Indie Squid Kid

Halloween is nearly over, but I think I have time to squeeze in one last post. In case you haven’t noticed, I really like Halloween, and one of my favorite things about the holiday is that it gives me an excuse to make compilations of music about Halloween-themed topics such as horror, death, blood, black magic, and monsters. I try to make at least one a year, and there are eight of them so far. I’m constantly on the look out for new songs, and fortunately I see no signs that I will run out of material for new compilations any time soon! In this year’s mix I was pleased to include a small aquatic-themed section:

• Into the Water by Dethklok
• She-Devils of the Deep by Future Bible Heroes
• The Octopus Is Gonna Get You…Dad by Boss The Big Bit
• Creature From The Black Lagoon by The Happy, Happy Jihads

I also do a Halloween music show every year on my podcast. Today’s Halloween show is the fist episode of Random Signal I’ve recorded since June. I tell myself that this temporary hiatus is because of Kid Indie Kid Squid, but the fact that I started doing daily posts on this blog might also have something to do with it…

logo designed by Leah Riley

In theory, Random Signal is produced bi-monthly (on average) and I either host the show solo or with my wife Ryn Nasser. I usually describe the podcast as equal parts geek talk and indie rock—we talk about comics, movies, TV, books, cephalopods, etc., and each show usually features 3-5 songs by independent musicians. I actually do two Halloween-themed shows every year. One on Halloween proper, and one in April on tax day, which I have declared to be the holiday of Aprilween.

I now want to switch gears entirely and talk about cephalopod-themed jack-o-lanterns. I don’t know exactly why, but there seems to be a strong correlation between cephalopod appreciation and artistic talent (although I seem to buck that particular trend). Case-in-point, the following awesome jack-o-lanterns:

Ninja Squid! by Vicious Bits

Vampire Octopus by alexfiles

Cthulhu by Sketchy-Stories

Cthulhu by timailius

And in case you were wondering, our jack-o-lantern this year was sort of a goblin-bat kind of thing…not a cephalopod at all. I’m not completely single-minded!

Underwater Land is a CD of marine-themed children’s songs, and it was Shel Silverstein’s last musical project before his death in 1999.  The Silverstein estate has finally released the album as both a CD and MP3 download, and both can be purchased from the Underwater Land project website, where you can also hear samples of several of the songs. The CD comes with a 32 page booklet featuring the lyrics of all 17 songs and previously unpublished Silverstein illustrations, and the download comes with a PDF version.

Underwater Land contains two cephalopod-themed songs: “Cuttlefish” and “Captain Octopus.” On the website you can hear a sample of “Captain Octopus” which is about all the different things an eight-armed sailor could do at once. Here’s excerpt of the lyrics…

And he can…

Raise the flag,

And paint the mast,

And lower the boom,

And polish the brass,

Squeeze the Juice,

And shine the boots,

And iron the captain’s sailor suit,

And still have one hand free

To give a salute.

(Via BoingBoing)

I totally forgot about this animated sequence from Bedknobs and Broomsticks (Disney, 1971)! Not only do we get a short octopus drum solo, but we also see why one should never play poker with a cephalopod.

Via Matt’s Marine Music Medley

From Saturday Morning Central (Via BoingBoing)

Update: I just realized this is post #100. Go me!

I know, I know. Music Week was last week, but somehow I ended up being too busy over the weekend for my last planned post. So, here is that final straggler—three of my favorite squid album covers.

Brooklyn’s favorite sons (sorry JoCo, but the Johns have this one!) make their second Music Week appearance. (The first being their tentacular collaborations with Hine Mizushima.)

For my money, TMBG’s fourth studio album, Apollo 18 (1992, Elektra Records),  is the mark to beat when it comes to squid-themed album art. What’s more awesome than Architeuthis dux vs Physeter macrocephalus? That same fight…IN SPACE!

The Gourds are a honky-tonkin’ alt-country band from Austin, TX, and their album Noble Creatures (2007, Yep Rock Records/Redeye) could almost be the sequel to Apollo 18—if the cover art is any indication. The Giant Squid, having either defeated or escaped from the Sperm Whale, now faces down a longboat full of lunar whalers! Man, that Space Squid is having a bad day!

