Stuff I'm Listening To - The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Artist: the Tokens 

Title: The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Lyrics: 
A-weema-weh, a-weema-weh, a-weema-weh, a-weema-weh

Why?:
I baked today. It seems to be the in-thing lately with SARS-CoV-2 (I recently learned that this is the name of the virus and coronavirus and COVID-19 is the disease caused by said virus) running rampant. 

Baking and posting your successes (and if you're brave or oblivious, your failures) on-line is what you need to do in order to let people know 'Hey! I baked stuff and didn't burn the house down!' I like to bake and I think I'm ok at it... Except for the one time I made singularity banana bread muffins*, everything else has eaten and complimented immediately. 

I discovered that when I bake, there are specific songs that I need to start off on to get me inspired. Today I decided to start off my baking exploits with the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight. 

Then I remembered that Tim Friese-Greene had something to do with the song and in the time between plunking the tin in the oven to the time it was going to be done, maybe (given I'm like this raging Talk Talk fan) I should look up what it was that he'd done. It obviously wasn't the version that kicked off my baking. But here are three more versions of this song (that's been covered a billion times it seems). I'll let you guess which one inspired me to bake my banana bread today.

*Singularity Banana Bread Muffins: when you toss caution and the recipe instructions to the wind, and triple on the number of bananas and have a little less flour than you were supposed to add. And forget baking soda. You get these dense pucks of banana goodness with it's own gravity and event horizon. 

Also special thanks to threadpennyvinyl on Instagram for bringing the documentary ’ReMastered: The Lion’s Share’ about the origin of this song originally called ‘Mbabe’ composed by Solomon Linda and the where all the royalties went. It was super informative for me. I strongly suggest if you are interested to give it a watch. It is currently available on Netflix. 



Artist: After Hours



Artist: the Scallwags



Artist: Tight Fit
 

Stuff I'm Listening To - The Christmas Advent Edition - December 7th

Artist: After Hours

Title: Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Favourite Lyrics:

He see you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake



Why?: You know what's really great about this a capella group? I know one of the founding members personally. (That's not actually the reason these guys are great, but I figure I owe him since we've been fighting about winter on Facey and the weather for Summer Boy has really been pretty ick. I love winter so I've been rubbing in it his face every chance I get, including now, because he's going to see this blog post). He's a really great guy. Went to college with him. I discovered he had this a capella group with a few of his high school friends. I went to see them in concert and they're really, really good. 

Remember what I said about the a capella groups and how they look like they're having so much fun? These guys, clearly singing because they love singing. And you hear it.

If you're in the Toronto area on December 14th and want to see some straight up awesome guys who are singing because they love it, drop by. I've posted the link for the event and on how to get tickets and stuff here - LINK

Failing that, they're preforming at the Toronto Pearson International Airport, Terminal 1 in the arrivals by door C and the Christmas Tree between 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. So if you're coming back to the YYZ or waiting for someone to arrive around that time, you'll have some sweet music to greet you.

Stuff I'm Listening To - Christmas Advent Edition - December 6th - After Hours

Title: An A Cappella Christmas - by After Hours

Why?: Like A Cappella? Listen to this. These guys are awesome. This album is great! I'm partial to "Feliz Navidad" personally. Also, bonus, they’re having a concert NEXT WEEK!! I encourage you to go. They’re entertaining and the concerts are a lot of fun. 

Like what you hear? iTunes