Tuesday tea tune: This Bird has flown

I posted this years ago, but the link seems to have perished. This bluesy tune crossed my path again recently, amid an afternoon of pining for Chicago's music scene, and it's worth repeating: the great Andrew Bird, "Tea and Thorazine."

Tuesday tea tune: 'Cup of Tea'

Brian Vander Ark was always a gracious interview when I was on the beat (once, twice), and his band, the Verve Pipe, always possessed a melodic and strong structural talent that lifted them above other grunge-tinged, ’90s-born bands. This song's about the taste metaphor rather than the beverage itself, but somehow it just feels good in an autumn-approaches kind of way ...

Tuesday tea tune: 'Texas Tea'

The phrase "Texas tea" refers either to petroleum gushing from a well or to a better-known cocktail cribbed from Yankees. Nonetheless, I've found this fresh electronic track by Deadbeat to be great brewing music ...

Tuesday tea tune: 'Tea and Toast'

Lucy Spraggan, a singer on the British "X Factor" show, wrote this moving narrative about the simple things in a couple's life ...

Tuesday tea tune: Bein' green

Spotted this attractive embroidery on Twitter recently. The Green Man has always been a favorite totem — I used to have a clay Green Man hanging on a tree trunk in a previous garden — especially in spring and summer.

Reminds me of a favorite XTC album track, too. A stretch for the Tuesday tea theme; just pretend Green Man loves his sencha ...

Tuesday tea tune: Far out, man

This is either the kind of marathon tune you'll enjoy, chilling with a hot cup, or one that will have you shouting, "This is my happening, and it freaks me out!"

The band is Gong, Australian proggers from exactly the era it sounds like. The track is the title composition from the 1973 album "Flying Teapot," a concept narrative about "a pig-farming Egyptologist called Mista T Being sold a 'magick ear ring' by an 'antique teapot street vendor & tea label collector' called Fred the Fish. The ear ring is capable of receiving messages from the Planet Gong via a pirate radio station called Radio Gnome Invisible."

Like, heavy ...

Tuesday tea tune: Spring into tea

Spring has sprung, spring classes have begun, the world is looking up. Here's a chill celebration titled "Spring Tea Ceremony" by Oliver Shanti ...

Tuesday tea tune: No foolin'

No jokes here, just a Tuesday tea tune (they come in batches nowadays, don'tchaknow...) called "April Fool" by the Tea Cozies ...

Tuesday tea tune: Here's lookin' at you, kid

Tomorrow, my partner and I celebrate 20 years together. Love is a superlative experience, worthy of every poem and song it has inspired. Allow me this reach for my weekly offering — it's the Cowboy Junkies, performing "Anniversary Song" on one of my favorite music shows from my old sweet home, Chicago. The refrain for this one goes like this:

Well I've known all these things
and the joys that they can bring
And I'll share them all for a cup of coffee
and to wear your ring

Tuesday tea tune: A ’60s cuppa

Yeah — a big-beat, British invasion track from, uh, a German band called the Rattles. "We will be there after tea," they sing, where they will "drink from golden cups." A 1968 single ...

Tuesday tea tune: Y'all

Some down-home, easygoing strumming — coupled with beautiful images of summertime and sun-ripe tomatoes, for those shivering timbers this winter — from the Elms, in a song called "Bring Me Your Tea":

Tuesday tea tune: Young love

I've no idea who these high school kids are, but from the notes on the YouTube link and the performance cues the scenario here seems to be this: Sniffly cameragirl had a bad day, and boyfriend-of-the-year candidate attempts to cheer her up by singing about green tea. It's sweet, it's stupid, it's all of that, even the part about burned kitties ...

Tuesday tea tune: Righting all wrongs

Tea solves all life's problems, right? That's the idea behind this new promotional video from Yorkshire Tea — they of the nifty slogan, or as Rufus Wainwright calls them "the crystal meth of tea." Come for the nifty theme, stay for the impressive single-take tracking shot. (There's even a behind-the-scenes video about the making of.)

Tuesday tea tune: Funkadelic new year

A cool, funky soul groove for your New Year's party — out and about, or snug at home — from French producer Chris Joss, "Drink Me Hot":

Christmas tea tune: Jesus drank tea

Merry Christmas, tea folk!

As Christmas Eve falls on this lovely Tuesday, be sure to check out today's Tuesday tea tune: "Baby Jesus" by a fine Brit band, Kula Shaker. A sweet slice of early Moody Blues-ish, narrated psychedelia, the chorus of this track sings the praises of Jesus as "a real cool man" who not only showed up to parties and turned the water into wine but was a man of true character because "he probably drank tea"!

Click here to listen, or right/control-click to download. (Read more)

Tuesday tea tunes: Hellish

From another folksy Lilith, Melissa Warner, here's a song putting forth the preposterous notion that "there's no tea in heaven." Dahling — tea is heaven!

Nothing embeddable, so click here to have a listen.

Drink to me

Paul McCartney has a new record out this week, simply titled "New." Mark Guarino, a great critic who took my post at the Chicago Sun-Times, says the new tunes reinforce Paul's sometimes unheralded tradition as an artist who "has quietly pushed the boundaries one would not expect from rock royalty who might otherwise opt for reeling in the years."

Really, I'd just been looking for an excuse to post this photo of Macca mugging with a sad mug of road tea.

Tuesday tea tunes: 'Red, white, black or green

I'm reprimanding myself for not including this song in the lineup much earlier, given that the singer is a treasured but wayward friend and the cover of the album from whence it comes was designed by my partner. The band is the Mudville Project, an erstwhile alt-country band from Tulsa led by Greg Klaus, and the song is "The Tea," a slow, moody rumination on a steeping life.

Tuesday tea tunes: Peace out!

Sept. 21 is World Peace Day (or International Day of Peace), a holiday observed by all United Nations member states honoring the absence of war and violence. Too bad (a) we're still at war and that (b) every day isn't World Peace Day.

Here's a song expressing something of that sentiment, a goofy but poignant protest song of sorts by an old Israeli band called, of course, Teapacks:



(Why the name Teapacks? Singer Kobi Oz explained in a Q&A: "We were originally called Tippex, as in wipeout fluid, because we are trying to wipe out differences between people. We are combining together different kinds of Israel, like Arab Jew Israel with East European kind of Israel. But we found out there are students that are sniffing this fluid and it caused brain damage so we changed our name to Teapacks. We didn't want to take responsibility for this." We're left to assume that snorting tea is a better option. I won't argue.)

Tuesday tea tunes: Deep Freeze, hot tea

Here's a band with a name as absurdist as most of its songs: the Deep Freeze Mice. An underground persistence throughout the ’80s new wave, this quartet produced 10 albums of self-consciously wiggy but still musically sound pop — a more daffy version of Monochrome Set, a more centrist prelude to the Frogs. Click here for a live run through "I Like Digestive Biscuits in My Coffee," the opening salvo of their 1981 album "Teenage Head in My Refrigerator." Fear not, the line following the title is: "I hear some people dip them in their tea ..."