the shakes and the shimmies and the boogaloo

Monday:
Bombino of Niger, Agadez
Dub Colossus, A Town Called Addis
James Blood Ulmer, In and Out 
Skeeter Davis & NRBQ, She Sings They Play (HT to famous people on the Internet whose twitter streams are like eavesdropping on the best conversations)
Kim Fowley, International Heroes
The Human Beinz, Nobody But Me

I love "Nobody But Me."



It's the perfect teen anthem, the all-consuming ego of adolescence. That opening drone is the black hole from which nothing can escape but self-definition, the effects of me. Nobody gives you the shakes like I do. The real beauty, though, lies in the fragile pronouncements, the brittle threat of the shakes and the shimmies and the boogaloo. The Human Beinz sounds unsure while making those threats, like they find themselves suddenly in over their head. The confidence is instead channelled into there being nobody but me, nobody, nobody, nobody. The form shaped in the negative, the anti-silhouette becoming too bright to be defined. Adolescence. I just love this song.