Amanda covers Neil Gaiman

Sigh, I feel goofy constantly re-hashing stuff Neil Gaiman's linking to-- you should already be subscribed to his RSS feed anyway-- but lately I just can't help it, what with all this Amanda Palmer/Neil Gaiman/Ben Folds convergence.

From Photographer Kyle Cassidy's blog a few days ago:
"We got finished shooting at about 2:00 a.m. and we're sitting in the kitchen in Neil's apartment and he says something like "blah blah blah I was sitting next to Paris Hilton once blah blah blah the lounge song I wrote blah blah" and we were all like "the lounge song?! so he sang it for us. Three times! because we kept applauding and shouting bravo! It's hysterical and infectious and I can't get it out of my head -- and Amanda's like "Oh I am so covering that!" So you may hear it too. It's funtabulous."

And she did. Here's Amanda covering Neil Gaiman's I Google You from a show last night in L.A.:


Audio's about as okay as one can expect from a youtube video, but it may be the only version we ever hear! According to this setlist, at the same show she also covered Cologne, a song from Ben Folds' upcoming Way to Normal [EDIT: turns out she actually lip-synched to Ben's studio recording]. Hmmm, I need that bootleg!

Woody's Roundup

OK, so Cover Riddle #6 was dependent on being able to identify all the people in the pictures. Let's see...

Brent Spiner as Data in Star Trek

Paul Simon guest hosting Saturday Night Live

Kirsten Dunst in the title role of Marie Antoinette

Wallace Shawn as the voice of Rex in Toy Story

Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct

director Todd Field (In the Bedroom, Little Children) in Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut

Itzhak Perlman, famed violinist

Zach Braff on Scrubs

Lewis Black, actor/comedian

Lisa Marie in Mars Attacks!

David Blaine, um, "magician"

Sigourney Weaver in Aliens

And what do they all have in common? They all made their feature film debut in a Woody Allen film!

Maybe I'm just a nut for trivia, but I think that's remarkable. Let's go through that list again:

Brent Spiner as "Fan in Lobby" (Stardust Memories, 1980)

Paul Simon as "Tony Lacey" (Annie Hall, 1977)

Kirsten Dunst as "Lisa's Daughter", uncredited (New York Stories, 1989)

Wallace Shawn as "Jeremiah" (Manhattan, 1979)

Sharon Stone as "Pretty Girl on Train" (Stardust Memories, 1979)

Todd Field as "Crooner" (Radio Days, 1987)

Itzhak Perlman as Himself (Everyone Says I Love You, 1996)

Zach Braff as "Nick Lipton" (Manhattan Murder Mystery, 1993)

Lewis Black as "Paul" (Hannah and Her Sisters, 1986)

Lisa Marie as "Office Xmas Party Guest" (Alice, 1990)

David Blaine as "Spectator", uncredited (Celebrity, 1998)

Sigourney Weaver as "Alvy's Date Outside Theatre" (Annie Hall, 1977)

This is based on the sometimes dubious IMDb listings, but it's accurate enough for our purposes. There are even a few more notable names that were close calls, just one or two minor credits off a Woody Allen debut: Jennifer Garner, Sylvester Stallone, Danny Devito, and Adrien Brody (who debuted in New York Stories, but technically in the segment directed by Francis Ford Coppola).

Again, thanks to those who participated and congrats to reader Mimi who was the only one to get it right. From the Fong Songs prize bucket, she received a 2-disc cover compilation from the UK chock full of covery goodness. Onto the cover songs!

Anita Kerr - What's New Pussycat? [originally performed by Tom Jones]
What's New Pussycat? (1965), starring Peter Sellers and Peter O'Toole, was Woody Allen's feature film debut both as an actor and writer. The song written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David for the film was also nominated for an Oscar that year.

Built to Spill - Take the Money and Run [originally by Steve Miller Band]
Run DMC - Take the Money and Run (Feat. Everlast) [originally by Steve Miller Band]
Technically Woody Allen's directorial debut was the 1966 film What's Up, Tiger Lily?, a comically re-dubbed version of a Japanese action movie. His first "proper" directorial effort was 1969's Take the Money and Run.

Annie Hall - Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go [originally by Wham!]
While Diane Keaton covering Wham! in character may be an intriguing if completely bizarre prospect, this is simply an Italian band called Annie Hall (damn!). Just a note for aspiring artists: naming your band after a popular movie does not do you any favours in the Google department. I did manage to find their myspace page, though clearly the "anniehall" myspace address was taken and they had to settle for "unclepig". This isn't a particularly audacious claim to make, but not only is this my favourite Woody Allen film, but one of my favourite films of all-time, period.

