City Beat: Music discoveries to blow your mind

photo "The Fox (What Does the Fox Say)" by Ylvis.

Discovering new music is one of my favorite things, but this week was a little strange on that front. Two of the discoveries were blasts from the past, and two frightened me for the future. All were trippy to be sure.

First, I stumbled (I certainly wasn't looking for it) across a YouTube video of a band called Winny Puhh performing something called "Meiecundinees Uks Korsakov Laks Eile Latti." The title supposedly means "A man from our region, one named Korsakov, went to Latvia yesterday." Why that is worth screaming over and over is not made clear.

It features an Estonian heavy-metal quintet performing on a talent contest on Eurovision. I'm not making this up, because why would I, but the guys are all sporting full wolfman facial hair and wearing wrestling singlets. For much of the video, they are spinning from cables like a bad cirque routine.

The next find was Ylvis singing "The Fox (What Does the Fox Say)." You've probably already heard it, as it's been watched on YouTube 171,816,346 times as of Tuesday morning. It is apparently the result of a party for furries in Norway that got out of hand. Someone videotaped it, put it to music and created an Internet hit.

It features adults in animal costumes and dancing waiters in the woods singing about the various noises animals make. Elephants go "toot," fish go "bluh" and seals go "ow, ow, ow," which is the closest thing to a deep thought in the video.

It was written and performed by brothers and talk-show hosts Bard and Vegard Ylvisaker. They explained on the "Ellen" show that the intent was to make a really bad song and video, and that, in Norway, fox is a euphemism for marijuana. Not sure if either is true, but both are very believable.

Then on Sunday I stumbled across a couple of records in my late mother-in-law's record collection. The first was "The Hokey Pokey and Other Favorites" from 1972. Hearing it brought back lots of memories.

The second discovery brought back bad memories. It was "Dance, Dance, Dance," a collection of disco hits. What was kind of nostalgic about it, though, was that the album came with a how-to booklet that showed the proper way to do the Bump, The Hustle and The Latin Hustle. It also came with 10 numbered feet for showing the proper steps.

What a trip.

Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@times freepress.com or 423-757-6354.

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