Tell the high-schoolers from 2003 about that one, but if you are looking for a foolish, feel-good flashback, the original “Let’s Get Crazy” is a good place to start. This track by Prince & The Revolution was obviously recorded at the dawn of the drum machine, but it’s still a good one to bring to an 80s party attended by people you don’t entirely hate.

Practice your two-step too, because this song will have all the wasted people in the room bouncing like a beach ball. “Shoot the jumper. Shoot it.”

This song first appeared in 1969 and did not receive much critical acclaim. Recently, however, the English rock band, The Heavy, have gained success sampling the horn lines from this tune with their song “How You Like Me Now?” That song appeared most recently in a KIA commercial that aired during the Superbowl. The Heavy song is great, but it is always nice to see where the original comes from. I dare you not to dance to this one.

“When you feel down and out, sing a song!”  It’s hard to not do just that listening to this up-beat, happy-go-lucky funk melody.  Earth, Wind & Fire is the ultimate funk-pop band.  Their hit “Sing a Song” reached #5 on the U.S. Billboard Charts in 1976 and it’s regarded as one of the band’s most popular songs.  Founded in 1969 by Maurice White, EWF has sold over 90 million albums and enjoy continued success, performing songs to this day.

Falling Somewhere in the Venn Diagram intersection of soul, doo-wop and motown music, the group of white boyz known as Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels definitely sounds more enthusiastic than they look playing “Jenny Take a Ride” in this Swingin’ Time clip. But the groove is rock solid, the chorus feel-good, and the organs help accent the classic “wall of sound” approach. Plus you get to hear Ryder before his solo career, which extends all the way to 2009.

Speaking of recent times, the prolific Ryder sounds pretty peeved he’s not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Ryder: “There’s six members on the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame board of directors and three of those men are my enemies. So what are my chances of getting in there?”). How bout some Rust Belt love for Ryder, Cleveland?

Yusuf Islam, commonly known by his former stage name Cat Stevens, is a British singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, educator, philanthropist, and prominent convert to Islam.

His early 1970s albums Tea for the Tillerman and Teaser and the Firecat went Triple Platinum in the United States. His album Catch Bull at Four sold half a million copies in the first two weeks of release and was Billboard’s number-one LP for three consecutive weeks. He has also earned two ASCAP songwriting awards in consecutive years, for “The First Cut Is the Deepest”, which has been a hit single for four different artists.

Cat Stevens converted to Islam at the height of his fame in December, 1977, and adopted his Muslim name, Yusuf Islam, the following year. In 1979, he left his music career to devote himself to educational and philanthropic causes in the Muslim community. He has been given several awards for his work in promoting peace in the world, including 2003’s World Award, the 2004 Man for Peace Award and the 2007 Mediterranean Prize for Peace. In 2006, he returned to pop music under the name Yusuf, with his first album of new pop songs in 28 years, entitled An Other Cup. His newest album, Roadsinger, was released on May 5, 2009.

Happy Friday! It’s time to get pumped up for a great weekend. We are trying something new this week. Your Daily Song Fix will be bringing you three links that we find amazing or hilarious. We live and breathe the internet and technology so be sure to check out these links to hear about things that no one else delivers. Of course we will still be posting a song, so you’ll get your fix.

1. Please Rob Me is a hilarious but scary website that crawls Twitter to figure out when people tweet out that they won’t be home (giving you the optimal chance to rob them). The intentions are good – to raise awareness about what information you should not be sharing with the public.

2. Are you interested in starting your own business? Are you seeking information on a certain topic? Mixergy.com is where you want to be. In Andrew Warner’s words – “Imagine having a mix of experienced mentors teaching you their expertise. That’s my mission with Mixergy.com.” Andrew asks the best interview questions I have seen …it’s almost like he is reading your mind.

3. A funny Dave Chappelle and Martin Lawrence clip that most people haven’t seen:

And finally, enjoy your daily song fix!