Edward Norton - Just You, Just Me [originally written by Jesse Greer & Raymond Klages]
Woody Allen's first and only musical (I think), Everyone Says I Love You features several unlikely actors breaking into big music numbers including Edward Norton in an early role, here backed by the Helen Miles Singers on the jazz standard Just You, Just Me. Written by Jesse Greer & Raymond Klages, the song debuted in the 1929 MGM musical, Marianne. Frequent Woody Allen collaborator, Dick Hyman also performed a version of the same song in Hannah & Her Sisters.

Dick Hyman & Mike Lipskin - 'Deed I Do [originally by Walter Hirsch and Fred Rose]
Dick Hyman - Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da [originally by The Beatles]
As an old school New York City jazz man, Dick Hyman made a perfect fit for Woody Allen's musical sensibilities. He has served in various roles as composer, arranger, conductor, and pianist for Stardust Memories, Zelig, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Broadway Danny Rose, Hannah and Her Sisters, Radio Days, Bullets Over Broadway, Mighty Aphrodite, Everyone Says I Love You, Sweet and Lowdown, The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion, and Melinda and Melinda. His only on-screen credit is as "Band Leader" in The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. I first discovered Hyman when I stumbled upon the stunning Stride Piano Summit album at the library, which the 'Deed I Do cover is from. As I later became a Woody Allen enthusiast, I was pleasantly surprised to find Dick Hyman's name repeatedly gracing the opening credits. That Beatles cover is from an electronic album Dick Hyman did in the late 60's (think: Moog synthesizer).

Incidentally, the writing credits on popular jazz standards is the first big hole in wikipedia's compendium of knowledge that I've come across. Spoiled by the google/wiki one-two punch, it's strange to have to dig a little deeper and find the right combination of google keywords just to find the original composers for these songs that have been recorded hundreds of times. And it's not like these are traditional folk songs of lost origin either... I mean, even those have extensive wiki entries.

Woody Allen and His New Orleans Jazz Band - After You've Gone [originally by Turner Layton]
If it wasn't apparent from the soundtracks to his films, which often feature predominantly jazz scores, Woody Allen is a jazz enthusiast. In fact, he supposedly took his stage name (his birth name was Allan Konigsberg) from clarinetist Woody Herman. Allen himself is a clarinetist with his own band that plays dixieland jazz. The 1996 film Wild Man Blues documented Allen and his New Orleans Jazz Band on a European tour and, as far as I know, he still plays weekly in New York. That is, of course, when he's not filming. Just a couple weeks ago, Allen and his band played two shows at the Montréal Jazz Festival for the first time, after previous invitations conflicted with his filming schedule. First recorded by Marion Harris in 1918, After You've Gone is my all time favourite standard, so I was happy to find Woody and his band perform this on the Wild Man Blues soundtrack.

Pinball Number Count Revisited

[EDIT: 7/19/2008 2:46pm]
MP3 links temporarily restored in conjunction with Muppet Covers Week!

[EDIT: 1/11/2008 10:36pm]
Now with direct links! Dear readers, a spike in traffic to this blog in which the 10GB/month bandwidth limit was exceeded in the last 2 days has had me reconsider the benefits of the box.net pay account. Lucky you I decided to not invest $80 in more blackjack, but rather get a box.net account with unlimited bandwidth and as an added bonus, direct links! And guess what? Despite great temptation I will not start soliciting donations... Everybody wins! To boot, there are a couple new covers by Venetian Snares and Inglewood Jack added.

First post of the new year and instead of looking forward, I'm going to delve into the past to wallow in possibly unhealthy nostalgia. In one of the earliest posts on Fong Songs, I focused on a funky little ditty known as the Pinball Number Count, which we should all fondly remember from our collective childhood memories of Sesame Street.


To pretentiously quote myself:
"I remember several years ago going on a mission to find this song and eventually downloading a shortened version (just the number 4) through Napster. This was also pre-"google-takes-over-the-world", so I never did really find out anything more about it. What a difference a few years makes."

Well, what a difference a few more years makes. In the meantime, the influx of Pinball Number Count-related material has been incredible. Since that original post, the song has been covered several times, parodied on Family Guy, released on DVD(s), gotten its own wikipedia entry, inspired clocks, and much more. Its place in pop culture history is cemented as long as the internet doesn't implode, which considering the percentage of dead links on the previous post (3 of 5) is not entirely unlikely.


