Late Summer Reruns

I don’t plan on doing this too often, but today I’m posting some reader requests for songs that I have blogged here in the past.

Rusty writes:

dear matthew

big fan of em, and i saw em with radiohead tonight. when you saw them in brooklyn, did you record the enitre show, and did they play the song ‘fly’ that they opened up with tonight? it was outstanding. malkmus came out and introduced it as ‘fly,’ slow number with killer synth on the side. opened up with a line about flying away … do you maybe have it somewhere? if not, know where i might be able to get it. thanks man.

I’ve never actually recorded a Jicks show, but I do have several good recordings of the Jicks performing “Fly,” which is a cover of a song by a very obscure psychedelic band from the late 60s called J.K. & Co. I went through about ten different recordings of the song, and I think that this version from the Paris 2001 Oui FM concert is the best in terms of performance and sound quality. I’ve edited the song so that there is virtually no audience noise, so that it could fit in well on a cd of studio tracks.

To double your pleasure, here is the beautiful original J.K. & Co. version of “Fly.” The song is taken from the only album the band ever recorded, 1968’s Suddenly One Summer. J.K. & Co. were led by the 15 year old singer/songwriter Jay Kaye, son of the guitarist Mary Kaye of Las Vegas’ The Mary Kaye Trio and namesake of the Mary Kaye Fender Stratocaster. The album itself is primarily inspired by Jay’s spiritual awakening as a result of taking LSD, and is meant to represent the birth and death of a fictional man. His band’s career was unfortunately cut short due to their record company’s unwise decision to release the 36 second instrumental intro before “Fly” on the album as a single in an attempt to gain publicity for having the shortest single ever released. This obviously didn’t go over well, and led to very poor sales for the album, and the band were financially limited to touring only in California. Making matters worse, Kaye’s age meant that they could not get gigs in most nightclubs, forcing them to play mostly teen rec centers. Apparently, Kaye is now living in Spain and still writing and performing music.

Chris writes:

Do you know if there’s anywhere else on the web where I can find that mp3 of the weird girl talking over Prince’s “Kiss” you posted a while back?

I really don’t think so. I recorded that from an archive of The Audio Kitchen which has since been removed. I think it’s fairly safe to say that that only people who ever heard the mp3 were either a) directly acquainted with the person who made the mp3 or recieved it as part of the intended gift, b) friends of the Audio Kitchen’s Professor, or listeners of the show or c) people who downloaded the mp3 from this blog and passed it on. I’m totally wrong! Go here for the Amy track, plus a whole bunch of other similar mp3s!

The mp3 in question was recorded by a girl named Amy for a mix cd which she was making for her girlfriend Caroline. She recorded herself singing along and making some comments over the top of Prince’s classic “Kiss.” Amy is extremely flirtatious, but also disturbingly possessive and transparently insecure. The Professor found this on Amy’s harddrive back in the heyday of Napster, aired it on a special edition of the Audio Kitchen last year, and now it belongs to the world. It’s easily one of the most entertaining bits of found audio that I’ve ever encountered, and I’m happy to offer it up once again. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Amy Sings With Prince For Caroline