Various Artists - Musical Salad, Volume 2 (1939-2025) (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Here is the second volume of "Musical Salad,"a collection of songs about vegetables. For real. 

As I mentioned with the release of "Musical Salad, Volume 1," this project began as one of Fabio from Rio's eccentric ideas, supported at first by my cautiously skeptical encouragement. But after we finished "Volume 1," I have to admit I was already looking forward to a second helping.

Nearly all of the songs in "Volume 1" were found by Fabio. But for this volume, I went digging and found a majority of these ones. As with the first volume, Fabio really went above and beyond the usual call of duty, making an artistic booklet with text, talking about each song and including an illustration for each song, made by AI. (He wrote all the text however.) I also provided ideas and suggestions for many of the illustrations generated with the help of Fabio's AI-assisted artwork process.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, I have concerns about the use of AI. For instance, I have been careful to never include any music made by AI in this blog. But the AI artwork made for this booklet was just too good not to include. In fact, it's kind of "scary good," since it can do what a human can do for practically no cost in just a tiny fraction of the time.

At any rate, as I mentioned in the write up for the first volume, the songs here had to actually be about vegetables in some way and not just have a fitting title. So for instance, we didn't use the song "Vegetable Man" by Pink Floyd, because all of the lyrics reference clothes and fashion, with just a mysterious line in the chorus, "Vegetable Man, where are you?" That may well refer to someone being a mental vegetable and have nothing to do with actual edible vegetables at all.

But now that we are posting the second volume, if you can think of any fitting songs that are worthy of inclusion for a possible third volume, please let us know. I thought that we had pretty much found all the good ones that fit, but already we've had a few suggestions in the comments for valuable one that look promising. I could easily see a third volume, including more of the fun artwork, if we can just find enough songs that keep up the standards of the first two volumes. 

Also, if you have suggestions for other theme, albums, similar to this one, please let us know. I doubt I would spearhead any project like that (since I have my hands full with so many other albums I want to post already), but there's no telling what kind of off the wall ideas that might appeal to Fabio. In fact, I already get the feeling that he is thinking about other food related albums, so if you have some suggestions for songs along those lines, please let us know about those too.

This album is 50 minutes long.

01 Our Garden (Lucy Kalantari)
02 Life in the Slaw Lane (Kip Addotta)
03 I Love Onions (Jackie Weaver)
04 Cheese and Onions (Rutles)
05 Homegrown Tomatoes (Guy Clark)
06 Solid Potato Salad (Ella Mae Morse)
07 Potato (Cheryl Wheeler)
08 The Potato Stomp (Killin' Jivers)
09 Beans and Cornbread (Louis Jordan)
10 Eat Every Bean and Pea on Your Plate (Daddy A Go-Go)
11 Cornbread and Butterbeans (Carolina Choc Drops)
12 The Spinach Song (Julia Lee)
13 Broccoli (Association)
14 Artichokes (Maps & Atlases)
15 Avocado Woo Woo (The Tin Men)
16 Fruit Salad (Tierra Whack)
17 Coleslaw (Louis Jordan)
18 Vegetables [1993 Live Version] (Beach Boys)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/eN4EguPz

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/khZ7cVB1EQwxUMr/file

The cover image was made by Fabio, using AI. As mentioned above, he also used AI to have illustrations of each of the songs. Here's one that I particularly liked, for the song Avocado Woo Woo." 

Various Artists - Musical Salad, Volume 1 (1939-2025) (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

As part of this music blog's ongoing Brian Wilson Week, here's another tribute to one of the most original musical minds of the Twentieth Century. If we've got our dates right, this should be appearing on June 17th, which happens to be National Eat Your Vegetables Day in the United States.

The idea for this collection emerged during a late-night Discord conversation with Fabio from Rio, when preparing the "Covered: Brian Wilson" discs. While discussing Brian Wilson's wonderfully eccentric song "Vegetables", we started wondering whether anyone else had ever written songs about vegetables. What began as a joke I made quickly turned into a challenge taken up by Fabio. A few days later, he returned with a surprisingly long list of candidates, and before long we realized there might actually be enough material for an entire compilation – or two.

