Not since Hohner released the Siamese Twins model harmonica in 1904 – or perhaps since Tod Browning’s 1932 film opus Freaks – has our advanced civilization had the unmitigated pleasure of being serenaded by a pair of congenitally joined twin girls who have mastered the piano, ukulele, and accordion, each twin contributing their respectively available hand toward playing duties.
Evelyn Evelyn changes all that, with an autobiographical vaudeville revue cum baroque Pop-Rock opera (don’t swallow with Pepsi!). It’s complicated.
EVELYN and EVELYN NEVILLE are a songwriting duo performing original compositions on piano, ukulele, guitar and accordion. The sisters are parapagus tripus dibrachius twins, sharing three legs, two arms, three lungs, two hearts and a single liver.
Born September 11, 1985 on a small farm on the Kansas-Colorado border, the Evelyns have traveled the greater part of North America performing with “Dillard & Fullerton’s Illusive Traveling Showâ€.
Their unique musical style is inspired by their many eclectic influences – from 80’s music to showtunes, Joy Division to the Andrews Sisters.
The sisters currently reside in Walla Walla, Washington. They are fluent in chicken and their favorite colors are purple and yellow.
Unless you count celebrity cephalopods, the only larger-than-life presence at this year’s World Cup was a man standing five feet, five inches. Having barely survived his Fat Elvis phase, Argentine legend Diego Maradona re-emerged from his usual work as a religious icon to coach (or at least cheerlead) his national team to the quarter-finals. This happened when the self-styled Pancho Villa in soccer shorts wasn’t otherwise occupied running over reporters’ feet, directing his players to haze each other, threatening to run naked, denouncing Anglo-American imperialism, or getting bitten by his own dog.
In his recent documentary Maradona, the equally eccentric Serbian director Emir Kusturica describes Maradona as the footballer’s equivalent of the Sex Pistols. But he’s more like a combination of Mozart and Iggy Pop: a contortionist savant driven by instinct, walking the line between genius and madness, aware that he is both a brilliant creator and a really big stooge. While these aren’t necessarily the qualities you’d want in a coach, they are sensational songwriter’s materials. Although Maradona is reportedly despondent over his team’s manhandling by Germany, here are reasons you shouldn’t cry for him, with accompanying soundtrack.
1. He’s still the King of Bongo.
Our Diego
Who art on earth
Hallowed be thy left foot
Thy magic come,
Thy goals be remembered.
The Church of Maradona
Soccer and music don’t always mix. For every goal-worthy performance—K’naan’s Marleyesque reworking of “Wavin’ Flag†from this year, or New Order’s suave “World in Motion†from 1990—two or three come out deserving red cards (for instance, the Village People’s 1994 musical partnership with the German national soccer team). But Maradona, despite his obvious faults, inspires fanatical devotion. He could fill an entire playlist with musical tributes, some of which verge on greatness.
Maradona is the subject of two songs written by Manu Chao, the wiry French/Spanish troubador responsible for politically charged albums such as Clandestino, as well as surreal classics like “Bongo Bong†and “King of Bongo.†The raucous “Santa Maradona,†recorded with Chao’s old Franco-punk band, Mano Negra, pays tribute to his hero even as it flips the bird to hero worship. “La Vida Tombola†(life is a lottery), from Chao’s latest La Radiolina album, mixes joy and melancholy as it traces the man’s journey from rags to riches to disgrace to partial redemption.
Manu Chao, “La Vida Tombola” (sung to Maradona)
2. Andrew Lloyd Webber will never write a bad musical about him.
Argentina has had a few well-known rock bands, including Los Fabulosos Cadillacs and Soda Stereo, who performed at Maradona’s wedding. But on an international scale, Maradona’s only serious celebrity rock-star competition is Eva Peron. Unlike poor Evita, however, Maradona has no likelihood of having his life turned into a horrid Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. How bad can his musicals get? Well, in a new production of Evita, Ricky Martin will play the role of Che Guevarra.