Pointer Sisters - Pinball Number Count [DJ Food Re-Edit]
Originally composed by Walt Kraemer and performed by the Pointer Sisters, the full story of the Pinball recording sessions can be read here in a letter from the composer himself obtained by unofficial Pinball Number Count historian Matt Jones. As I would learn later, this full-length edit of the Pinball Number Count is actually a remix by DJ Food released on the Ninja Tune label in 2003. The 3-song release Solid Steel Presents Sesame Street also contains 2 disco remixes of C is for Cookie.

The Dead Hensons - Pinball
The Dead Hensons are an 8-piece band from the San Francisco Bay area that exclusively perform covers from the Muppets and Sesame Street. Active since 2004, the band was assembled after founding member Ryan Beebe placed an ad on Craigslist seeking seeking Muppet-music enthusiasts. And thank goodness he got some responses. I'm still waiting for a follow-up to their only release, a 4-song 7" vinyl. Find some more mp3s on their official website.

Big Organ Trio - Pinball Number Count
This organ-based jazz cover sounds like Medeski Martin & Wood invading Sesame Street. And hey, why not? Incidentally, a Medeski Martin & Wood children's album will released tomorrow. Check out Big Organ Trio's website and you may just find some more covers...

Neil Cowley Trio - Pinball Number Count
A sweet, sweet piano jazz cover is from the Neil Cowley Trio's 2006 debut album Displaced, which won the BBC Jazz Award for Best Album.


Wicked Hemlocks - Number Count
This experimental/funk/rock cover by Wicked Hemlocks is the most recent addition to the Pinball Number Count collection, just released last June by indie label Stick in Your Spokes Records.

Blind Spot - 12
From the impossible-to-find 1995 compilation called 20 Bands Trash 20 Songs to find the way to Sesame Street. Trash is a fairly accurate description of the punk covers inspired by Sesame Street, though luckily the Pinball Number Count is the best cover on there, done in a ska/punk fashion.

Nude Continuum - Twelve (live)
Australia-based funk/acid jazz outfit Nude Continuum perform a sweet rendition of the Pinball Number Count live. This mp3 is ripped from a youtube video, which features lead singer Princess Freesia rockin' out in her underwear on stage. Clips from their impending debut album Nightclub of the Nudist sound promising and Jamiroquai drummer Derrick McKenzie is a guest performer.

Serious Aeolian Belfry - Twelve (live)
I consider it a major coup to find this cover, recorded live in the summer of 2002 at Nelson Ledges Quarry Park in Garrettsville, Ohio. On occasion I'm prone to go all Veronica Mars-like in pursuit of covers. After extensive research (read: googling), I found a mention of a band called Serious Aeolian Belfry performing the Pinball Number Count live and a recording that may exist. I was able to contact Andrew Rothman, drummer for the now defunct band, who graciously indulged me with my strange request for the cover. Now here's the really cool part: does the name Andrew Rothman ring any bells? Just a couple weeks ago, Andrew won first-place in the Coverville theme remix contest that ran in conjunction with the Coverville Countdown! Congratulations! And to boot, Andrew also won Coverville Idol last March! Wow, it's a small coverworld after all.


Braces Tower - Eleven Twelve
Sweet head-bobbin' remix by the possibly non-existent Braces Tower (their website has been "coming soon" for a long time).

Venetian Snares - Twelve
Thanks to many readers who've pointed out this 2005 Venetian Snares remix that I missed the first time around. Different but good, a schizophrenic breakdown of the original track. I've read it described as "breakcore", a term that really means nothing to me. By the way, Venetian Snares is the alias of one Aaron Funk (a highly appropriate name) who hails from Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Inglewood Jack - Pinball Number Count (live)
One more cover for ya! Just when I think I've exhausted all cover sources, I stumble upon this live cover from Ottawa band Inglewood Jack on the Internet Live Music Archive. If you scroll around, they've got a few different shows with the Pinball Number Count. Go Canadian Content!


Hockey Night - For Guys' Eyes Only
Not limited to mere covers, the Pinball Number Count gets a shout out in this catchy Hockey Night tune.

Stephen Lynch - Jim Henson's Dead
In spite of its morbidly blunt title, this is a terrific ode to the muppets creator from comedian/musician Stephen Lynch, possibly with the most melodramatic rendition of one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twweeEEEeeeeEELLVE! The chorus is as follows: Oh Jim Henson's dead and gone / But his muppets will live on / And Kermit's still hot, 'cause it's still not / Easy bein' green.