The result is "Musical Salad." It's a collection of songs inspired by vegetables, salads, and assorted garden-related culinary adventures. Some tracks are genuinely great, some are bizarre, some are funny (either deliberate or not), and a few somehow manage to be all three at once. Taken together, they form one of the strangest and most entertaining themed collections we've assembled so far.

Note that there are many many songs that have a vegetable or something vegetable related in the title. We decided that wasn't good enough. The song has to actually be discussing something vegetable-related in the lyrics.  Furthermore, it had to hold up musically as well. I know this concept may seem strange. But just as your parents probably told you when faced with eating an unfamiliar vegetable for the first time, "try it, you'll like it." I was skeptical at first, but I think these ended up being fun albums.

There is a second volume coming, hopefully tomorrow.

This album is 58 minutes long.

01 Vegetables (Beach Boys)
02 Sam the Vegetable Man (Stuff Smith)
03 Cauliflower (Rattles)
04 The Onion Song (Marvin Gaye & Tammy Terrell)
05 Don't Touch Me Tomato (Phyllis Dillon)
06 Hot Potatoes (Kinks)
07 Eat Your Green Beans (Happy Campers)
08 Call Any Vegetable (Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention)
09 Potatoes, Tomatoes, Gravy and Peas (Terry Scott Taylor)
10 Carrot Juice Is Murder (Arrogant Worms)
11 Eggplant (Train)
12 Leaf and Lime (High Llamas)
13 [Don't Give Me That] Broccoli (Phenomenauts)
14 Vegetable Town (Barenaked Ladies)
15 The Boy Who Wouldn't Hoe Corn (Johan Heldenbergh & Veerle Baetens)
16 Lettuce and Croutons with Fresh Daily (ScienZe)
17 Red Peppers (Peppes)
18 Hang On Little Tomato (Pink Martini)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/wnZK6i25

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/zj3KlY4Ns9gV2Jq/file

The cover image was made by Fabio, using AI. Furthermore, he went above and beyond and used an AI art generator to create a visual picture of each of the songs. I was skeptical of that at first as well, especially since I'm not a big fan of AI art, or really AI much of anything. But I have to admit these pictures that Fabio made for the songs turned out really well. In fact, they turned out so well that I told Fabio they make me fear for the future, because if AI can make one of these in a matter of seconds, I don't see how people will be able to stay employed as artists. But that's a discussion for another time and place perhaps. Here is a sample of one such picture. This one illustrates the song "Carrot Juice Is Murder." You can find an entire booklet that he made with these AI created pictures as well as descriptions of each song in the download zip file.

Various Artists - Fallout, Season 1 - The Unreleased Complete Soundtrack (2024) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here is another guest post from contributor Mike Solof. This time around, he's chosen to do a post of the complete soundtrack to season one of Netflix’s 2024 drama "Fallout," known for its extensive use of music. Normally, I would write a long introduction about the show and Mike's post of the music. But the problem is that I confess I have never watched the show, played any of the video games it was based on …and basically know nothing about it… other than I like the music. So for this post I’ll keep it short and sweet.

"Fallout," the 2024 Netflix series inspired by the popular video game franchise, plunges viewers into a post-apocalyptic world where remnants of civilization clash with mutated creatures and survivoralist factions vying for power. The show artfully blends dark humor and action, following a diverse cast of characters navigating the desolate wasteland. A standout feature is its extensive use of music from the 1940s and 1950s, which not only enhances the nostalgic atmosphere but also juxtaposes the grim setting with a sense of charm and irony, providing a captivating backdrop to the unfolding drama.

Mike’s PDF file is a "Fallout" soundtrack guide and includes details about every song and when it appears in the show. Much like its video game counterpart, each episode of the Fallout TV show features all kinds of songs that bring the franchise's 1950s aesthetic to life. Many of these songs were popular picks from the era, while other songs were lesser-known selections. 

The Fallout TV show follows the story of its three main characters, Lucy, Maximus, and Cooper Howard, as they each race across the wasteland in an attempt to chase down a valuable head. Fallout's cast of characters have their stories interweave throughout the show, with each of their various adventures being scored by these popular songs. Since there's no official soundtrack album with all the songs, Mike decided to make one. He realized on a Fallout fan wiki that had details about all the songs on the show.

