My friend Gerg is someone who, when talking to a new person about music, always asks to “borrow” some of their albums, unfortunately it’s usually asked in the heat of the moment and afterwards, the albums go un-listened to and unreturned!
So one day I take Gerg along with me to visit one of my Alternative/Punk gurus James, and seeing his huge collection, Gerg asked James, ‘So what’s the hot thing you’re listening to nowadays?” to which James pulled out a CD and said “I’ve JUST been getting into these guys and they’re pretty terrific!”
I already knew what was coming, and sure enough, Gerg said, “Wow man, can I borrow that?” I tried to step in and say that we could just record it some other time, but James was happy to nurture new fans and said “SURE! I think you’ll dig it!”
A few weeks went by and James asked me, “Hey, how’s that Gerg guy liking the CD I let him borrow?”...But when I asked Gerg, he still “hadn’t had time to listen to it.” “No problem,” said James.
Then a few MONTHS went by and once again James asked, “Did your friend Gerg get a chance to listen to that album yet?’ to which, once again, I was told by Gerg he still hadn’t yet.
Finally 4 months had gone by and James called, asking, “Hey man, can I get that album back from your friend? I wanna use one of the songs in a mix tape I’m making.” I apologized and told him I’d get on it.
I need not mention to you that the thing I hated most of this situation was that I was the guy in BETWEEN this predicament, a situation I’d tried to avoid by not letting him borrow anything in the first place! But I went to Gerg and said, “Yo, you listen to that album yet? James wants it back.”
“Argghh, I still didn’t have time to check it out yet. I’ll get on it right away.”
In the end, he just returned the CD to me without EVER listening to it once, but I was relieved enough to be able to return it back to James! Case closed!
Fast forward a few months later and I’m cruising with my friends Kipp and Al, the latter of whom told me he had a new music mix tape James had made for him and we could listen to it while we cruised! I was game, and off we went…and as the mixtape began, I was BLOWN AWAY by the mix’s opening track, a BLISTERING, ROCKING song called “I Couldn’t Smile”, and I just HAD to have a copy of the mix for my own!
Calling James up, I gushed to him about that awesome song I heard on Al’s mixtape and asked who it was. James laughed with bemusement as he said “The group is the Junk Monkeys, that was the CD I let your friend borrow for half a year!” But he loved how much I dug it and told me “I’ll make a copy of that mixtape for you!”
MAN, this song was so damn good, (well the whole mix was good, but that opening track was just chef’s kiss!), and when I played it for another friend of mine named Cassie, SHE loved it too, asking it I could dub a copy of the mix for her, to which I enthusiastically did!
NOW, fast forward to a month or so later and Me, Cassie, and my aforementioned friend Gerg are in my car, going to see a movie. On the way, I dig up James’ mix tape, and from that cracking opening notes of I Couldn’t Smile, me and Cassie were rocking out, singing at the top of our lungs, air guitaring and drumming, all throughout the song til its crashing end, and once it was done, Gerg said “WHOA! That song was awesome! Who WAS that?’, to which I laughed, “DUDE, that was the Junk Monkeys, the CD James let you borrow for half a year and you never listened to!”
“Argh!"” he said. Then after thinking, he sheepishly asked, “So…you think it would be “dick” of me to ask James if I could borrow it again?”
I laughed and said “There ain’t no WAY I’m asking him to let you borrow anything again!, LOL!”
But so affected was Gerg by not only the song but the sheer enthusiasm me and Cassie had while blasting the song in my car, that he went out and bought the CD for himself! And eventually, even I wasn’t satisfied with only having the song on a cassette mix, and bought a copy of Soul Cakes for my very own as well!
To this day, “I Couldn’t Smile is STILL one of the greatest cassette-mix openings I’ve even experienced, a perfect starter to ANY party mood!!!
California alt rock group Concrete Blonde are such terrific songwriters that their take on other artists’ tunes are largely overlooked- Unlike some other groups who merely “do” covers, this group takes songs they like and lovingly transform them into true Concrete Blonde masterpieces!
