When I clicked on the email just now from my pal Chris Campion that was titled “Left Banke reform,” I duly hit “play” on the YouTube clip not really expecting much from a bunch of guys pushing 70, if not well past it.

Boy was I surprised and completely and utterly wowed by how gorgeous this is. Watch the “baroque pop” vocal group of the Sixties (best known for their hit “Walk Away Renee”) collaborating with the NYU All University Choir as the special guests at their “Drama Cantorum” performance on December 10, 2011.

This choral version of their “Desiree” number is simply breathtaking. Lush. Polyphonic Spree eat your hearts out.

Seriously, do check it out, it’s practically guaranteed to improve your day at least a little bit.
 

 
Bonus: Rickie Lee Jones doing a stunning cover of “Walk Away Renee” from her 1982 Girl at Her Volcano EP.
 

 
Via Chris Campion/David Arnoff

 
Beth Gibbons, vocalist of both Portishead and Rustin Man, turns 46 today. Here’s to one of the best, most soulful, female voices English music has ever produced. After the jump a selection of her best clips, but let’s start with this haunting cover of the Velvet Underground:

Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man “Candy Says”
 

 
Thanks to Grizz Gom Jabbar Robinson.
 
After the Jump, videos for “L’Annulaire”, “The Rip” and “Glory Box” (live)...

Well, it’s certainly an improvement over some of the other outfits he wore that decade…

Although there is much debate about when the Rolling Stones “peaked” or what their last decent album was—I still loved Goat’s Head Soup, thought It’s Only Rock & Roll was okay and felt the same about Black & Blue. I drew the line at Some Girls. You may feel differently—having said that, music aside, what about Mick’s clothes from about 1970 onward?

His fashions started going downhill a lot earlier than the music did.

For a guy who dressed so damned cool in the 60s, by the time this short live show was shot at London’s famed Marquee Club in 1971, Jagger’s much-vaunted fashion sense had clearly turned to shite. The guy who looked so spooky and satanic in the Uncle Sam top hat and cape get-up during the 1969 tour was now wearing a glittery mid-drift “top” with a sideways-cocked, multi-colored silk baseball cap???

Imagine what the rest of them thought when they realized they had to go onstage with this git dressed like this… It’s a great set, Mick Jagger just looks like a bit of a dork here.

Setlist:
Live With Me, Dead Flowers, I Got The Blues, Let It Rock, Midnight Rambler, (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, Bitch, Brown Sugar.
 

 
I’d love to give credit, but I don’t know who made this.

(source: KMFW)

3iO’s Robert Mitchell
 
Music that has a sense of humor tends to get a hard time among people who consider themselves “serious” music fans. Why is this? Is it because music itself has to be seen to be serious? That the music makers have to mean it (maaan) and it’s impossible to wear your heart on your sleeve if it’s matched by a raised eyebrow and a smirk?

3iO are an acoustic jazz band who last year released an album called Back To New Roots, which features jazz-style covers of a host of big dance tunes from the last 15 years. LOL!! Right? Or is this an acceptable style of guffaw on a par with coffee table favourites Nouvelle Vague? Here’s a bit of info on the band via the Soundcloud page of their excellently named record label Hell Yeah: 

Let’s keep it simple, this dance meets jazz concept started as a joke: take a bunch of friends, discover that they are highly talented jazz musicians and propose them to do something a bit different, play and perform your favourite E-dance / alternative hits / chill out timeless classics into their contemporary jazz style…. shake it as it was your cocktail of choice and you have Serotonin Fuelled Jazz Covers.

3iO are Richard Maggioni (piano), Juan Manuel Moretti (double bass) Matteo Giordani (drums), they are not newcomers in the italian jazz circuit, they have already two albums on their back and with BACK TO NEW ROOTS they challenge themself with a new repertoire: Fat Boy Slim, Groove Armada, Chemical Brothers, Royskopp, Underworld, Spiller, DJ Shadow… just as you never heard them before.

