ICOSIUM KAFE IN ANDERSONVILLE

It's not just a crepe, it's a meal -- and it's dessert, too! That's what I learned from Leah and Dick when we dined recently at Icosium Kafe in Andersonville. Almost as good as the crepes is the view out the cafe's windows, which give you front-row seats to Clark Street's widescreen-Technicolor parade. It's men with women, men with men, women with women -- and some folks just sit there and cross-pollinate.

Once we get rolling in the Mobile Recording Studio, we head south along Clark and pass by Lincoln Towing, which prompts Leah and Dick to talk about Steve Goodman's "Lincoln Park Pirates" -- Steve Jobs will sell it to you for 99 cents at the iTunes Store.

Leah also mentions that she's been playing a lot of old music lately. Here are some of the links she found for great sources of legal downloads of out-of-copyright music from Edison cylinders (that's Thomas Alva Edison at right) and 78 records:

Internet Archive - Cylinder

Internet Archive - 78 rpm

Turtle's "78 RPM" Jukebox

University of California, Santa Barbara, Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project

"These are terrific compilations of early 20th-century popular music -- and provide a glimpse of the times," Leah says. She explains that it was common for a single song to be recorded by a large number of musicians. One example was "Yes! We Have No Bananas" (sheet music published in 1923, courtesy of UCLA's Digital Library Program).

"Yes! We Have No Bananas," Billy Jones, 1923

"Yes! We Have No Bananas," Great White Way Orchestra with Billy Murray, 1923

"Yes! We Have No Bananas," Green Bros. Novelty Band, 1923

"Yes! We Have No Bananas," Arthur Hall and the Yerkes Novelty Five, 1923

"Vandaag Geen Bananen" ("Yes! We Have No Bananas" in Dutch), Willy Derby, 1923

Leah found that the song was also recorded in 1923 by Furman and Nash, William West, Bailey's Lucky Seven with Irving Kaufman, Ben Selvin and his Orchestra, Benny Krueger and his Orchestra, Vincent Lopez and his Hotel Pennsylvania Orchestra, The California Ramblers, Sam Lanin's Dance Ensemble, the Original Georgia Five and, undoubtedly, others, not to mention endless covers since. (She's especially fond of the version by the Muppets' Swedish Chef.)

And then there was "I've Got the 'Yes! We Have No Bananas' Blues," Billy Jones, 1923, which Leah says several other artists recorded, too.

By the way, according to the 1923 Chicago Tribune citation listed at the end of this page, the catchphrase "Yes! We have no bananas" originated here in Chicago in 1920.

And here's a possibly not relevant but nonetheless interesting article on why there really might be no bananas soon. It all has to do with how bananas reproduce. I mean, isn't it incredible that the banana hasn't had sex for thousands of years?

See some college girls put a condom on a banana.

In this podcast we also mention:

Jerry Lewis' "The Noisy Eater"

"Three Coins in the Fountain" was written for the film (and apparently sung by Frank Sinatra in the soundtrack, per Internet Movie Database), but popularized by the Four Aces.

The Austrian soft drink sensation Almdudler. See a commercial for the stuff.

Lincoln Square

Sabatino's

Magic Pan

OTHER MEDIA

Leah's printed review

Centerstage Chicago

Yelp

Zagat

Metromix

CONTACT INFO FOR RESTAURANT
Icosium Kafe, 5200 N. Clark St., Chicago, [phone], IcosiumKafe.com.

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