Pinball Number Count international
As it turns out, the funkiness of the Pinball Number Count transcends many languages. Sort of. While the master instrumental tracks cannot be de-funked, some of these versions do not benefit from the awkward extra syllables. I'll leave it to you to laugh inappropriately when necessary.
Flipperkast [in Dutch]
TallSangen [in Norwegian]
Пинбол [in Russian]
Pinball Numeros [in Spanish]
Sayılar [in Turkish]

Strangest Pinball Count-related video: "SE7EN!"
David Fincher's Se7en is mashed-up with the Pinball Number Count. Funky AND disturbing. Really quite brilliant.

Best Pinball Number Count video on Youtube
It starts off innocuously at a radio station in Hamilton, Ontario. 2 guys in a broadcast booth, one guy standing awkwardly facing the camera, the other in chair facing away. Someone whispers "Six!" and the pinball number count is on! The guy standing proceeds to unashamedly dance his socks off as the other eventually shuffles off camera. This appears to be an on-going project of one Mike Long of Hamilton whose youtube video count is nearing 300 (!), most of which are him dancing guerrilla-style in and around Hamilton, sometimes to the utter bafflement of passerbys. Getting jiggy to Mickey Lee Lane's Hey Sah-Lo-Ney in a health food store is particularly brazen. The hilarious kick-off to France Gall's Poupeé de cire, poupée de son is also not to be missed. Napoleon Dynamite and the Torrance Community Dance Group would be equally proud. Dance on, my friend.

The Fox lawyers have been busy... It was surprisingly hard to find a working link to the spot-on Family Guy pinball parody. But you know, you can't really stop the internet from doing it's thing.

Want to own your own piece of Pinball Number Count? The DVD collection Sesame Street: Old School, Volume 2 contains a replica animation cel from the Pinball Number Count! A tempting offer no doubt.

A nice 1280 x 1024 wallpaper can be found here. Originally available in conjunction with the Ninja Tune release.

Gee, I've always wanted a clock based on the Pinball Number Count animation, but I just didn't know how to go about making my own. I'm sure you've been struck by that same insight at one point or another. Well, we're in luck. Someone more capable of putting thoughts into action has a step-by-step guide to creating such a clock. Very, very impressive. Ironically, he was struck by a wave of nostalgia triggered by the Family Guy parody. Inspired by the DIY clock, someone else made a flash version of the same clock. At first I thought I was looking at a static image, until I realized that indeed the clock was accurately displaying the time.



OK, I'm off to Las Vegas & San Francisco for the next few weeks. You may or may not see guest posts in the meantime. Later 'gators.

Cover Lay Down

There's another new cover blog on the block: Cover Lay Down. His niche is folk cover songs, folks. Already the first post and planned future posts will cover (no pun intended) artists and songs that would not likely find their way to my blog simply because of my relative unfamiliarity with the genre. The inaugural post deals with a Richard Shindell cover album (See? Already an in-depth article on someone I've never heard of!) with covers of Springsteen, Dar Williams, REM, and more. If you scroll down to his intro post, I was positively delighted to read about my "incredible ability to compile cross-genre coverlists the likes of which I've never seen". WOO! I should make a banner and hang it on my blog permanently like a thumb's up from Ebert.


As per my unofficial welcome policy, here's a cover from Toy Story.
Riders in the Sky - You've Got a Friend in Me [originally by Randy Newman]

...and a folk cover for you too:
Brewer & Shipley - All Along the Watchtower [originally by Bob Dylan]
From the folks that brought you the wonderful One Toke Over the Line, a cover of the oft-covered Bob Dylan classic. It's been covered so many times, I'm surprised at how much this one stood out. Different, but I like it.

Bob Walkenhorst - One Toke Over the Line (live) [originally by Brewer & Shipley]
I fell in love with this song as a kid even though it was way before my time and references to "tokes" sailed clear over my short head. I remember my dad used to buy these Solid Gold cassette tapes from gas stations and these would provide the soundtrack to long camping roadtrips. The Solid Gold series (probably one of those Time-Life compilation series) covered the gamut of music from the 50's through the 70's. Now that I really think about it, those cassettes left a huge mark on my impressionable mind. That was literally my first exposure to the Beach Boys, Jerry Lee Lewis, Mamas & the Papas, Roy Orbison, Big Bopper, The Guess Who, Eagles, Buddy Holly.... I could go on and on. It was a real lesson in music history, even if I didn't realize it at the time. Brewer & Shipley's One Toke Over the Line stands out as a song I rushed to rediscover once file-sharing became prevalent.