So is this “serious” music? Or is it just a big joke that can be easily dismissed as not being worthy of much attention? While there is definitely a smirking knowingness about this project, the lol-factor is not all that great and I think some of this album actually sounds really good. But I will leave it up to you to decide whether this is “real” music or not (bearing in mind that we’re big fans of both Zappa and Sparks here, two acts who feel no fear of adding humor to their work): 
 
3iO “Right Here Right Now” (original by Fat Boy Slim)
 

 
 
3iO “Born Slippy (nuxx)” (original by Underworld)
 

 
 
3iO “Organ Donor” (original by DJ Shadow)
 

 
 
You can hear (and purchase) 3iO’s album Back To New Roots in full here.

Thanks Tara!

 
A selection of pop’s bold in beautiful in drag.
 

Robert Plant and Roy Harper.
 

Annie Lennox in “Who’s That Girl?”
 
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

 
More beautiful people after the jump…
 

 
The world’s forgotten boy wielding his Hoover.

I can totally relate, I love vacuuming too!

(photo via Gothamist)

 
Keith Emerson and The Nice performing a wild live version of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim’s “America” from West Side Story. “America” was the second single from The Nice, released in 1968 on Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham’s Immediate Records..

This is the earliest color live footage that exists of the band, a clip from the Swiss television program, Hits a GoGo. Emerson does that thing with the knives stabbing his keyboard that he continued to do onstage with Emerson, Lake & Palmer. In the interview afterwards with co-hosts Suzanne Doucet and Hardy Hepp, Emerson gets asked “what’s with the knives?” Aside from the practical (he can hold down notes with the knives and play other things) and that it looks really cool, he says they’re symbolic of the violence and assassinations gripping America that year. In a protest against the war in Vietnam, Emerson once burned the American flag onstage during this number.

Emerson would often embellish the tune with melodies heard in Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” and Dave Brubeck’s jazz standard, “Blue Rondo ala Turk.”
 

 
Sparks perform a selection of excellent songs on From The Basement, in 2009.

The tracks in no particular order are:

“Propaganda” / “At Home, At Work, At Play”
“I Can’t Believe That you Would Fall (For All the Crap in this Song)”
“Good Morning”
“Strange Animal”
 

 
More joy from Sparks, after the jump…
 

 
Still wondering what (if any) New Year Resolutions to make? Well, for inspiration take a peek at Woody Guthrie’s “New Years Rulin’s” for 1943, found in one of his journals dated January 31st, 1942.

1. WORK MORE AND BETTER
2.  WORK BY A SCHEDULE
3.  WASH TEETH IF ANY
4.  SHAVE
5. TAKE BATH
6. EAT GOOD - FRUIT - VEGETABLES - MILK
7. DRINK VERY SCANT IF ANY
8. WRITE A SONG A DAY
9. WEAR CLEAN CLOTHES - LOOK GOOD
10. SHINE SHOES
11. CHANGE SOCKS
12. CHANGE BED CLOTHES OFTEN
13. READ LOTS GOOD BOOKS
14. LISTEN TO RADIO A LOT
15. LEARN PEOPLE BETTER
16. KEEP RANCHO CLEAN
17. DONT GET LONESOME
18. STAY GLAD
19. KEEP HOPING MACHINE RUNNING
20. DREAM GOOD
21. BANK ALL EXTRA MONEY
22. SAVE DOUGH
23. HAVE COMPANY BUT DONT WASTE TIME
24. SEND MARY AND THE KIDS MONEY
25. PLAY AND SING GOOD
26. DANCE BETTER
27. HELP WIN WAR - BEAT FASCISM
28. LOVE MAMA
29. LOVE PAPA
30. LOVE PETE
31. LOVE EVERYBODY
32. MAKE UP YOUR MIND
33. WAKE UP AND FIGHT

 

 
See the full page here. And here’s Woody singing “All You Fascists Bound To Lose”.
 

 
With thanks to Ivana Aleksic