Around The World

What with the holiday season just around the corner, it was surely time to do a show that travelled around the world. As usual, never enough time to give a good theme like this its due, but we gave it a good shot. Hardly touched on Europe and never got to the UK, so I can see a show on the Brits looming on the horizon.

Started the show with a bit of bubblegum. Not my usual fare, but the song ‘Around the World’ by Aqua (remember them – “I’m a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world…”) was just such a cute choice to open the show, I couldn’t resist.

Once again I included  a song from C.W. Stoneking (Jungle Lullaby). When I first heard him sing I thought, “that’s got to be the bastard child of Tom Waits and Bessy Smith”. And I’m not the only one to have made that kind of comment (Rolling Stone for one). We had the opportunity to compare when I also played Tom’s “Telephone Call From Istanbul”. Both performers use musical personas to great advantage, but for my money Tom has got it all over C.W. (who I love btw).

Tom Waits has such a distinctive voice. It has been described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding “like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car.”

The song “Telephone Call From Istanbul” is from his album “Frank’s Wild Years”, which before it was an album, was a musical play co-written by Waits and staged as an off-Broadway musical in 1986. It was directed by the actor Gary Sinese and had a successful run at Chicago’s famed Steppenwolf Theatre.

This week’s  playlist covered a lot of ground and moved between pop, r&b, jazz, calypso, rock and punk. The Ryan Adams song “New York, New York” is particularly interesting because the music video was shot on September 7, 2001, the week before the September 11, 2001 attacks. The twin towers of the World Trade Centre feature prominently in the background while Adams is in the foreground singing “I’ll Always Love You New York”. It’s not surprising that the clip received a large amount of air time on MTV in the days following the attacks. I’ve included the clip here and then the complete playlist follows.

Around The World -  Aqua

Going Loco Down In Acapulco - The Four Tops

Down In Mexico - The Coasters

Tijuana Taxi - Herb Albert

The Boy From Ipanema - Julie London

Jamaica Hurricane - Lord Beginner

Back in the USA - Chuck Berry

Georgia On My Mind - James Brown

Traveling Man - Ricky Nelson

Kansas City - Fats Domino

Twenty Four Hours From Tulsa - Gene Pitney

I Drove All Night - Roy Orbison

If You’re Going to San Francisco - The Byrds

New York, New York - Ryan Adams

Hawaii Aloha - The Strokes

Hawaiian War Chant (Ta-Hu-Wa-Hu-Wai) - Ella Fitzgerald

Hong Kong - Screamin’ Jay  Hawkins

China Girl - David Bowie

Made In Japan - Buck Owens

Congo Blues - Charlie Parker & Dizzy Gillespie

Moby Dick (movie sound bite) 

Jungle Lullaby - C.W. Stoneking

Mozambique - Bob Dylan

Under African Skies - Miriam Makeba & Paul Simon

Rock the Casbah - The  Clash 

Telephone Call from Istanbul - Tom Waits

Never Been To Spain - Three Dog Night

When In Rome - Blossom Dearie

Oh, and I nearly forgot: A recipe for the party season: “Tijuana Taxi Cocktail”

Scale the ingredients to servings.

2 oz Gold tequila

2 oz Blue Curacao liqueur

1 oz tropical-fruit schnapps

lemon-lime soda

Pour tequila, curacao, and schnapps over ice into large highball glass. Fill with lemon-lime soda and garnish with orange slice and a cherry. Enjoy! 

Next week: Xmas week (can’t believe it!). The theme will be ‘Eatin’ and Drinkin’.

Lyn McCarthy presents ‘Theme Park’ on BayFM 99.9 between 2-4pm, Eastern Standard Time, Tuesdays and the show streams via www.bayfm.org