Songs like George Harrison’s “Beware of Darkness”, Thin Lizzy’s “It’s Only Money” and Tommy James’ “Crystal Blue Persuasion”…Listening to any one of their covers and it is obvious that the band has given the same amount of time and crafting to these tunes that they’ve given to their own songs!
Of all these cover tunes that the band has produced, (and there have been many, many…!) the song that stands out in MY mind as one of their very best is their take of Roxy Music’s THE END OF THE LINE, featured on their incredible 1993 album MEXICAN MOON.
There are lots of reasons why this cover works so well, but a large part of is that by the time Mexican Moon came out, vocalist/bassist Johnette Napolitano and Guitarist Jim Mackey were seasoned pros; after travelling across the world a zillion times in as many tours, their experience shows through in their sound-No one croons like Napolitano with her low, growling whispers and powerful wailing, and when you add in the lush, layered guitars of Jim Mackey, you are left with pure perfection!
The End of the line was originally off Roxy Music’s 1975 SIREN album, and though I liked the song, I always thought of it as the opening to the avante-grade third track “Sentimental Fool” (since they were essentially connected) and never thought of its potential as a “single” type of song. WOW, how the Concrete Blonde version has changed my mind!
Over the years, I have made quite a few Concrete Blonde cassette mixes for people, and almost ALL of them have concluded with “End of the Line”… Just listening to Jim’s echoing reverb as he picks out the resounding notes on his guitar- with double-tracking and a guitar synthesizer, he’s created this beautiful guitar harmony , and then laid over this is the incomparable Johnette’s heartfelt singing- She sings with such passion, you really feel like the lyrics are hers, and when she hits those notes…MAN! Just awesome!
Perusing W♥M’s review of R.E.M.’s song “Don’t Go Back to Rockville brought back happy memories of 10,000 Maniacs’ “Candy Everybody Wants” Maxi-Single, which featured not only “Don’ t Go Back To Rockville” and “Sally Ann”, but a cover of ANOTHER famous artist…
I used to go out with this girl who had a love of music as much as I did, and at that time, her favorite group was The Smiths, (in particular their enigmatic lead singer Morrisey) while one of my favorite groups (still is, actually) was the awesome Jamestown Alt/Folk band 10,000 Maniacs.
So one day at work, I’m listening to the college radio station, and they’re spinning the latest single from Natalie Merchant and the boys, and I am pleasantly surprised to hear them do a cover of Morrisey’s “Everyday is like Sunday”!
What an interesting choice!!! Listening to it, I just loved Natalie's take on the song, and I just couldn’t wait to go home and tell my girlfriend the news that two of our favorite groups had “connected” somehow! I picked her up after work, and was about to tell her the exciting news, but before I could, she burst out, “Guess what, today I heard some BITCH trying to cover Morrisey’s Everyday is Like Sunday!!!”
Stunned, I defensively said “What?! That was no “Bitch”! That was 10,000 Maniacs!!!”
Then she said, “Oh…really?”
And I adamantly said “YEAH!!!” Ahahahahahahaaa!!!
Well, I can't remember if she ever gave the 10,000 Maniacs version a chance, although to be fair, she did like quite a lot of OTHER songs from The Maniacs. Too bad Morrisey never did a cover of one of Natalie's songs!
Back in the 90’s I was working for a Photo Imaging Studio where the supervisor in the Developing Room was a Junior Pastor who would play nothing but Christian Radio, and though I’m not Christian in the least, over time I fell in love with quite a few of the songs and artists coming over the airwaves!
Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, Margaret Becker Michelle Pilar, more rock-oriented artists like Dana Key and PETRA, even Mark Farner (!), etc, I suddenly found myself making trips to the local Christian Bookstore to pick up the latest favorite song discoveries! Even my fellow employees ended up buying cassette tapes of those Christian artists! (though theirs were the more Jazz-oriented ones like TAKE6).
Usually when I liked a new artist, I could simply make my way down to the Christian Gift Shop and pick up the latest tape, but there were a few that never seemed to be available, and while there seemed to be no reason that they didn't have the latest Greg X. Volz, one of the other albums I really wanted wasn't available simply because it was too old and out of print, and that was "Inhabitants Of The Rock" by David and the Giants which I wanted because it featured one of my all-time fave songs called "I Can Depend On You".