Maradona, who named one of his dogs Che, would never stand for this abuse. Moreover, Webber, a supporter of England’s conservative party, would never risk his middlebrow credentials on Maradona, whose popularity in the UK ranks somewhere between that of Napoleon and Osama bin Laden. It’s not just that Maradona scored the most famous illegal and legal goals in history to defeat England 24 years ago (respectively, the devious Hand of God goal and the brilliant Goal of the Century). It’s that Maradona viewed each of these as poetic justice that avenged the Falklands War and placed Argentina on the right side of history. You can argue the history, but it’s really hard to be on England’s side when listening to the amazing Atahualpa Yupanqui.
Atahualpa Yupanqui, “El Carrero”
3. He’s responsible for the modernization of Argentine tango.
I don’t mean that Maradona personally did this, of course. But in his memoir, Astor Piazzolla observed that he was indifferent about football until Maradona’s exciting play made him a “furious fan.†In 1986, the same year Maradona led Argentina to World Cup victory, Piazzolla released one of his most daring works, Tango Zero Hour. More than a coincidence?
Astor Piazzolla, “Tanguedia”
4. He’s Springsteen to those who weren’t born in the USA (or England).
Beneath Maradona’s shiny designer suits and fondness for luxury toilet seats is the soul of a populist rebel from humble origins who sometimes lets his big heart show. Just when you’re ready to dismiss him as just another hopelessly obnoxious rich guy, he can pull something that’s a bit more Joe Strummer or Bruce Springsteen than Johnny Rotten. Even as his own life was unraveling, Maradona helped jump-start the career of then-teenager Diego Forlan, this year’s Golden Ball winner from Uruguay, and helped pay medical bills for Forlan’s paralyzed sister.
Below is a clip of Maradona, still bloated and recovering from his drug-addicted wipeout, covering “La Mano de Dios†(that’s right, “The Hand of Godâ€) by the late Argentine cuartero singer Rodrigo. At first he comes on like a train wreck, something like the over-the-hill boxer Robert DeNiro played near the end of Raging Bull. But by the time family members join him at the end, the clip transforms into something weirdly touching and hopeful.
Maradona singing Rodrigo’s “La Mano de Dios”
5. He’s a better metaphor for globalization than anything in Thomas Friedman’s laptop.
Maradona is missing from almost all of Franklin Foer’s fascinating 2004 book, How Soccer Explains the World. Foer, editor for the New Republic, uses soccer as the lens for fairly gentle criticism of Thomas Friedman-style flat-earth thinking about globalization. He portrays soccer as a surreal parallel world illuminating our own, in which rival teams in placid Glasgow re-enact a centuries-old holy war between Protestants and Catholics, Nigerian players lose their cool in the icy Ukraine, and Iranian women dress up as men to sneak into the world’s largest stadium. The global game, despite its liberalizing potential, still hasn’t come close to overcoming regional, ethnic and religious strife or the power of corrupt oligarchs.
If you had to pick a soundtrack for cosmopolitan nationalism, what would you choose? Barça’s unofficial theme song last year was…drumroll please…“Viva La Vida†by Coldplay–because nothing motivates athletes quite like moderately paced middle-of-the-road rock. That may be a bit harsh. Barcelona is one of my favorite cities. I admire its tolerant reputation and its team’s storied history (the soccer field was one of the few outlets available for Catalan expression during the bleak Franco years). I also have nothing against Coldplay’s signature song, or the half-dozen others that share its lilting melody. But I think the hopeful parts of Foer’s thesis may play a little too much like a Coldplay song—meticulously constructed and catchy, but lacking a willingness to push beyond the comfort zone at the risk of looking ridiculous.
Maradona, who is all about pushing beyond the comfort zone, inspires either revulsion or religious devotion (and yes, there’s a Church of Maradona with more than a hundred thousand members). While his fanatical devotees vary widely, many never got Tom Friedman’s memo about how the latest internationally-distributed gadgets will help level the playing field. They understandably would like to believe that every once in a while, they might have a turn to rule the world, if only for the length of a game. They want to believe David can still slay Goliath, even if it requires the Hand of God.
Scenes from the Church of Maradona
South Korean singers summon the hand of God in 2002
When long-suffering Spain defeated Germany yesterday to qualify for its first-ever World Cup final, you could point to the usual sports pundit’s list of factors to explain the 2008 European Cup champion’s victory, from Spain’s superbly choreographed short-passing game to the offensive wizardry of the brilliant midfielder Xavi. But since none of these reasons would allow me to go off on a musical tangent, I’ll focus instead on two acts of divine intervention.
