Tag: Donna the Buffalo

Random Shuffle – KC and the Sunshine Band, Arrested Development, John Prine, Elton John, & Donna The Buffalo

“(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty” – KC and the Sunshine Band From The Best of KC and the Sunshine Band

Truth be told, if the story comes out, I’m really not a fan of dance music. Disco, hip hop, techno, and rave music all get a collective ‘meh’ from my bones. Maybe it’s that I’m a middle-aged white boy with a Church of Christ background (where dancing is a sin) but the appeal of the dance club is completely lost on me. The loud music, the smoke, and the embarrassment of having to shake my hips in rhythm just turn me off from the whole scene. This being true, the music involved has never really done anything for me, either.

There are a few exceptions. “Shake Your Booty” is one of them. It has enough infectious pop grooves in it to make a grandma shake. It also reminds me of a Simpsons clip show where they play this song along with a montage of all the Simpsons’ nudity from previous episodes. Hilarious stuff.

The booty shake of the music isn’t enough to get me out on the dance floor mind you. If played in public, I might jiggle my buns for the laugh effect, but then I’d keep myself firmly rooted in standing-ness, or sit-down-ness and just sing along. If the mood struck me, and I was feeling particularly frisky, I might get down a little in the privacy of my own home. The problem then comes back to my non dancing background and any attempt at hip movements from this old body usually results in laughter from my wife.

“Tennessee” – Arrested Development
From 3 Years 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life of…

I grew up in the 80’s. My musical sensibilities were developed in the early 90’s. I don’t like dance music. Rap and hip hop mean MC Hammer, Young MC, and Vanilla Ice to me. I came of age musically at a time when radio wasn’t dominated by hip-hop acts. This isn’t really to diss the genre of music, I just don’t get it. I see guys I work with, a good 5-10 years younger than me completely engaged with rap artists. I suspect if I had been born a few years later, I too would have at least some existence with this culture. As it is, what I know of it comes from a period of time when it was marginalized as a novelty. Hammer and Vanilla were not real artists, they were mocking the true performers. They were circus performers, acceptable to the mainstream audience at a time when they didn’t know what to do with hardcore artists.

Even so, I think Arrested Development put out some dang good music for the time. “Tennessee” along with “People Everyday” stands up to the best music in my collection. They have just as much in common with what is now termed “Americana” as they do with rap. They threw in fat beats along with a folksy, country twang.

I know I’m no longer hip. My musical universe is so outside the popular or even hip world it would make me sad if I cared. I don’t know where Arrested Development fares amongst the kids today and their Eminems and Tupacs. What I do know is “Tennessee” is a great freaking song, no matter what genre you put it in.

“Fish and Whistle” – John Prine
From Souvenirs

Souvenirs is Prine’s album full of cover songs, except that he’s covering himself. Essentially he wrote a whole bunch of beautiful songs as a young man, but as an older man, he felt he could do better. Sometimes he’s right, other times he sounds pretty much like he did when he was younger.

For “Fish and Whistle” I can’t make any proclamation, for I’ve never heard the original. But I must say this version is a treasure. Prine’s voice has aged gracefully over the years. It is never something you would call beautiful, but now the ruggedness has been toned down by something sounding suspiciously like wisdom. His lyrics have always been beyond his years, and now his voice has caught up to that.

The music here is lilting, catchy, and sunny. Honestly, I have no idea what the lyrics mean. They sound like Prine is making some kind of joke that I just don’t get, or being cynical about religion without being too hateful about it. Either way, it’s fun to sing along even if I don’t know what I’m saying.

“Candle in the Wind (acoustic version)” – Elton John
From Yellow Brick Road

Elton John completely ruined this song for me with his Princess Diana tribute. I was never mesmerized by the Princess in life or death. I didn’t wish her any harm, and she seemed to have done some good in this world, but she lived in a world I just wasn’t particularly interested in. John changing his lyrics to lionize her, however honest and heartfelt, always seemed like a cheap way to make a buck.

This version begins to sway my feelings back. It is an acoustic version with a guitar playing the piano parts. It seems more stripped down, more honest. Like it has torn the exuberant, Liberace Elton away from the honest songwriter.

It is a beautiful, heart-tearing version of a song I’m happy to relive again.

“Conscious Evolution” – Donna the Buffalo
From Live from the American Ballroom

I must say the time I caught this band live here in Bloomington it was a much better show than what I hear from this live album. Maybe it was that I was but ten feet from the band, or maybe it was the pretty girls dancing around me, but that show was so sweeeet, where this disk is a good deal of fun, but nothing mind-blowing.

This song has a good deal of verve to it. They get out there a little bit with a revolution groove that jiggles my innards. There is a curviness to the guitar that completely melts my inner sanctum.

Halfway through it morphs into “Working on a Building” an old spiritual that fits perfectly into their root’s musical background and their own spiritual lyrics.

Editor’s Note: I couldn’t find a Youtube clip of the live version of the song I’m writing about here, so I found a different one.

Random Shuffle (05/15/06) – Donna the Buffalo, Don McLean, Rolling Stones, Nivana, & Leftover Salmon

donna the buffalo

“River of Gold” – Donna the Buffalo
from Donna the Buffalo

I caught these guys live at the Lotus Festival here in Bloomington a few years back. They played an intimate show literally under a tent. I was way up close whirling and twirling my head off. My lovely wife was enjoying the music, but not being really familiar with their songs was less enthusiastic than myself. We were very close to the speakers and the sheer volume started to get to her, so she backed away and hit the far end of the tent.