I don't know quite what struck me about this song, but there was something about its utter simplicity that instantly hooked me, and thankfully, though an older song, the radio station (the late great KAIM) played it all the time! For years after that, I'd occasionally call up the radio station and request to have them play it (and of course they always did!), but aside from taping the song off the radio during one of those occasions, I still really wanted to have the song.
Then with the arrival of the internet and EBAY, a whole new avenue opened for me, and it was here that I thought I could actually get my hands of that song, and in the end, I found someone selling it on VINYL, and I had to make do with that.
When the album arrived in the mail, I was horrified to see that he record was slightly heat-warped (Ah! The maladies of an archaic format!) and for most of the album, it played slurry and made the needle jump! Fortunately, luck was on my side and one of the few songs that I COULD play was in fact I Can Depend On You!!!! Success!!
Sometime during the early eighties, a peculiar PV began airing on Night Trax starring a Lucille Ball-ish singer in a very kitschy retro-50’s style video called “They Don’t Know”. I’d later learn the woman was a popular British entertainer named Tracey Ullman.I was directed towards the video by a friend who knew my love of The Beatles, and one day the video came on and he told me, “Hey, you should check this video out- at the end of the song, her boyfriend turns out to be Paul McCartney!” Well, he was right, and I found the video, with Sir Paul as a country bumpkin truck drivin’ fool and bubbly Tracey as his lil’ lady, was so sweet and charming, I fell in love with the song in an instant!
Although no more significant singles came out of Tracey, she’d would later become a household name when she started her TV show The Tracey Ullman Show in 1987 (the skit show most famous for launching the careers of The Simpsons), and she'd go on to star in the award winning HBO shows “Tracey Takes On…” as well!
Fast forward to the year 1994, where Britpop music had taken over my life. My favorite groups at this time were the usual suspects like Belly, Lush, Darling Buds, Sundays, etc, and I was a big collector of these giant CD collections called VOLUME (fill in the number) that featured new and unreleased singles of the latest Britpop outfit!
VOLUME 10 had just arrived, and I immediately snatched it up as it featured both Tiny Monroe and Echobelly as well as a new song from Lush. Listening to the CD, I was plasantly surprised to hear a group called GIGOLO AUNTS doing a VERY Beatlesy rendition of the Tracey Ullman song!! Their version was so jangly and poppy (rather Smithereens-ish in tone), I ran about, getting all of my friends to listen to it!
It has since become one of our very favorite tunes, and the point was never clearer than when my friend Gerg found his copy of VOLUME TEN had oxidized(!) and wouldn’t play any more! He called me in a panic, first making me make sure that MY copy was okay, then begging me to burn him a copy so he could still have the song! I, of course, happily did so!
Fast forward again to around 2001, and I’m listening to a newly released greatest hits package of artist Kirsty MacColl’s work called “Galore!”, a collection I wanted for favorite tunes “Walking Down Madison”, “Innocence”, “I Can’t Stop Killing You”, and the catchy Smiths cover of “You Just Haven’t Earned it yet, Baby”, but was surprised to find what I assumed was another cover of “They Don’t Know”…and found out that the tune was originally written and recorded by Kirsty herself- Tracey Ullman and Gigolo Aunts had been covering KIRSTY all along!
Listening to Kirsty’s version was quite stunning- to hear the “actual version” which sounded so sincere and melancholy really hit home with me. But you know, in their own way, all the versions of the song are terrific, whether it be the Tracey Ullman version, the Gigolo Aunts one or Kirsty’s original song, so I decided to cobble together the three versions of Kirsty’s beautiful, upbeat and utterly unstoppable tune for everyone to lend an ear to- there’s no doubt in my mind that you will like at leat ONE of the versions of this song- it’s just TOO GOOD!