First, let’s talk hair. Xavi’s Barça teammate Carles Puyol scored the winning goal, and as the late Warren Zevon might have noted, his hair was perfect. Puyol has a huge head of rock star hair that could have seen him waking up with Peter Frampton’s wine glass in his hand in 1976, sparking the dubious hair-metal craze in 1986, skateboarding with Pearl Jam in 1996, or opening for My Morning Jacket in 2006. More locally, Puyol’s hair would have easily qualified him to substitute for the lead singer in Barcelona band Sopa de Cabra (see the video below). To be sure, Puyol can’t match the legendary locks of Colombian soccer star Carlos Valderrama. But at the decisive moment in yesterday’s match, Puyol’s flowing tresses gave him an unusually wide target to receive the ball on Xavi’s corner kick and connect for the winning header. By contrast, close-cropped German striker Miroslav Klose, who might as well have been a member of Kraftwerk, stood nearby in disbelief.
In contrast to Argentina’s celebrated Hand of God goal 24 years ago, this one was perfectly legal. Still, it’s clear that Spain won by the hair of God, which can’t bode well for the follicly challenged Netherlands team that will face Spain in the final. In Spain’s honor, here’s an impromptu list of songs about hair:
Ben Vaughn Combo, “Wrong Haircut”
Nina Simone, “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair”
Mongo Santamaria, “Afro Blue”
Calexico, “Hair Like Spanish Moss”
Danney Ball, “Let’s Give the Devil a Bad Hair Day”
Cowsills, “Hair”
Morrissey, “Hairdresser on Fire”
Pavement, “Cut Your Hair”
Beck, “Devil’s Haircut”
Blake Miller, “Long Hair”
Captain Beefheart, “Hair Pie, Bake 1 and 2”
Rogers and Hammerstein, “I’m Gonna Wash that Man Right Outta My Hair”
After a lifetime of continental drifting, our everyman busker anchors himself on the California coast, channeling the ghosts of Otis Redding and Sam Cooke as he pleads for some peace, love and understanding. And what’s so funny about that?
Dick Dale and the Del-Tones, “Misirlou”
Once you get beyond know-nothingism and nativist paranoia, nothing could be more American than having the Boston-bred son of Lebanese and Polish immigrants electrify a Greek rebetiko classic, turn his guitar into an oud with a lit firecracker, and forge a new music that makes everyone think of … summer in California!
Gaslight Anthem, “American Slang”
Meet the new slang, same as the old slang. Despite packing more Jersey cliches than your average episode of the Sopranos and more Springsteen references than your average Hold Steady song, blue-collar standard-bearer Brian Fallon shapes a ’10 sound that at times seems more than the sum of its social distortions.
George Gershwin, “An American in Paris” (in North Korea)
The former Jacob Gershowitz and Tin Pan Alley teen sensation reached adulthood spinning melodies that are tough as body armor, remaining bulletproof in the most surreal of locations from Paris to Pyongyang.
Fans of the beautiful game throughout Africa are painfully aware that it took nothing less than the the second hand of God to keep Ghana’s Black Stars from becoming the first African side to reach the semi-finals in World Cup history. But if the World Cup were awarded for music, host South Africa’s opening concert offered compelling evidence that African bands deserved a place in the finals. While TV coverage here was mostly devoted to the likes of the Black Eyed Peas and Shakira, you can catch up on what you missed here.
Somali-Canadian rapper/ singer K’naan performs his stirring anthem “Wavin’ Flag” with such quiet dignity and righteous power that it seems like the sort of song Bono would trade half the gross domestic product of Ireland to have thought of first. With its loping tempo and big chorus, K’naan’s signature song seems simple the way that “Blowin’ in the Wind” or “Get Up, Stand Up” are, distilling the restless search for freedom to words so basic your children will sing them after a couple of listens. And they will (“when I get older, I will be stronger…”).
The Marley connection is far from coincidental. If you heard that K’naan was a good friend of Damian (Junior Gong) Marley and had recorded much of his last album at the Dreadest One’s old home and studio, you might wonder whether K’naan is just latest one-anthem wonder to trade on the Marley legend. Duet versions of a soccerized version of “Wavin’ Flag” have been released in Spanish, French, Chinese, and Arabic for a World Cup preview tour, and Canadian all-stars rerecorded the song for Haiti earthquake relief (leading to the strange spectacle of K’naan’s words coming from the likes of Avril Lavigne and Justin Bieber). And as the surest sign that K’naan is here to stay, “Wavin’ Flag” has already been recorded by a false version of Alvin and the Chipmunks.
