Jaan Pehechan Ho

This pop culture entanglement started, for me, sometime around 2012, when Heineken shoved a television advertisement (called "The Date") down my throat with multiple viewings, probably during the watching of many sporting events. I didn't really mind, because the commercial was kinda cool, as it reminded me of restaurants in San Francisco's Chinatown, and the music got stuck in my head in a good way:

Fast forward, perhaps a year later, when I started to re-discover music again, that commercial and song popped back into my head and I wanted to know where it came from. A couple of quick searches led me to a clip from a 60's Bollywood Movie called "Gumnaam", where a band by the name of Ted Lyons And His Cubs, performs the song. Way cooler than anything Heineken could have produced:

Then I thought, Heineken stole the music, but added a whole different theme around it, however, those costumes looked very familiar to me. Then I remembered seeing a recent video by the White Lies that used the costumes and some choreography from the Bollywood movie overlaid with their own music. I liked their song and the lead woman dancer reminded me of someone from the past----fond memories:

Then I got curious. Were there any other cultural references to this movie? Yes, it turned out to be in the opening credits of a movie I hadn't seen called "Ghost World". I've subsequently seen it and it's a little depressing (supposedly a comedy/drama), based on some graphic novels for teens, with Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson as teenagers fresh out of High School trying to figure things out. Released in 2001, it seems to be the first Western pop culture reference to the "Gumnaam" dance clip.

How the creator of "Ghost World" got his hands on the clip of this movie, involved one of the guys from The Db's, but you can read Wiki on that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaan_Pehechan_Ho

Here's the most recent cover of the song by a Melbourne band, The Bombay Royale, which made it into the video game Far Cry 4, playing as the main character storms the fortress, so it continues...

Holy Rollers

I love it when some people have so much music inside them, they have to form multiple bands. Shana Cleveland as the lead singer to La Luz, needed to air out some folk-type songs (I guess), so she formed this ensemble of the Sandcastles as a vehicle for that. I don't necessarily like folk music, but this has an underlying, slow-burning intensity that is very appealing. Reminds me of the stuff that Andrew Kenny (American Analog Set) is doing with the Wooden Birds.

Here's a live (in studio at KEXP) version of the song that is also worthy of watching. A little more electric, showing her talent as a guitarist and the excellent sound quality right in her backyard in Seattle, WA (I think that's where she is from).