The fight for diverse and conscious voices

In relation to Tuesday's musical surprise find. I have a bunch more new music I want to blog about, but I need to get this silly obsession more out of my brain than it is.

First, fennel discovered an English translation of the actual lyrics of the Dan Balan tune and compared them to the lyrics of his MySpace page tune and they're different. He posted these in a comment on the Tuesday entry. Props to fennel for doing the discovery. I was too distracted by the boobies, what can I say?

And speaking of the boobies I was convinced on first viewing that the actual singer on "Chica Bomb" is not one of the featured babes. MizA sent me a face shot captured from a video still and that set me off again. I can identify at least four different women in the vid; oddly, two of them appear only in head/shoulders view, looking straight at the camera and lip-syncing. I was guessing at first that the actual singer was one of those two, but a little searching says no.

It appears the actual vocal force behind Chica Bomb is one Katie DiCicco (http://www.myspace.com/katiedicicco). There's quite a sample of stuff on her page, of which two things stick with me.
1. Either she's got a really good wardrobe person or she is MUCH better endowed than the models in Chica Bomb.
2. Anyone who covers Eartha Kitt gets bonus points in my book. She does a respectable job with the song, given that it's a terrible recording of a live performance.

And now I think it's time to move on.

Today's music special has a surprise ending. I hope you'll play along because it's just that kind of awesome.

Step 1: the set-up
http://www.mashup-industries.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=321&Itemid=27
We begin by checking in at Mashup Industries, as I do a couple times a week. They don't post as often as they used to, but it's the place to go to hear the newest stuff from people like Clive$ter here. His latest offering "We No Speak Chica" is a strongly latin-influenced fast-paced pop dance tune. I like it and since I don't know either of the component parts I go off to listen to them so I can backtrack what the DJ has done to produce this mash.

Step 2: the players
In this case, we have Yolanda Be Cool & DCUP doing "We No Speak Americano" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wavpWRK6IX8). Yolanda are a couple of Euro DJs who have teamed up with DCUP, an Australian producer. Being an American I had no idea that "We No Speak Americano" had topped several European charts already this year. The song samples a 1956 hit "Tu vuò fà l'americano" (You want to be American) by Italian singer Renato Carosone (or so says Wikipedia). Cool.

The second part is Dan Balan's "Chica Bomb" and my first search for that turns up the official video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWxnI8-5LEg. Go ahead and watch that, at least long enough to get an idea of what's going on. Keep in mind this is the official video for the song.

Step 3: the video
I watched about 45 seconds of the video before my jaw bounced off the floor long enough for me to send the link to MizA who promptly responds with "Boobies!" And "it was nice of her to invite her gay friend into her video."

No, sorry, that's his video. What, exactly, is he adding here? A bit of freak and three words, repeated, assuming you think "oooh" is a word. I'm still unclear on who the female singer is - she's got a decent voice and I'm pretty sure she's not the "jiggly sweaty tits" so succinctly described in Nick Levine's pithy snark (http://www.digitalspy.com/music/singlesreviews/a234883/dan-balan-chica-bomb.html).

Step 4: who is Dan Balan anyway?
Right, so if he's not the moving force on this bit of electro-house, who is he? Well, like lots of musicians he has a MySpace page. To which I will direct you in a moment, but it auto-plays and you need some background first.

He's Moldovan and he's done Eurovision entries as part of a band called O-Zone. If that's familiar to you, then you know what's coming and props to you. I was sitting there thinking "Hmm, where do I know that from..." when I went to his MySpace page.

Step 5: the reveal
( Just in case you were skimming and don't want spoilers quite yet )
I can not make this stuff up. Life is just way weirder than you ever expect.