One problem Mike and I faced is how to divide the music up into something listenable. All in all, this makes up two hours and 15 minutes of music. That's way too much for an album. But there were eight episodes, and if you break this up into one album per episode, some of those are too short. For instance, one episode only had two songs in it that weren't in previous episodes. So we decided to split this into four albums, each containing the music from two episodes. 

Thus, this ends up being either one really big album, or four smallish albums, depending on how you look at it. To cover all bases, we made one album cover for the whole thing, then individual album covers for each of the four sub-sections.

The show has been a big hit and already has been renewed for a second season. So let's hope Mike will be game to make a sequel to this if the next season has lots of interesting music like the first one.

By the way, a real technical note here. I used the fan wiki mentioned above to track down the years each song was first recorded (which get mentioned in the mp3 tags, as well as Mike's PDF file). But three songs were so obscure that the wiki didn't know when they were released, and I couldn't figure those out either. So, for those three songs, I just put in the year 2024.

EPISODES 1 & 2:

01 Orange Colored Sky (Nat King Cole)
02 Journey into Melody (Sam Fonteyn)
03 Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes (Perry Como)
04 Who Do You Suppose (Connie Conway)
05 Some Enchanted Evening (Castells)
06 Keep That Coffee Hot (Scatman Crothers)
07 A Nervous Kiss (Carl Coccomo)
08 So Doggone Lonesome (Johnny Cash)
09 All Over Again (Johnny Cash)
10 Brighter Side (Connie Conway)
11 Mariachi de Amigos (Donald Quan)
12 Crawl Out Through the Fallout (Sheldon Allman)
13 Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall (Ink Spots)
14 Don't Fence Me In (Bing Crosby & The Andrew Sisters)
15 It's a Man (Betty Hutton)
16 I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire (Ink Spots)

EPISODES 3 & 4:

01 Maybe (Ink Spots)
02 We'll Meet Again (Ink Spots)
03 Tweedle Dee (LaVern Baker)
04 In the Mood (Glenn Miller Orchestra)
05 Act Naturally (Buck Owens)
06 Let's Go Sunning (Jack Shaindlin)
07 Just Fine (Michael Brown & Company)
08 What to Do (Buddy Holly)
09 It Ain't the Meat, It's the Motion (Swallows)
10 I Can Dream, Can't I (Andrews Sisters)

EPISODES 5 & 6:

01 Jet Tones (Henry)
02 Robin in the Pine (Bonnie Guitar)
03 Battle Hymn of the Republic (Rick Rhodes & Danny Pelfrey)
04 National Pride (Cedric King Palmer)
05 Ladyfingers (Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass)
06 What a Difference a Day Makes (Dinah Washington)
07 It's Just a Matter of Time (Brook Benton)
08 Texas and Beyond (John Scott)
09 Improvisation on Tchaikowsky's Pathetique Andante (Django Reinhardt)
10 Dardanella (Alvino Rey)
11 The Theme from a Summer Place (Percy Faith & His Orchestra)
12 Lonely Hours (Gene Armstrong)
13 Summer in Love (Romolo Grano)
14 Give Me the Simple Life (June Christy)
15 Skitter Skatter (Metrotones)
16 I'm Tickled Pink (Jack Shaindlin)

EPISODES 7 & 8:

01 Sixteen Tons (Tennessee Ernie Ford)
02 Only You [And You Alone] (Platters)
03 Bossa Angela (Roland Kovac Rhythm & Strings)
04 Annie's Song (John Denver)
05 Yeah Yeah Baby (William 'Cool Papa' Jarvis)
06 You're Everything (Danleers)
07 From the First Hello, to the Last Goodbye (Jane Morgan)
08 Oktoberfest (Douglas Wood)
09 I Don't Want to See Tomorrow (Nat King Cole)
10 We Three [My Echo, My Shadow and Me] (Ink Spots)

https://www.imagenetz.de/gYtxA

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/5WhqrY3f

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/gDalFJYahfb6har/file

The cover art comes from a promotional poster for the show. Don't look at what the dog has in its mouth!