Thursday, June 18, 2026

Various Artists - Musical Salad, Volume 2 (1939-2025) (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Here is the second volume of "Musical Salad,"a collection of songs about vegetables. For real. 

As I mentioned with the release of "Musical Salad, Volume 1," this project began as one of Fabio from Rio's eccentric ideas, supported at first by my cautiously skeptical encouragement. But after we finished "Volume 1," I have to admit I was already looking forward to a second helping.

Nearly all of the songs in "Volume 1" were found by Fabio. But for this volume, I went digging and found a majority of these ones. As with the first volume, Fabio really went above and beyond the usual call of duty, making an artistic booklet with text, talking about each song and including an illustration for each song, made by AI. (He wrote all the text however.) I also provided ideas and suggestions for many of the illustrations generated with the help of Fabio's AI-assisted artwork process.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, I have concerns about the use of AI. For instance, I have been careful to never include any music made by AI in this blog. But the AI artwork made for this booklet was just too good not to include. In fact, it's kind of "scary good," since it can do what a human can do for practically no cost in just a tiny fraction of the time.

At any rate, as I mentioned in the write up for the first volume, the songs here had to actually be about vegetables in some way and not just have a fitting title. So for instance, we didn't use the song "Vegetable Man" by Pink Floyd, because all of the lyrics reference clothes and fashion, with just a mysterious line in the chorus, "Vegetable Man, where are you?" That may well refer to someone being a mental vegetable and have nothing to do with actual edible vegetables at all.

But now that we are posting the second volume, if you can think of any fitting songs that are worthy of inclusion for a possible third volume, please let us know. I thought that we had pretty much found all the good ones that fit, but already we've had a few suggestions in the comments for valuable one that look promising. I could easily see a third volume, including more of the fun artwork, if we can just find enough songs that keep up the standards of the first two volumes. 

Also, if you have suggestions for other theme, albums, similar to this one, please let us know. I doubt I would spearhead any project like that (since I have my hands full with so many other albums I want to post already), but there's no telling what kind of off the wall ideas that might appeal to Fabio. In fact, I already get the feeling that he is thinking about other food related albums, so if you have some suggestions for songs along those lines, please let us know about those too.

This album is 50 minutes long.

01 Our Garden (Lucy Kalantari)
02 Life in the Slaw Lane (Kip Addotta)
03 I Love Onions (Jackie Weaver)
04 Cheese and Onions (Rutles)
05 Homegrown Tomatoes (Guy Clark)
06 Solid Potato Salad (Ella Mae Morse)
07 Potato (Cheryl Wheeler)
08 The Potato Stomp (Killin' Jivers)
09 Beans and Cornbread (Louis Jordan)
10 Eat Every Bean and Pea on Your Plate (Daddy A Go-Go)
11 Cornbread and Butterbeans (Carolina Choc Drops)
12 The Spinach Song (Julia Lee)
13 Broccoli (Association)
14 Artichokes (Maps & Atlases)
15 Avocado Woo Woo (The Tin Men)
16 Fruit Salad (Tierra Whack)
17 Coleslaw (Louis Jordan)
18 Vegetables [1993 Live Version] (Beach Boys)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/eN4EguPz

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/khZ7cVB1EQwxUMr/file

The cover image was made by Fabio, using AI. As mentioned above, he also used AI to have illustrations of each of the songs. Here's one that I particularly liked, for the song Avocado Woo Woo." 

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