They Don't Know
You've been around for such a long time now
Oh maybe I could leave you but I don't know how
And why should I be lonely every night
When I can be with you
Oh yes you make it right
And I don't listen to the guys who say
That you're bad for me and I should turn you away
'Cos they don't know about us
And they've never heard of love
I get a feeling when I look at you
Wherever you go now I wanna be there too
They say we're crazy but I just don't care
And if they keep on talking still they get nowhere
So I don't mind if they don't understand
When I look at you and you hold my hand
'Cos they don't know about us
And they've never heard of love
Why should it matter to us if they don't approve
We should just take our chances while we've got nothing to lose
Baby
There's no need for living in the past
Now I've found good loving gonna make it last
I tell the others don't bother me
'Cos when they look at you they don't see what I see
British Alternative magazine SELECT would occasionally give away free music cassette samplers of upcoming / rare tracks from groups like Gene, Lucy’s Fur Coat, and Lush as a free bonus shrunk-wrapped with their issues.
On one of these fantastic collections, there was an incredibly catchy, jangly pop-perfect tune called Love of the Bottle, by new indie Britpop group Tiny Monroe. Fast- paced, and sassy , I fell in love with it immediately and knew I wanted to have a “hard” copy on CD (we all know how temporary those cassettes are), and I made a mental note to grab the release when it came out.
When the CD from Tiny Monroe called VOLCANOES came out, however, I was shocked to find the version on the album being QUITE different from the version on the cassette that I’d loved for so long! I was utterly baffled! Was the version on the sampler a single version? Or a work-in-progress? I do know that the LUSH song on the same sampler, a song called “The Childcatcher”, was a demo-form, which was ALSO quite different from the LOVELIFE release, so maybe that was it.
The Album version was slower, more rock-oriented, and NJ’s voice was double-tracked during the choruses. The entire structure of the song seemed different, with new guitar breaks and guitar riffing during the second verse. Oh, and there were new vocals overlaid over the lead-out, as well… a LOT more polished, but where was that happy, poppy song?
In any case, although I did like the Volcanoes version and the Album in general (esp. Cream Bun), part of me wasn’t satisfied, knowing I was still missing my favorite song from the band! What I ended up doing was taking that precious SELECT cassette to a friend’s house, and he ripped it to MP3 for me. I know it ain’t “State of the Art”, but at least I can relax, knowing that my song won’t warp or demagnetize out of my life when I try to listen to it!
Hey, if there’s anyone out there who knows exactly what the scoop is with the cassette version, I’d really appreciate if you’d drop me a line!
Being a Huge fan of THE WHO lead quite naturally to a all-encompassing love of lead guitarist/ songwriter Pete Townshend’s work as well, and from albums like Who Came First down through the Lifehouse project and more, his songs have always been just as meaningful to me as his accomplishments with the band.
In the early 80’s, Pete released an unusual collection called SCOOP…this was an album made up of unreleased songs, ideas, and precious demos that had been gathering up in Pete Townshend’s vaults. Among the many, many incredible songs, was a track called “You Came Back”, a tune that immediately got my attention with its catchy guitar riff...
Listening to the song’s lyrics for the first time, I had the distinct feeling it was another bawdy ditty of Pete’s a la Squeezebox, when I heard the line “That girl with the umbrella used to be a fella”…my first thoughts were that it was a song about a transvestite! Then the next verse sang about “remembering being dead and alive”, and trying to remember names of people’s faces…was this a “drinking til you blackout” song like Who Are You?
I didn’t know, but something about the gentle way the song was played and orchestrated made me feel like it was a particularly intimate song, really wistful and dreamy-like in feeling, despite not knowing its meaning, the melody still had that power to move me.
I’d love to say that I figured it out all by myself, but the fact of the matter is, after puzzling about the song for weeks, I finally gave up and took a peek at the liner notes in the CD booklet, and read the explanation given by Pete himself:
You Came Back:
“This is a real favorite of mine about, you guessed it, Reincarnation.
The fact that I never got around to putting drums on it makes the exchanged guitar rhythms, played on an inexpensive CORAL guitar, more effective. Lead Guitar also missing, I’m afraid.”
OH MY GOSH! REINCARNATION? I hurriedly went back and put the CD in again and listened to the song with renewed eyes…it ALL made sense! Now all those confusing lyrics lent itself to one of the most gentle, wistful tunes ever!
