USOUNDS is proud to present the second installment of J Ship’s A-Z with Jonathan Shipley.  Miss out on A?  Well, fucking check this out then.

”BANANA AND YAM SKANK” 
No better song title I’ve seen. Thank you, King Tubby, thank you.

BANANA BOAT 
Unquestionably the best Polish quintet singing traditional sea shanties today. There’s no doubt that Maciej Jedrzejko, Pawel Konieczny, Pawel Jedrzejku, Tomasz Czarny, and Michal Maniara can belt out nautical-themed tunes! They’ve toured extensively in Poland and the Czech Republic. Rumors abound that frontman Maciej Jedrzejko will be doing a duet with Masta Killa entitled “Szanty dla Pajacka Ho Money.”

Continue reading →

AHHH! Zzz…No, don’t fall asleep. This is a new semi-regular column where I talk about music and all its wondrousness from A to Z. Perhaps I’ll discuss Digable Planets, Duran Duran and Claude Debussy for the Ds, or Pete Zorn, U2’s Zooropa album, and ZZ Top’s beards for the Zs.  There’s a wonderful world of music out there. No better place to start than at the beginning…

 A

Ace of Base
In 2000 they released a greatest hits album. Huh?! How many “great” hits did they have? Honestly, I don’t want to hear “The Sign” thirteen different times on one album. Sorry Jenny, Linn, and Jonas Berggren.  Sorry Ulf Ekberg, Swede or no, you, Ace of Base collective, are not great. And, no, I’m not racist towards Swedes. I like many of them (Ingrid Bergman, Alfred Nobel, the one, the only Dag Hammarskjöld), and several pieces in my house are from IKEA. And meatballs. I like meatballs. And that Muppet who said, “Bork! Bork! Bork!” and threw kitchen implements around. The sound of that alone, the clatter of kitchen implements in a Swedish Muppet’s kitchen, I would rather hear than “The Sign.” Anything but “The Sign.”

Continue reading →