Enjoying myself too much I let her go while I stayed. A dumb move for a married man, I know, but darn these guys were flippin’ fantastic, and I wasn’t about to give up my good seat just to please my wife. And besides, she’ll get over it, right?

Turns out, at the end of the show, she wasn’t mad at me for not joining her, she was mad at me for dancing too close to some groovy hippy chick. Most of us at the front were doing what I call the white man’s groove which consists of lots of short step hops, maybe a twirl or two, and the flailing of arms like drunken chickens in a coup. While doing this, many of us get kind of entwined and bump into each other on accident.

Apparently, I was grooving too close to an attractive girl. I can’t say that I didn’t notice this girl, or didn’t enjoy being in close proximity, I am male and human after all. However, I really was way more into the music, than the girl. Come on, I’m happily married, and I know my wife is somewhere behind me, probably already mad at me. No chance I’m going to try anything.

She stayed mad for a few days, and it was all worth it. Being that close to one of the best bands playing music today was so totally worth a little married madness that I’d do it again.

Donna the Buffalo is a hard band to describe. They have influences from reggae, ska, classic rock, folk, and old country music. They play the type of music that I’d play if I played music. It is fun. It’s music to groove to, to get up and dance to, to close your eyes and get off to. The lyrics are lightly political without sounding preachy or political.

“River of Gold” is a great bouncy tune with a chorus to shout along to.

“I want the river to rock
I want the river to roll
I am willing to lose complete control.”

Tell me that’s not something to get lost in while chanting with a thousand other fans.

don mclean tapestry

“And I Love You So” – Don McLean
from Tapestry

One of a handful of songs that makes me sit down and listen, no matter where I am or what I am doing. It is a song that can make me weep, and always makes me tearful with remembrances. Funny thing for a love song to do.

Though it is a delicate love song, there are lines about loneliness that remind me of times in my own life when I was alone. I listened to this song a great deal towards the end of my college career when the course of my life was unclear and when there was no true love in sight. When Don sings of knowing “how lonely life can be” I feel that loneliness somewhere deep inside. Even now, while happily married I can still remember all those lonely nights through my life and I must take pause.

rolling stones let it bleed “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” – The Rolling Stones
from Let it Bleed

This song reminds me of two things vividly; the opening scene to The Big Chill of course, but also of a night sitting in a friend’s dorm room.

The friend in question made a comp tape with what he called the “Big Three.” It included “Magic Carpet Ride” by Steppenwolf, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and “Inagaddadavida” by Iron Butterfly. Late one night he lit some candles, burned some incense, turned off the lights, and cranked it up. A bunch of us boys were in there, as we always were hanging out and talking about everything and nothing at the same time. The tunes fell out like wine and we had a great, great time.

I’m not sure what the neighbors thought, what with the ten-minute drum solo, but man we sure dug it. I mostly remember the Iron Butterfly tune and its psychedelic craziness, but the Stones song is what remains in my music collection. The funny thing about that version was that my friend had taped it off the radio, so the first few seconds consisted of some annoying DJ chattering over the opening organ bits. But the rest was all rabid rock and roll.

What a night it was.

nirvana nevermind “Drain You” – Nirvanafrom Nevermind

Anytime I think of Nirvana now, I think of a lovely young lass I met at some summer camp way back when. It was shortly after Cobain had killed himself and the uncertainty of everything was still in the air. I was a senior in high school and uncertainty was always in the air, but after the icon of my generation (or my life at least) whacked himself things were even more in turmoil. This maiden and I stumbled upon a conversation at the side of an auditorium where some uninteresting musical group was singing. She likes my hair (it was long and not so receding back then) I liked her…well I just liked her, she was all girl, and I liked girls.

She had big scars up and down her arm, where she had cut herself over the deal with Kurt Cobain. Written things like “Kurt Lives Forever” into her skin. I dug the crap out of Nirvana, but not enough to ever carve anything into my body. Like many girls of her age and persuasion, I suppose she was just trying to feel something, but at the time all I could think about was “cool.” Well maybe not cool, but my brainwaves weren’t far beyond anything but hormones.

I’m older now, and while I appreciate the intensity of youth, and the historical significance of Nirvana, my ears prefer much gentler things these days. Once in a while I find some old punk/metal records and play them loud whilst driving down the road. But mostly I leave the angst to the kids these days.

o cracker where art thou “Low” – Cracker and Leftover Salmon
from O’Cracker, Where Art Thou?

An odd, interesting mix to leave this week’s Random Shuffle. Leftover Salmon teamed up with Mark Lowry of Cracker fame in a bluegrass mixing of some of Cracker’s songs. It works in more ways than it has any right to. Their version of “Low” is one of the exceptions. The original has a deep foreboding sound to it that just can’t be conjured with a banjo.

Leftover Salmon can create panoplies of musical gyrations, but here they leave too much out. There isn’t enough going on musically to keep my interest. In the final coda, all the instruments come out, and it becomes something to listen to, but by that point, I’ve already tuned out or hit forward.