Listen to Pete’s singing. This is one of the most sincere, heartfelt songs I think I’ve ever heard him sing, and when you consider the man has made a career out of wearing his heart on his sleeve, that’ s quite an accomplishment. Sometimes when I listen to it, I can’t believe it’s this unknown song tucked away on an “obscure and unreleased” CD package, but that’s alright by me…finding songs like these are like finding hidden treasures! And Pete? Yeah, It’s a real favorite of mine, too!
An inspirational song for anyone who’s lost someone important to them. It’s hopeful to believe that our loved ones will always come back to us and are never truly gone!
In the times of Mass Media, the Internet and Itunes, it’s hard to remember a time when you could hear a song on the radio a few times, fall in love with it, and never hear the song again!
But that’s just how it was back in the day. A song that you loved on the radio might be completely unattainable as far as locating a single, especially if it wasn’t brand new or if it was only a minor hit. Your local record store might have only brought in a few copies of the song, and once it was gone, that was it! All you could do was hope to hear it again on the radio, and if it was a one-hit wonder...well, those chances were slim!
There were so many songs I can remember loving and never being able to get a copy of the single for my own collection. “Crackerbox Palace” by George Harrison was one, and I remember trying desperately to get a copy of “Sir Duke” by Stevie Wonder, all to no avail!
Anyway, back in 1980 or so, there was this rocking, poppy song that they would play on the radio every once in a while, and I just loved it. The group was called “Spider”, and the single was a song I believed to be called “It’s A Mystery”, due to it’s catchy refrain. I remember trying to find the 45 at my store, but no luck. Just when I resigned myself to only hearing it on the radio, it seemed to disappear! Suddenly, I never heard the song again!
Years later, I was with a bunch of school friends, and we were talking about cool songs we liked. I casually mentioned liking a song that no one seemed to know, by a group called Spider, and began singing “ooh, it’s a mystery, do you know what I’m talking about?” I was quite surprised when one of my friends immediately said “ Yeah, “New Romance”! My sister has their album!”
I was instantly hopping around, saying that we HAD to get to his house so that I could tape a copy for myself! Yes, this is back in the days of cassette recording, friends. And so it was for the first time I was able to see the actual vinyl myself!
Hearing the song again really brought back memories for me! It was just as good as I remembered, and we all listened to it, wondering why this great group never made it big!
As an adult, I was happy to find they had finally gotten around to releasing their two albums onto a CD, and so without further ado, let us take a listen to the wonderful sounds of SPIDER!
A friend once got me an incredible video sampler from the label NETTWERK, featuring songs from the label’s impressive roster. Among the terrific songs was a sentimental pop tune called “You’re In A Mess”, by a group called Falling Joys.
From Wikipedia: Falling Joys was an Australian alternative rock band formed in Canberra in 1985. They were composed of lead singer Suzie Higgie, guitarist Stuart G. Robertson, bass guitarist and vocalist Pat Hayes, and drummer Pete Velzen.
In this particular video, Pat Hayes is singing the lead, and Suzie Higgie is singing the chorus, so I thought the group was fronted by a guy. I was in for a surprsie when I picked up their accompanying album Wish List, and found all the other songs were sung by Suzie!
Despite the title, the song is a bright and rather optimistic song, and the video is full of flowers and pastel colors, a really sunny clip!
When I started as the store artist for a record company in the 90’s the former artist had left written instructions all over the room to guide me to where everything was, as well as a Barbie Doll tied up in bondage hung from the ceiling!
I also inherited her CD/Cassette player, and a few scattered cassettes that were piled in the corner where the electronic equipment was stored… To this day I’m not sure if these cassettes were hers or not because she’d written to me telling me all the stuff she needed had already been taken out and moved to her new job. So I was free to do whatever I wanted with what was left.
So one day, I was working on a big project and after a few hours, had exhausted my supply of the CDs I’d brought along with me to get me through the long day. I needed music, but I sure didn’t feel like listening to the same CDs over again. Then I remembered the stack on Cassettes in the corner, and right at the top of the pile was an album that caught my eye featuring an artist named Vanessa Daou. The tape read : Vanessa Daou reading from the works of Erica Jong. Hmmm, sounded interesting, to say the least!