But anyone who would marginalize K’naan as the latest world-music flavor of the month is going to miss out on the widely varied work of a complicated man from a complicated place. Synonymous here with anarchy and misery, Somalia has been known for centuries as a nation of poets, where rhythm and rhyme are central features of language and communication. The nephew of a famous Somalian singer and the grandson of a revered poet, Keinan Warsame narrowly survived the mean streets of Mogadishu, emigrating to Toronto as a teenager when civil order imploded in the nineties. He honed his English skills listening to hip-hop lyrics from Rakim and Nas, finding a pathway from home in conscious and reflective street poetry.
He can come on harder than a hand grenade (literally, as he picked one up by accident in grammar school), sweeter than Smokey Robinson at a candy factory, and clever enough to carry around a seriously tricked-out bag of fantastic rhymes in his second language. Seamlessly merging hip-hop with roots, funk and soul, last year’s Troubador album, his second, mixes booming old-school hard-knock raps than make most American gangstas sound like spoiled suburbanites (“T.I.A,” “I Come Prepared”) politically charged character sketches (“Somalia,” “People Like Me”), and tongue-twisting wordplay more fun than a bowl of Eminems (“”Dreamer,” “Bang Bang”). He even enlists Kirk Hammett to help him slay the heinous rap-rock beast. My favorite is probably the gorgeous, funny, heartbreaking “Fatima,” which tells the real-life story of a childhood friend with a cruel fate.
Perhaps even better, last fall K’naan released The Messengers, three stunning mixtapes paying homage to his musical and spiritual mentors, which you can download for free on the website of his Brooklyn-based D.J. collaborator, J. Period. Part documentary collage, part musical tribute, part mashup with K’naan’s own work, these are clearly a labor of love and like nothing else I’ve heard. Not surprisingly, two of the “messengers” featured are Bob Marley (naturally) and Nigeria’s legendary Afrobeat pioneer and Broadway musical inspiration, Fela Kuti.
The Marley and Fela tributes are as incendiary and thoughtful and you would hope, but the real stunner of the group is the mixtape for the third messenger, Bob Dylan. I wouldn’t have guessed it before, but the troubador from Mogadishu actually seems to “get” Dylan better than a whole conference room of professional Dylanologists who worship the water he walks on. K’naan’s call-and-response in “Hard Rain” adds to the song’s sense of foreboding, and his “Fire in Freetown” fits so tightly into “4th Time Around” that you’d swear it was always in the song. And the revision of “Don’t Think Twice” made me think twice for the first time in years about why I loved that curmudgeonly song-and-dance man in the first place. The “message” from Dylan that begins the remix nails the mood: “Keep a good head and always carry a lightbulb. I plugged mine into the socket and the house exploded.”
K’naan, “Wavin’ Flag”
K’naan, “Fatima”
J. Period/ K’naan, Fela/ Africa (Messengers Remix)
J. Period/ K’naan, Dylan/ Don’t Think Twice (Messengers Remix)
What’s been the most embarrassing moment at your job this year? If you’re a broadcaster, the answer is obvious: trying, and failing miserably, to pronounce the name of that pesky Icelandic volcano that has turned into nature’s equivalent of Grecian fiscal policy. Try as they might, the most seasoned of non-Scandinavian reporters repeatedly stumbled home with clouds in their airspace after pretending that Eyjafjallajökull could simply roll off the tongue. Only one TV network seemed to master the feat, and as you probably guessed, it was Al Jazeera. But it turned out they had an ace pronunciation lesson from Iceland’s own Eliza Geirsdottir Newman, who is exactly the singer and ukulele player you always wished your own teacher could be. Now you can take the same lesson at home by viewing the clip below, which answers the musical question of what would happen if Björk’s chipper blond cousin suddenly discovered the Moldy Peaches. The reporter gets extra bonus points for attempting to use Angela Merkel’s picture as a mnemonic device.
