King Tubby on Pandora is Badass

I've recently fallen in love with dub music. Be sure to check out King Tubby on Pandora: link

WE LOVE TALKY-BITS!

One of pop music's greatest joys is when the singing stops and the artist expresses themselves through simple spoken word. It is a great moment. We plan to make this a regular feature here as well, and we thought we would begin by going waayy back in time to the original masters of this technique: The Shangri-Las.
The Shangri-Las were young ladies who were fucking miserable and happy like that. Perhaps Emo, but better. If LiveJournal had existed back then, the world would have been deprived of their masterpieces.
'You Can Never Go Home Anymore' is one of their best. Listen to it, have a cry, and then go call your mother. Do it now, tell her you lover her.

THE SHANGRI-LAS 'YOU CAN NEVER GO HOME ANYMORE'

REMINDER: The servers available for "a site of this nature" are limited (And that's called "bad"). It can be a challenge to keep a file available for a day, let alone a week (And that's called "sad"). We will make an effort to keep the most recent songs available for a day or two so if you have a problem check back in about eight hours. Otherwise, we suggest you grab while you can.

WE LOVE POP IDOLS!

Since America crowned the latest international Pop Idol last night, we thought we would celebrate by offering one of our favorite releases from the very first series of the show in the UK.
Contestant Korben found it difficult to keep secret that he was once a candidate for Mr. Gay UK and was was promptly voted off. In a way, he died so that Will Young could live. He was the ultimate gay pop sacrifice. Unfortunately for Korben, his post Pop Idol career never quite took off. Here is one of the remains: the Almighty remix of his club anthem, 'Give In To The Music'.

KORBEN 'GIVE INTO THE MUSIC (ALMIGHTY MIX)' (LINK IS UPDATED!)

WE LOVE ROBOT VOICES, WEEKLY!

We really do love it when vocals meet technology, so expect this to be a regular feature. The future is great, and we fully expect to have our voices sound as odd as the vocals on this track in the year 2525 (if we are still alive, of course. And we expect to be. As robots). We are confident it will happen, as Visage were so visionary. Of course, Visage don't sound very confident about "womankind" surviving on this cover of the Zager and Evans single, so perhaps that is why we will all be robots.

VISAGE 'IN THE YEAR 2525'

Our file serving can be challenging, so if you are having trouble, keep checking back. Thanks!

WE LOVE BOBBY O!

Bobby O is one of our favorite producers from the Eighties. His stable of artists ranged from The Pet Shop Boys to Divine. We love all of them. However, there is a special place in our hearts for The Flirts who caught our ears when they were still wet with 'Jukebox (Don't Put Another Dime)'. Since then our love has only grown.
Here we have their anthem and manifesto. We love it.

THE FLIRTS 'CALLING ALL BOYS (REMIX)'

SAD: It seems our good pal Fernando has decided to leave the mp3 blog world and close his fantastic site THANK ME FOR THE MUSIC. We will miss him and his songs greatly. We say 'Thank You'.
NEWS FLASH: It seems the good people over at GARETH'S LOVE PAVILION have had a falling out over Damon Albarn or something and have closed up shop as well. How very odd.

NEW FRIENDS: Fernando inspired many, including us, to help spread the word on forgotten pop gems. We are happy to see the legacy continue. Thanks for the links at the brand new MUSIC GETS THE BEST OF ME and the classic NEW YORK LONDON PARIS MUNICH. We appreciate it.

WE LOVE LOVE!

We have tons of love to share at Bang & Burn. We even have some to spare. This is why were thrilled to be invited to join the new A MILLION LOVE SONGS mp3 project. You cannot get enough love, but you may be questioning that concept as you get close to an actual million songs about it on your iTunes. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
We were a bit anxious about our first entry for the new blog, and we decided on Take That's 'Once You've Tasted Love'. Problem was, Take That have the very first song already (the page's namesake) so we decided to go with Ant & Dec's 'When I Fall In Love', which sounds like an early Take That tune.
It was difficult to leave the Take Take song on the back burner, so we offer it to you now in all its gay glory. Go on, take a taste...

TAKE THAT 'ONCE YOU'VE TASTED LOVE'

MORE CONNECTIONS! It seems a few other sites have tasted us and liked what they found. Very special thanks to our friends at LOWCULTURE.CO.UK, along with ENTHUSIASTIC BUT MEDIOCRE, INTO THE GROOVE and JONNY'S SITE for adding links to us.

