CC Cowboys - Barnehjemmet Johnny Johnny

Joe Dassin - Les Champs-Elysees

My mom thinks this song is stupid, and she may have a point. It's a lot of fun, but lyrically it's basically a French "La Bamba."

Mayhem - Freezing Moon

Norway, land of enchantment, fjords, and a badass resistance movement during World War II. Probably a lot of mythological stuff that influenced the Lord of the Rings, I don't know. I'm going there!

There is also black metal there.



He cuts himself on his arms, which I believe is known as "metal as fuck." So Mayhem are legends of black metal. They're like the Beatles with more suicide and intra-band murder and the same amount of satanism. There are two infamous moments in this band's history:

1. Their original vocalist Dead slit his wrists and blew his brains out with a shotgun. Upon discovering the body, band members went to the store to buy a disposable camera to take photos, which later appeared on the cover of some bootleg album. According to legend, they made a stew from his brains and necklaces from his skullbits. The band later denied the former and confirmed the latter.

2. In 1993 a temporary member of the band stabbed Mayhem's guitarist to death, a moment that is hauntingly dramatized here.

Look I'm not going to pretend I know anything about this music. I kind of hate it. I absolutely hate it. I just picked the shortest and most slightly palatable clip for you guys because I am going to Norway this Friday. Your suggestions on the method by which I should kill myself while listening to black metal in the comments.

A Musical Survey of the World's People

It would be remiss of me not to return with a post detailing some of the music I encountered in my two weeks abroad. So here now for your pleasure is a three-song set of the best (worst?) of what I heard. I don't think I need to tell you that this whole exercise is dedicated to the resplendent Lewis Michael Beesley.

Hurra Torpedo - Total Eclipse of the Heart

This is without a doubt the best appliance-core cover by a Norwegian band of an '80s pop song that I heard in my entire trip.



Los Colorados - Hot 'n' Cold

We don't have to move too far afield to get to our next number. The best part is that they're all from Ukraine.



Horkýže Slíže - R'n'B Soul

It's Slovaks ... rapping! I don't want to say these guys are enormous in Europe, but this particular song inspired at least one out-of-focus LEGO music video. Embedding is disabled; watch the original video here. And, yes, all Slovak women are that hot ... until age 30. Then they all look like this.

Horkýže Slíže - L.A.G. Song

I managed to make my first trip to Slovakia in January of 2003, in the few-weeks span when this song, by a Slovak pop-punk band, was blowing up the local charts. The experience, my first night in town, seeing a hundred young Slovaks packed in a bar, singing along to this, coupled with my newfound celebrity as "the American," was surreal. You'll never guess what the L.A.G. stands for (OK, probably you will). And, truly, the video is worse than I imagined.

This song became something of an anthem for my times in Slovakia; I post it today to mark my next trip. My friend, Jan (as in John), is getting married. I'll be gone from Aug. 7-24, starting in Bratislava for the wedding, then wandering south into Hungary, to Budapest, then back north into Vienna. I'll try to schedule a couple of posts for while I'm away; if I don't, please don't kick me out of the blog.