Music

RDIO PLAYLIST OF THE WEEK: Kid Koala

by Sam Sutherland

If you’re familiar with Eric San, it makes sense that his playlist contribution would be “Six ‘sick’ songs to play when you’re feeling under the weather.” Best known as Kid Koala, the versatile DJ behind numerous solo releases, graphic novels, and collaborations like Bullfrog, Deltron 3030, and the Slew, San is nothing if not playful. Just look at that photo.

The most recent Kid Koala project is Space Cadet, his second graphic novel. Since making his debut in 1996 with the Scratchcratchratchatch demo tape, Kid Koala has built a career on being unpredictable, working with everyone from rock bands to puppets to Lederhosen Lucil — another graphic novel, which comes with its own soundtrack, is just another natural progression for the Vancouver-born artist.

Given San’s proclivity for unusual samples in his DJ work, it should also come as no surprise that this marks our first playlist to stump Rdio — both the Sesame Street song and Outbreak soundtrack aren’t available (we can’t imagine why), so we’ve included them as YouTube links to really get the full “sick” experience as intended.

“Achoo” from Sesame Street
I remember this clip from the show featuring a singing cow who sneezes and wails about how “life can be blue with a cold or a flu.”

“Time to Get Ill” by the Beastie Boys.
When three or more of your co-workers at the office or your guardees at the daycare center get sick, you should play them this song and have a get well party!

“Outbreak: Original Soundtrack” by James Newton Howard
Nothing silences a hypochondriac more than an amazingly arranged string section! Play this music on your headphones and run a few laps around the block. You’ll start feeling better immediately, I guarantee it.

“Fever” by Peggy Lee
I once saw this girl drive down the street in Montreal with this tune blasting out of her car speakers. To this day I still wonder if she had a temperature that day.

“Flu Season” by Kid Koala
I had the craziest cold when I recorded this track. The whole beat is made up of scratched coughs and sneezes. It is by far one of the silliest tracks in my repertoire. I’ve performed this track live only a handful of times because it requires six turntables and eight coffees to really pull it off.

“Suze (The Cough Song)” by Bob Dylan
To my knowledge, there are no coughs in this song but it’s still a beautiful tune.