WE LOVE NOT WORKING!

It is summertime and we love to play, so we won't be posting on the weekends. Use the time to catch all the songs we were offering this week before they disappear and then go have fun yourself. We will be back on Monday with plenty more love to share.

Do you think you have something we want? Why not send it to us? Use the wonderful file sending tool at YouSendIt to email us presents. We love presents. You can also drop us a comment to blogbanger@hotmail.com and tell us what you think. We can't promise we will post your tune, but we offer gratitude regardless.

Today's song selection is from German boy duo B.O.N. (aka Band Ohne Namen) who had a minor English hit with 'Boys'. German pop has always been "closer to the knuckle", as they say, but this song takes the phrase a bit deeper. The chorus in English is a triumph and this is exactly the type of song that Westlife should be covering (or even Busted, in a punk-pop stylee).
BAND OHNE NAMEN 'SLIPPING INTO YOU'

MEANWHILE: The kind folks over at GARETH'S LOVE PAVILION have given into the MP3 blog craze and started hosting a few gems of their own. We are especially flattered that they mentioned us.

WE LOVE ENGLISH POP ACTS SINGING IN FRENCH!

We confess our understanding of the French language is inadequate at best, but nothing makes us happier than an English-speaking pop act translating one of their hits for the teenage girls of France and Quebec. We love this so much we will feature an example every Thursday!
Up first is dearly departed British boyband A1. In 2002, they teamed up with Eve Angelie to re-record their hit 'Caught In The Middle' as 'Nos Differences'. We hope you enjoy it and perhaps pick up a little French while you are at it. Click HERE to see the original picture we photocopied for this post.

A1 & EVE ANGELIE 'NOS DIFFERENCES'

Go to THIS PAGE to see the lyrics to Justin Timberlake's 'Cry Me A River' translated into French ('Pleure moi une rivère') which, had it been recorded, would have made us very happy. Go to THIS PAGE to see fake Justin porn.

INTERNATIONAL THANKS to Spanish blog CROSSFADER and the brilliant French site of DJ STEPHANE for linking us. We especially like Steph's site which we learned (through Google's translation engine) features the following comment on Frankie Smith's 'Double Dutch':
"I added in my playlist "Double Dutch Bus", of Frankie Smith, piece which remained 4 N°1 weeks in the American charts R&B in 1981, and which with each time I listen to it gives banana."
Check out his beautiful site (click HERE for an English translation). It is sure to give banana.

WE LOVE BEN LEE!

Yes. He may be a bit indie, but we admit to having a long term, gone steady, relationship with the Aussie boy and his tunes. Every now and then we will show you why, starting today.
A few years back, Ben used to post some clever covers in fashionable lo-fi form on his web page. In keeping with our cross-referencing this week, this song is a cover a Pet Shop Boys tune. That's right. Ben Lee doing The Pet Shop Boys (who we love) who were posted yesterday covering Serge Gainsbourg (who we love). One big fucking love-fest. Ben takes the song and turns it into a nice little LiveJournal post.

BEN LEE 'I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU WANT BUT I CAN'T GIVE IT ANYMORE'

MORE LINKS! Heartfelt heaps of gratitude to the brilliant THANK ME FOR THE MUSIC, TOTALLY FUZZY and PANDA POPS for adding us to their respective sites.

ELSEWHERE! Hurry (before it is gone) over to Engadget to get the information and link to the Hymn software which will allow you to play purchased iTunes files on any computer. You own the files you paid for, etc.

WE LOVE ROBOT VOICES!

That's right, robot voices. The technical term may be vocoder, but we like robots. Fairly often, we plan to include some wonderful examples of this technique at work because it makes us smile.
Our first robotic voiced mp3 is another joyous combination of several things we love: Covers of French Songs, Serge Gainsbourg, The Pet Shop Boys and, erm, anal sex (at least that is what we think it is about). In other words, a dream come true.

THE PET SHOP BOYS 'JE T'AIME... MOI NON PLUS'

A BIG THANKS to Fluxblog, Lost Bands Of The New Wave Era, The Suburbs Are Killing Us and Radio Babylon for adding us as a link on our very first day. We plan to keep the network growing, so write to us if you have an mp3 blog you would like us to check out.