Here’s two cover songs for you today, both found on an excellent compilation called Jazz and Flowers. One is a sorta dnb remix of Karen Aoki’s cover of Smooth Operator and the other is a remake of Gangsta’s Paradise by UK’s Sunlightsquare, called Pastime Square, with a dancehall beat and great lyrics. Check the links below while you’re enjoying the songs..

* Bob from Brockley writes a postscript to my Marc Ribot post. I’ve read this before but I forgot to mention it. Having a postscript written to your post makes you feel like you are an actual music critic!. Mind you, his postscript is better than the original post. Cheers mate.

* Bit of a late find for me, music like dirt’s top 150 tracks of 2007.

* A great find on It’s a Trap, the Scandinavian Music Journal. Jonas Knutsson & Horn Please reworking a traditional carnatic Indian tune. What’s more, the original tune was also interpreted by the master saxophonist Kadri Gopalnath whom we featured a few weeks ago. Download both and listen consecutively!.

* Bandfind is A private network that caters to musicians, where you can meet with fellow musicians for band tryouts , jam sessions, gig fill-ins & recording. Good web2.0 concept that’d be nice to see working.

* Another indie startup is virv.tv this time for the fans, is a free TV broadcasting an all-indie playlist 24/7, exclusively on the web. Their playlist includes Bright Eyes, Of Montreal, Spoon, Arcade fire, Xiu Xiu, The Good Life, Now Its Overhead, Architecture In Helsinki, M.Ward, Devendra Banhart and more, download their plugin and check!

* The Spannered Oddcast No #4 featuring a truly odd 4 and a half minute Ska mix by Randomoidz of London’s Adverse Camber collective.

* A remix compo of the latest The Politik album we reviewed a few weeks ago here. Unfortunately this mail has been rotting in my mailbox for over a month so if you wanna enter, please be quick as there’s only a week or so left in the contest.

* Lovely happy birthday post for Holger Czukay of Can, on Metafilter with lots of references & links. A late happy birthday from us to Mr. Czukay as well.

It was in the year 1967 when I had a job as a music teacher when I heard that Karlheinz Stockhausen was giving a performance of his new created piece “Kurzwellen”(short waves) in Bremen. Early in the afternoon I went to Bremen so that I could also listen to the rehearsal. Five musicians were equipped each with a short wave receiver and some additional instruments. Again they got linked with a small mixer and the famous Maihak W49 filters. Everybody had a little “score” in which I could read an arrangement of the signs +, – and 0. It seemed to look like a composition directory to me. The musicians were searching on the radio for some short wave specific in sound and rhythm, keeping it in tune for a while, playing with their “ordinary” instruments and again searching for another sound signal coming from the radio. Meanwhile Stockhausen was mixing and giving treatments following his score and it turned out to become a concert of a, let’s say “advanced ambience” category. This all happened one year before CAN was born!

It was years later. I was about to take off from CAN in order to follow my own nose when I phoned Karlheinz Stockhausen up. I wanted to see him again after all these years. First he said he didn’t have time, but then he changed his mind : “come for dinner tonight”. We were talking about his influence on the young music scene in general and I mentioned to him how important his ideas have been to me . CAN had been without a singer for some time and I told him how unreplacable the short waves had become to us, looking for a singer or other material coming out of the radio.Today you would probably make a download from the internet. And that his “Kurzwellen” piece had become such an important key event, especially for me. Karlheinz replied that this piece got released on a record, but as the record company didn’t sell more than 3 discs in one year they wanted to take it off the catalogue. This made him go to Hannover, the place where the record company was situated and as he said he was fighting ‘like a lion’ to make this piece remain in the catalogue.

He has been a real good mother to his music I think. He gave me all his records when we said goodbye. He wrote the following notice into the “Kurzwellen” sleeve : “Dear Holger, this is apparently my most important record and you should say that to everybody. Cordially, Karlheinz Stockhausen.”

Holger Czukay: Oh Lord, Give Us More Money

* And the controversial, violence against emos issue. Watch the video or read via Sturgell.

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