Finally, we have To the Bottom of the Sea (2008, Projekt Records) by wacky Goth troubador Voltaire. No Space Squid this time…unless he has followed the whalers back to their ship to exact his final, horrible revenge. The title track mentions a “She-Kraken,” so Voltaire gets points for actually including a cephalopod in his squid-covered album! (Shout out to Kevin Z. at Deep-Sea News for posting this one first.)

Today’s Music Week (and Flickr Friday) entry is a gorgeous handmade cephalopod-themed banjo ukulele by Michelanious.

Here’s the first image I saw (via Dinosaurs and Robots), but one photo is not enough! There is so much cool detail here, that I would be remiss if I didn’t share the entire set.

Timothy Sellers is the core of Artichoke, a band from Highland Park, California which specializes in quirky, rollicking rock music about science and nature. This year saw the release of 26 Animals, an alphabetic assemblage of children’s tunes about various denizens of the animal kingdom. The letter “O,” as you have by now no doubt surmised, is for “Octopus,” and the song celebrates this cephalopod’s unique talent for evasion. A few other marine invertebrates are featured on the album: “J” for “Jellyfish” and “U” for “Sea Urchin.”

The CD is available on its own, or paired with a fully illustrated songbook featuring original watercolor paintings of each animal alongside the lyrics and guitar chords for each song. You can buy it directly from the band at www.artichoketheband.com, as well as at CD Baby. You can also download it from iTunes and Emusic.

While we are on the subject of awesome alphabetical aural acquisitions, I also highly recommend Artichoke’s 26 Scientists Volume 1 (Anning-Malthus) and Volume 2 (Newton-Zeno).

Yo La Tengo are Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley, and James McNew. Not only are they Hoboken’s most famous indie-rock trio, but they are also the one of the most prolific bands in the genre, releasing more than 15 albums since 1984. In 2001 they composed an instrumental score for eight aquatic-themed short documentary films by Jean Painlevé. Called “The Sounds of Science,” the complete score was first performed live at the 2001 San Fransisco Film Festival. In 2002, it was released as a CD called The Sounds of the Sounds of Science.

Clocking in at just under 12 minutes, “The Love Life of the Octopus” is the hypnotic sixth track on the album. It was written to accompany Painlevé’s Amours de la pieuvre (1965), and it is available as a free full-lenth MP3 download at www.yolatengo.com, where you can also hear samples of the other 7 tracks. (The CD might also still be available from their website, but the store is currently down for repairs.)

This spring Criterion Collection released Science is Fiction: 23 Films of Jean Painlevé, a 3 disc box set with special features that include a live performance of “The Sounds of Science” score by Yo La Tengo. Buy it on Amazon.com.

CD tray art by Jim Woodring

“Machine & Squid” is a T-shirt designed for They Might Be Giants by artist Hine [hee-neh] Mizushima. Here are photos posted by the artist herself on Flickr.

(front)

(back)

The shirt seems to only be available on the TMBG website as part of the Super Value and Enormo-Bundles. I plan to see them live in Raleigh next month, so I hope they sell it at their shows as well!

Hine also animated this excellent video for “With the Dark” from They Might Be Giant’s 2007 album The Else.

John and John vs a Giant Squid! Who will prevail?

See more of Hine’s art at her Esty shop!

Welcome to Music Week! This week I will look at some of my favorite songs made for, about, and by cephalopods. (OK, maybe not by cephalopods, but you never can tell…)

We begin with “I Crush Everything” by the mighty Jonathan Coulton. If you haven’t heard of Jonathan Coulton (or JoCo, as he is known to his fans), he is a feral mountain man from the wilds of Brooklyn, NY. He specializes in a brainy brand of folk-pop that is sometimes tragic, often hilarious, and always brilliant.

“I Crush Everything” is a bitter love song of a Giant Squid that longs to embrace the object of his affection. Sadly, he cannot because, as the title suggests, he crushes everything. Here’s a sample of the lyrics…

Did the stars come out? Did the world spin round?
Does it matter that much when you’re ten miles down?
And in the light that filters down
Into my giant yellow eye
I can see the sails unfolding
Stretching white against the sky and I forgive them
I forgive and I let go

Click here for the complete lyrics, fan art, and more!

http://thailur.deviantart.com

“I Crush Everything” is originally from Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow, JoCo’s epic five song EP. Unfortunately, the CD is out of print at the time of this writing, but it is available for download on www.jonathancoulton.com and iTunes. It is also part of last year’s JoCo Looks Back compillation, available at CD Baby and Emusic.