So I put the cassette in, and was instantly taken in by the lush, nu-romantic sound of the opening track… this wasn’t ANYTHING like what I was expecting! I don’t know, maybe I was thinking it was going to be something like spoken word. OK, some of the tracks on the Cassette DID ring of “dialog with the music as a backing track”, but I was surprised at the very ROXY MUSIC-ish, ethereal keyboards that backed up the words.The song was titled "The Long Tunnel of Wanting You", Dark, Moody and HIGHLY Suggestive (and with Erika Jong, what else would you expect) , VERY Very catchy stuff!
Like most of the stuff I tended to get into long after it had originally come out, the CD was out of print, and I had to take a weekend to visit the various used CD stores peppered around town before I got ahold of a copy of my own!
And though many people have since told me "This CD is whack!", it's still one that I find myself yearning to listen to, particularly when I'm in my retro-80's mode! Ahahahaha!
I recently picked up this nifty little contraption that can rip vinyl albums into MP3 files, a must if you're gonna be listening to music in you car, walking around, etc... and immediately set about deciding where to start converting all those glorious albums in my collection that never made it to CD for one reason or another.
Rummaging around through my old 12" dance singles, I came upon my collection of Vicious Pink records. Vicious Pink! Why, I hadn't thought of them in YEARS, and yet, once upon a time they were sandwiched right up there with Stephen "Tin Tin" Duffy and Book of Love for most played records of the day!
After listening to the MP3 tracks, I was reminded of how awesome Vicious Pink were... the first song I ever got from them was "Fetish" (complete with a cover of the old Classics IV song "Spooky" on the flipside), but the song that really did it for me was the pounding dance beat of "Take Me Now" and the cool and catchy chorus of "CCCan't You See", and these songs sound as great as they did back then!
I believe the album versions of these songs may have been released on disc at some point, but to my knowledge, I never saw anything released on CD regarding these dance versions (the only TRUE versions, BTW!, at least in MY opinion!)
One day, back in 1992 or so, I was listening to the radio, and on came what sounded like a brand new song by Robert Smith and the Cure! Fun, jingly, and with an incredibly catchy chorus, I was surprised when the radio DJ announced it was in fact, a group called Presence!
Presence? Who the heck were these guys? And why did they sound so much like the Cure? Back in the days before the Internet, one couldn’t attain such information so easily! Then one day, after playing the song (which I had now known was called “Act Of Faith”), the DJ offhandedly stated that it was a song by a new group from a former member of the Cure! “So!” I thought to myself, “Robert Smith has split up the Cure, and formed a new group called Presence!” Right?
Well, no, not really.
I was to later find out by way of a magazine (ah, back when information was only found in the printed word!) that although it WAS a former member of the Cure, it wasn’t Robert Smith at all (who was quite happily still with The Cure, thank you very much) but Laurence Tolhurst, one of the original members, first as a drummer, then later on keyboards, before leaving (under circumstances I still don’t know for certain) the group after the Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me Album.
So it was Laurence Tolhurst’s group! Then I thought to myself, “Wow, I never realized how much he and Robert Smith sang alike! It must be all that time working together that did it! Right?
Well, no, not really.
You see, after his departure from the Cure, Tolhurst reunited with Michael Dempsey (he himself another ex-Cure member) to create an almost doppelganger sounding group to the Cure itself... As for the amazingly Robert Smith-ish vocals, they’d simply gotten Gary Biddles, a talented singer who sounded like a exact clone of Robert Smith, to fill Robert’s shoes!
Sadly, the group never really caught on, and their album Inside turned out to be their one and only release. But for what it’s worth, it’s quite a catchy record, and for light-hearted pop tunes, it certainly satisfies, and is still a joy to listen to!