One of the great things about my job is that I get to go to SXSW every year. The drag part is that I only get to go to the Interactive week, not the Music week (the part where the attendees start looking less like grown-up, pot-bellied Eddie Munsters complete with chunky eyeglasses and more like Iggy Pop). Still, there’s a bit of overlap between festival phases, and every now and then you hit a Lucky Strike. Was finishing up a plate of street tacos when I heard from a nerd that the Twitter party was happening across the street at the Parish. Why not?
Flashed the badge, shambled upstairs, helped myself to a free whiskey (the very best kind), and got hit by this wall of pawn shop blues that knocked my socks off. I’d never heard of Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears, and thus assumed that my flux capacitor had misfired, landing me sometime before 1967 when Otis Redding still walked the earth. Took about 30 seconds before my body started bouncing involuntarily to this deep soul groove, which soon segued into a more James Brown-style funk.
Wait… he can play guitar too? Like, deep guitar? Holy crap, there’s Leadbelly in here! And Jimi too. “What is this band?,” I yelled to the person standing next to me. “The Relatives!” Went to check out the merch. Ah, I had misheard – it was The Honeybears. Later found out the merch was all wrong – it was The Relatives after all. Turns out Black Joe Lewis plays with both bands. Who cares? Lewis is a force to be reckoned with.
I’m Broke
Don’t let the self-consciously 60s camp visual style of the video throw you – this stuff is as sincere as it gets. Stuart Derdeyn for National Post on Lewis:
He’s like the best moments of a classic Texas six-string slinger and a razor-sharp New Orleans funk n’ roll review in one. As ever here, his band is crazy tight and puts amperage into even the most tired and true blues riffs. Plus, he’s a really fine singer. This is blues for people that really want gritty R&B rather than Chicago I-V-IV boogie.
The night ended way too soon – I had arrived late and only caught half the show. Left the joint buzzing, thirsty for more “garage soul” … more of that throw-down funky blues, more of that back-yard Texas summer under Chinese paper lanterns, surrounded by shimmying glitter lame’ dresses and the pervasive aroma of ubiquitous, very slow barbecues. Yeah, there’s some retro camp there, but it’s also the real deal, and I could soak up this flavor any night of the week.
I’m part Irish-American, but that doesn’t mean I want to spend Saint Patrick’s day in leprechaun-themed restaurants guzzling pints of Guinness until I smell like the Pogues’ Shane MacGowan. Beyond the cartoon version of Ireland, this day provides the opportunity to celebrate the culture and history of a charismatic and embattled island nation stepping out of the shadows of the British Empire. I also feel a sudden urge to pop open a Red Stripe (now owned by Guinness), trade corned beef for curried goat, and listen to some angry white guys covering a Bob Marley song.
This isn’t quite as crazy as it sounds. The Irish arrived in Jamaica more than 350 years ago, and the first Prime Minister of Jamaica, Sir Alexander Bustamante, was part Irish. Lloyd Bradley’s excellent book on the history of reggae, Bass Culture, describes music events in late-1950s West London in which only the Irish would join the Jamaicans. My own reason for linking Ireland and Jamaica is more personal: my first real exposure to the genius of Bob Marley came from hearing Belfast band Stiff Little Fingers kick the living daylights out of Marley’s “Johnny Was.”
EVELYN and EVELYN NEVILLE are a songwriting duo performing original compositions on piano, ukulele, guitar and accordion. The sisters are parapagus tripus dibrachius twins, sharing three legs, two arms, three lungs, two hearts and a single liver.
Sometimes the simplest music hits you like a ton of bricks. Somewhere between Chopin and Sun Ra (in his more pensive moments) lie the gorgeous etudes of 87-year-old Ethiopian nun 
One of the great things about my job is that I get to go to SXSW every year. The drag part is that I only get to go to the Interactive week, not the Music week (the part where the attendees start looking less like grown-up, pot-bellied Eddie Munsters complete with chunky eyeglasses and more like Iggy Pop). Still, there’s a bit of overlap between festival phases, and every now and then you hit a 
He’s like the best moments of a classic Texas six-string slinger and a razor-sharp New Orleans funk n’ roll review in one. As ever here, his band is crazy tight and puts amperage into even the most tired and true blues riffs. Plus, he’s a really fine singer. This is blues for people that really want gritty R&B rather than Chicago I-V-IV boogie.
