Song Spotlight(s): "Duj Sandale" (1998)

It's a 2x1

Look, it’s not celty punk or “pirate music” or diddle-core or whatever you bloody people are used to but I mean come ON:

Sometimes you hear something so ridiculously creative that you feel intimidated. The production in “Duj Sandale” is intimidating in just this way. The way the synth sounds create this madcap, whirling storm around traditional (Romanian? anyone?) music is just not easy to find in any other song I know of. It is one of the few songs that will have you singing along even if you don’t speak the language (which you almost certainly don’t).

Apparently, the lyrics read something like: “I saw her on the street, I bought her melon, I bought her… two sandals.” Duj Sandale. No idea what language that is. Don’t care. That’s just a great story, so relatable. Who hasn’t seen a woman on the street and bought her two sandals?

I think that had he known about this song, John Lennon would have written:

Imagine seeing a woman
When you’re out on the street
Imagine buying two sandals
One for each of her feet…

Anyway. We gather that the song is something of a regularity in certain musical circles. Once, after a gig in Montreal, we were whisked to a secret upstairs club with some kind of band playing (we couldn’t tell, we were hammered and there seemed to be a lot of culturally diverse stuff going on). All of a sudden, like magic, they started playing this song, pretty much exactly as it is on this recording. I lost it. I went nuts. I have no idea how that happened. It was awesome.

I recorded a synth-heavy demo of a mediocre klezmer-ish instrumental for the new album that didn’t make the cut. I was going for something like “Duj Sandale”. I failed. It isn’t nearly as creative or interesting. Wanna hear it anyway? Here you go, paid subscribers... mysteriously paying for substandard music…