Way back in 1973, there was one song on the radio that me and siblings just loved, and that was Paul McCartney and Wings’ BAND ON THE RUN. we loved the catchy refrains, the three-part song changes, and the easy-to-understand story of a guy breaking out of jail. It was this knowledge of the story that led us to think Paul was singing “MAN on the Run,” and we would sing those lines as loud as we could whenever the song came on. My mother was quick to correct us, saying that the words were in fact, BAND on the Run, a fact that we just couldn’t believe. The song was about a guy in jail, right? and he broke out and now the cops are chasing him, right? so it had to be MAN on the run!
A few weeks later, we were out shopping with my mother and her friend and her kids, and when we heard the song blasting out of the record shop, we felt vindicated when her friend’s kids ALSO started singing “MAN on the Run, Man on the Run!” We triumphantly ran to our mother, saying, “See! See! Even THEY say that the song goes “Man on the Run!” My mother simply stated as-a-matter-of-factly,“I don’t care WHAT they’re singing, it’s BAND on the Run.”
Well, as we all know, dear old Mom was totally correct, a fact that we were forced to accept when we had the chance to buy the single one night at our local Woolworth’s- Right there on the label the title of the song was printed, and it was indeed BAND on the Run! I remember us playing that single over and over again, staring at the curious Apple logo on the record as it spun around, not knowing or caring that Paul McCartney had ever been a part of a group called the Beatles, only that he was part of this group called Wings, and they rocked! I remember me and my brothers and a couple of friends even created little skits to “act out” to the song, singing part one in jail, part two breaking out of jail, and part three with us running around the apartment like loons, playing cops ‘n’ robbers, all the while Band on the Run blasting out of our phonograph speakers!
We loved that darn song so much, that it was quite exciting and significant news when one day I came home from riding my bicycle, and my brother and his friend Miles called me over, and said, “Hey, listen to this song…it 's SUPER COOL!” Glancing at the single on the record player, I saw that they were playing the flip-side of Band On the Run, an ominously titled song called “Nineteen-Hundred and Eighty Five”. Maybe it was the title, but right away I got the feeling of the song’s grimness (if that’s a word), and even then I got the feeling like it was part of a bigger epic work. Plus, the song seemed LONG, and after awhile, I started fidgeting, wondering just what it was that my brother and his friends thought I’d think was so cool. “Wait a little…it’s coming!” they assured me. The song played on and became more and more dramatic, as synthesizers droned on louder and louder along with horns blaring, till it all came crashing to an incredible crescendo… and then, as the song droned to fade-out, the strains of Band on the Run chimed in! WHA!!! I stared open-mouthed at the guys, and they grinned back, proud of their discovery of the “hidden” Band on the Run track! “That WAS cool!!!!” I exclaimed, putting the needle back to the beginning of the single to listen to again. There it was again! This was genius! Pure Genius! “Holy Cow,” I thought, this is the coolest discovery of all time!
When we’d share the secret track to cousins and friends, it seemed to be an unspoken rule that you couldn’t just skip to the end…no, for the ending to have the cherished impact as intended, the entire song had to be played, much to the boredome of many of our friends! It was because of this that I really started listening to the song, I mean really listening, soaking up the melodramatic score while trying to understand the meaning of its cryptic lyrics.
Not having any idea of any connection to Orwell’s 1984 (or whatever McCartney’s actually referring to), I still got the gist of the theme when Paul sang lines like “Oh, no one ever left alive in Nineteen-Hundred and Eighty Five will ever do,” or, “I didn’t think, I never dreamed that I would be around to see it all come true”, that this was a song supposedly taking place after some devastating holocaust or something where not too many people had survived.
So the song gave me that uneasy feeling anyway, and when the Moog Synthesizer started underscoring the song after the first verse, the futuristic sounding instrument transformed the melody into a quasi-science fiction-ish drama soundtrack. When I would listen to the track, I’d close my eyes and picture in my mind great abandoned republics and huge, vast dead seas in strange worlds as the song unfolded, the tune was THAT rich with feeling.
And that end… It got to the point where it didn’t even matter that the snippet of Band on the Run was attatched to the end- No matter how many times I played it, that HUGE crescendo still was the most incredible finale I’d ever heard, and it blew me away EVERY TIME!
