Music Library: Golden Bear, Golden Cups, Golden Famile, Golden Smog, Gone, Goodie Mob, Gorillaz

Golden Bear - "Amazing Edward."  This is a free eMusic download from 2006.  The band is an Austin band, and the sound is pretty great (sorta like The Flaming Lips doing folk songs), so I should probably check out their actual albums.

Golden Cups - "Hey Joe." This is a cover by a Japanese garage band from the late 60s, and it has some great psych freakout stuff working for it.

Golden Family - Eastern, Cloudy (2003). Quiet Neil Young-ish alt-country from Canada with my old pal Mike Sheridan on drums.  Lovely stuff.  I especially like the song "The Great Escape," which is at least partially inspired by the movie.  I don't know how much attention they got outside of Canada, but however much it was, they should have gotten more. 

Golden Smog - Down By The Old Mainstream (1996). Speaking of alt-country, Golden Smog was (is?) an alt-country supergroup.  On this album, the band is Dan Murphy of Soul Asylum, Gary Louris of the Jayhawks, Kraig Johnson of Run Westy Run, Marc Perlman of the Jayhawks, Noah Levy of the Honeydogs, and Jeff Tweedy.  Chris Mars of the Replacements was in the band at one point, as was Jody Stephens of Big Star.  Anyway, the album is actually pretty decent, featuring not just a good cover of the Faces' "Glad and Sorry," but also Tweedy's "Radio King," a decent track that appears nowhere else.  Most of the other songs are decent, as well, and the band sounds like they're having fun. Definitely not necessary for anyone, but you could do a lot worse.

Gone - Let's Get Real Real Gone For A Change (1986).  This is Greg Ginn's instrumental band from the end-days of Black Flag. There's the elements of some interesting music here, but overall, it's not quite interesting enough to distract from the fact that you're listening to 70s riff rock with no singer.

Goodie Mob - "Fly Away."  Ah, here's a hip-hop group I wish I had more of.  This tracks is a killer, and Cee-Lo Green, of course, has moved on to make pop music with Gnarls Barkley.  But this track brings the funk in a big way.

Gorillaz - Gorillaz (2001) and Demon Days (2005).  I probably don't need to explain this to anyone, which is good because I'm not exactly 100% on the concept.  It's the guy from Blur pretending to be a hip-hop artist with a cartoon band, or something like that.  They're okay albums, more about the production than the performances, I think.  The first one is produced by Dan The Automator and the second by Danger Mouse.  And they're OK, if perhaps a bit overhyped.