It's great to have a new face on the cover block since I will be MIA for the next month. In fact, I leave tomorrow for China! I'll be gone for 5 weeks and when I return I'll be making my big move to Vancouver. You may have noticed a dearth of posts in the past couple weeks as I've prepared for this big trip to visit the mother country for the first time. I'll get the opportunity to explore some of my heritage with my grandmother, check out my dad's birth village, and have many other exciting adventures in spite of the fact that I myself speak no Chinese whatsoever (except for counting to 10 in Cantonese).

In the meantime, my blog will not go completely silent. Fong Songs will temporarily turn into a travel blog, assuming I have internet access. To get your cover fix, I've also given Kurtis from over at Covering the Mouse the Heigh Ho to fulfil whatever non-Disney cover desires he so chooses. Speaking of which, it's Jungle Book week over there right now and there'll be a guest post from me coming up on Thursday, by which point I should be reaching Hong Kong! In some blogger griping news, when I added Kurtis as a contributor it wiped off my profile link from the sidebar and due to to the "convenient" automated process of the blog layout, I couldn't add it back in. I actually had to use the Internet Time Machine to find some old source code to slip back into the template. Yet more Beta Blogger Blues... my god, it's been 10 months and it's still incompatible with Macs.

Have a good October, folks! See you in November.

P.S. I didn't win Led Zeppelin tickets. :(
The Hold Steady - Hey Hey What Can I Do? [originally by Led Zeppelin]
Hey Hey, what can I do to get face value tickets? And Hey Hey, what can I do to make this guy sing in time with the music? The Hold Steady must be an acquired taste. The last minute of this song makes me want to rip my ears off. But... you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the facts of life. Or in Zeppelin's words: Good times, bad times, you know I've had my share... Good times are on their way.

Wolfmother & Zeppelin

Went to the Wolfmother gig a few nights ago. It was rockin'. The high tempo show kicked off right into Dimension, which is one of my favourite Wolfmother tracks, and they rocked hard for close to two hours straight including a five song encore. The lead guitarist/singer had an awesome afro that made his head look puny and he pulled off some entertaining antics such as flipping his guitar in the air and some Roger Daltrey-esque microphone swinging. They played through probably the entirety of their only album and also threw in a new song. The best surprise was a cover of Led Zeppelin's Communication Breakdown (rock on!). Apparently I was among the few who hadn't been expecting this, as there were a disproportionate amount of people sporting Zeppelin shirts including a roadie.

So I got home and did some googling and yes, they do regularly perform Communication Breakdown and even performed it live when Led Zeppelin was inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame last year.

Wolfmother - Communication Breakdown [originally by Led Zeppelin]
This barely captures how wicked it was to see them perform this live in a smallish venue as the crowd went wild.

Wolfmother - Woman (Avalanches Millstream Remix)
Almost a completely unrecognizable version of this song.

Joss Stone - Son of a Preacher Man [originally by Dusty Springfield]
A pretty snazzy cover from the same UK Music Hall of Fame ceremony where Dusty Springfield was also inducted posthumously.

Some bonus Zeppelin covers:
Prince - Whole Lotta Love
Chris Cornell - Thank You
Jimmy Page & The Black Crowes - Celebration Day
Otis Clay - Since I've Been Loving You

Cover Riddle #5

Like Batman, James Bond, and Alien before it, the Cover Riddle is resurrected. The last one I did was, oh, about 8 months ago. These aren't covers, but don't worry there will be cover answers.

Tell me the common thread that links these tunes. Bonus points for not using google, the bane of trivia quizzes everywhere (2nd only to wikipedia). I'm looking for the name of a film and perhaps how each track specifically relates.

Ralph Steadman - Little Boy Billee
Oasis and Friends - Fade Away
Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet - Hunter S. Thompson's Younger Brother

Piece 'o cake. Go.

(Actually I changed my mind, go ahead and use O Mighty Google. I changed one of the songs to make it slightly less obvious.)

Beta Blogger Blues

Bah to change!

I just switched irreversibly to the new Blogger Beta. There's some nifty new features, but having to reconstruct all my sidebar content was a pain. The previous formatting is also gone since it's both "easily" customizable, yet overly restrictive. And check out that cool dynamic archive thing on the side. Pretty awesome, unless you have a Mac and it crashes trying to load August 2005. Fantastic! Editing the template on my Mac is also like hell. And similar to the garbage that is "Windows Live! beta" (obviously not designed for the Mac user), once you switch you can't go back. Damn you Google, you aren't supposed to follow in the footsteps of Microsoft!

Harry Nilsson - Always Look on the Bright Side of Life [originally by Monty Python]

Does anyone remember the time when Google used to just mean a really big number? Bring back googol!