Hammond organ recital

Mr Hammond is looking for sponsors for his 24-hour (church) organ marathon (with webcam) next Tuesday at St Edmund’s (that’s the king), Northwood, Middlesex. Lohengrin is somewhere after three in the morning, Italy at five, and fortunately there’s no Spanish repertoire. A month ago he was having the odd problem with Widor.

Realest fake Beatles

Homosexuallord Fields votes for Los Shakers from Montevideo. Scroll down the post for MP3s.

Tijuana Brass covers

Over at WFMU, probably the best music station in the world. Not much from this neck of the bosque, although they’ve got Los desechables, who I didn’t know, and the vile Eléctrica Dharma, who I do know and whose only merit is in having given rise to our freestyle pakrock outfit, Eléctrica Shoarma.

Occupational hazards of flamenco

No mention of heroin, but presumably it is only a matter of time before inspectors start banning players for risky rasgueado and closing all those nasty cellars lacking in natural light. Camarón might still be alive if he had been given a cubicle and regular coffee breaks.

My uncle Bumba from Kalumba dances rhumba (and he’s German)

Señor Coconut was a timely reminder to those who needed one that the best performers of Latin American music have always been Central Europeans. Here’s der Onkel Bumba as immortalised by the Comedian Harmonists: Their life made impossible by Mr Goebbels, half the Comedians ended up in the States, but an even stranger fate awaited…

Most popular musical number in Spain

This non-authentic version of Paquito chocolatero is by King Africa, who is, according to Wikipedia, actually kind of American, and John Major’s favourite artist to boot: Now an authentic version from Mike Oldfield, which doesn’t involve the mass simulation of anal sex popular down south: The next three favouritest tunes are also pasodobles, namely Viva…

Adam Aston singing Czerwone maki na Monte Cassino

One of the first times I played in public as a kid was at the local Polish club, and I remember trying to figure out what all these old folks were doing in this neighbourhood, amid numerous refugees from newer tyrannies in Asia and Africa and Latin America. After that it was a short conceptual…

For Ronaldo

Não é desgraça ser pobre, there ain’t no shame in being poor, and sometimes it’s better only being able to afford one tranny hooker. By Amália Rodrigues, who I only discovered the other day.

Der Engel

When I saw this first I briefly thought it was Montjuïc viewed from Maians Island, where Quixote first saw the sea. But the sun sets west, not south, and those are mountains in the background, not clouds. So it must be Italy, somewhere. Here’s the text.

Flatulent chief inspector publishes “Volatile peace. Talks on farting”

“I have in my mind the most masterly farts which, however, would be impossible to reproduce.” The farting policeman explains nevertheless how to perform the “Imperial”, the “Terminator” and the “Saturday Night”, which may or may not refer to the comparable artistic frustrations no doubt suffered by the admirable Mr Travolta.