Upbeat music to cheer us up during all this.

[Glebe]

The Shapeshifters - Lola's Theme.

Together - So Much Love to Give.

And so forth.

[Sin Agog]

Try this unbelievably sweet-voiced South African High Life singer Dixie Kwankwa. She released an album called Sadness & Joy in 1959 which I bought in a record shop on a whim, only to find out that she really has one of the most calming voices I've ever heard. Everything's so gentle and understated. The way she sings imalilela (or something like that) in this song just melts me. It's so dreamy.  Take a three-minute dose for every three hours of news consumed.  Kwa Zulu

[Gregory Torso]

What is more joyous than a bit of early Deerhoof?

Byun

Gore In Rut

Come See The Duck

Polly Bee

Milking

[Gregory Torso]

Kwa Zulu

This is fucking LUSCIOUS

[Psmith]

sweet.

[wosl]

Care for a little Bobby Timmons, sir or madam?  This Here. (Jimmy Cobb on drums.)

[Captain Crunch]

Maybe not for everyone but I'm always pleasantly surprised how Witch's debut album stands up.  It's like going down a log flop with a gob full of sherbet. 

[Egyptian Feast]

A bit of Os Mutantes always does the trick.

[alan nagsworth]

Ween - Hey There Fancypants

Never fails to chase the blues away in the most cartoonish and stupid way. The solo section is just ridiculously goofy and fucking great to boot.

[Urinal Cake]

K-Pop (Twice etc) and Hudson Mohawke- Scud Books https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R92qBDEKRJs

[honeychile]

Care for a little Bobby Timmons, sir or madam?  This Here. (Jimmy Cobb on drums.)

Fucking hell, the NHS should be prescribing this. Not only an easy-going and carefree glide across the ivories, but at a time of empty streets and shuttered shops, it blows in an amazing air of mid-morning, post-rush hour Manhattan, pavements quietly humming but not throbbing, teenage truants on a basketball court, the smell of coffee roasting and bagels baking. Isn't it? Wasn't it? Marvellous.

Enjoyed Scud Books too. Thanks everyone.

I'm gonna be an arch-twat and just quote some of my own old posts which i've made on very similar threads in the past. Special commendation for This beautiful day by Levi Jackson, give that a click first.

The chorus to Levi Jackson (aka Solomon King)'s This beautiful day is something i find it impossible to repress a grin for. The whole song grabs you by the lapels, slaps you across the face and says "Look out the window, it's beautiful and you're alive to see it!" but whereas the intro and chorus are carried by smooth muted guitar riffs and subtle chord changes, tact flies out the window in the chorus. It's so earnestly, childishly sincere and coupled with the violins and vox turning up the camp for all it's worth, it's a contagiously, air-punchingly cheerful moment. As is often the case with the best examples, we only get two choruses here and it's all the sweeter for being fleeting.

The tone for the unbridled joy of The Bar-kays Soul finger is set by that cheeky little blast of Mary had a little lamb at the start, and it just lays it on from there: drum and bass marching lock step, that obnoxious trilled riff on the trumpet (which as we know is possibly the funniest instrument in the orchestra, along with the gong), kids screaming "soul finger" in the chorus, and the brazen return of Mary had a little lamb halfway through. When Ray Parker Jr's Ghostbusters theme was released 17 years later, Parker was sued (successfully) by Huey Lewis who claimed he'd ripped off his song I want a new drug. In fact Ghostbusters ripped off Soul finger far more substantially - it's not only the chords but that thumping rhythm and bassline, and the way "ghostbusters!" is chanted is near-identical to the "soul finger!" refrain.

I've recently been working through Acoustic Ladyland's oeuvre and got round to giving their fine album Living with a tiger a whirl. The opening song Sport mode is a real whirlwind, one of those little blitzes which this band does well from time to time. It hinges around these two sax riffs; one of which cheekily extends the song's elastic, so that the second can go wild and bring it all back with a snap. It doesn't just make me happy. It makes me physically grin. It makes me think of shooting down a log flume with my hands in the air.

Eels' Blinking lights and other revelations [...] towards the latter end there's an uplifting number called Losing streak which features a trombone riff in the chorus which is uplifting, touching... and funny. It makes me smile every time i hear it. It goes beyond appreciation, the response is the physical embodiment of happiness.

I remember listening with trepidation to the Manic Street Preachers' It's not war just the end of love in advance of their album Postcards from a young man (which turned out to be a fine piece of work) and dreading it. And yet, as soon as those strings kicked in... well i was grinning for the entire thing. It was camp as fuck, it was completely lacking in self-consciousness and i think that can knock down certain critical barriers.

These aside, i think Keith Mansfield's spectacular Grandstand theme music has this in spades, right from the opening bars. In fact, quite fantastically it manages to encapsulate different levels of grinning, different styles of grinning, different reasons for grinning. It's a total joy.

[machotrouts]

Slime City - You and Everybody That You Love Will One Day Die

[Gregory Torso]

Love in audio format - The Cookies - I Never Dreamed

[boki]

Slime City - You and Everybody That You Love Will One Day Die

Fucking banger.  Lovely bunch of Michaels.

Let's be honest with ourselves and skip straight to Kunt And The Gang.  After you've listened to everything* by Slime City (and their previous band We Are The Physics), of course.


*it's only like six songs or summat so far.

[Neomod]

These get me beaming[nb]not a euphemism[/nb] when they hit the decks (or generic mp3 player)

The Dramatics  Inky Dinky Wang Dang Doo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XwQWY_szk0

Peppermint Rainbow Will You Be Staying After Sunday
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNg7arOQoVA

Sugar's Campaign 「ホリデイ」
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xl3xnY9QG_Q

Foxygen Follow the Leader
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-tZ1gbc2pQ