Well, we truly played that single to death, and there soon came a time when the 45 record just could not play anymore without jumping and skipping as soon as the needle hit the vinyl. When I really thought about it, it was a miracle that the single survived as long as it did in our destructive house. At this point the record really shoulda been tossed, but there was SO much sentimental attatchment to it, we kept it anyway, storing it away in our 45 record box as we moved onto the newer singles for our collection, like Ariel by Dean Freidman, I’m Your Boogie Man” by KC & the Sunshine Band and even later classics by Paul McCartney like Let Em In and Silly Love Songs!
At some point I made the very grown-up transition to buying albums instead of singles (or at least as well as), and I began to entertain the thoughts of buying some older Paul McCartney albums as well. The obvious first choic was the LP Band On the Run,a s it featured the single that started it all, but I was happily surprised when I found out that Nineteen hundred and Eighty-Five was given the highly respectable position of Album closer! I immediately bought the album (albeit a used copy, all my wallet could afford) and ran home to throw it on. The album was great, every song was fresh and just as groovy as the singles I already knew from them (like Jet and Helen Wheels), and when it finally got to the last song, I have to say…As soon as my ears heard that opening piano piece, I was instantly carted back to that childhood science fiction feeling I’d felt when I was a kid. It was no mistake- this was a grand, momentous song, and I was convinced that this LP was that epic drama that I’d always suspected Band on the Run and Nineteen Hundred & Eighty-Five was culled from. As the opening and closing songs of the album,it turned all the songs in between into parts of a greater work, the masterpiece that IS the"Band On The Run LP!
And HEY! Check out this COOL cover of Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five by Mexican Beatles Cover Band The Blue Meanies- They got it RIGHT!!! An AWESOME performance!!!
Years ago, a cool co-worker made me a tape mix of a peculiar new group by the name of IVY. They struck me as a sort of 4AD sounding band, and of course I fell in love with them immediately. The tape she'd made for me was from Ivy's first ep LATELY, and songs like "Wish it All away" and " Can't Even Fake it" are faves even to this day! From there I got their album REALISTIC, and wallowed in their dreamy, ethereal sounds...loving it all!
Fast forward to 2001, and Ivy's come out with a new album called LONG DISTANCE. I didn't know what to expect, but NOTHING could have prepared me for their "new" sound- HUGE, droning, and TOTALLY ATMOSPHERIC! Songs Like "Blame it on Yourself","Lucy Doesn't Love You"and "Digging Your Scene"still retained that jangly IVY sound a bit, but it was in songs like "Edge of the Ocean", "Midnight Sun" and the incredible album opener called "Undertow" that I realized just how much IVY had "evolved" from its earlier days, and in a totally good way!
This new sound has been more or less the direction the group has gone, with albums like APARTMENT LIFE and IN THE CLEAR, as well as side groups like PACO expanding their horizons even more!
Ihad about three or four different friends who would regularly make cassette tape mixes for me just like John Cusack in that High Fidelity movie, and over the years I’ve been introduced to many, many terrific groups (many of which I have mentioned here on this blog!)!
Now, it doesn’t happen very often, but once ina while there will be a certain group or artist that will appear on ALL my friends mixes at one time. None of these friends know each other, and a couple of them don’t even live here, but somehow, sometimes there is something in the air andALL my friends will get “turned on” to a new artist simultaneously! Even stranger was that most of the groups didn’t have radio or TV airtime, so most of these songs reached my friends through “the vine” as it were!
Some of the groups I remember appearing simultaneously on two or three cassette mixes at the same timewere groups like Suddenly Tammy, Throw That Beat In the Garbage Can, Voice of the Beehive, and more recently groups like Bishop Allen.
Anyway, back in 1991, one of the groups that appeared on a bunch of tape mixes was a insanely wacky and catchy group called Too Much Joy. Apparently, their album Cereal Killers managed to make its way to three friends of mine at the same time, and they in turn, all attempted to turn ME onto it…and I liked it, I liked it! With Songs like “Long Haired Guys From England”, “My Past Lives” and“Crush Story” , this was certainly a GREAT way to be introduced to the band, to be sure!
Afterwards, I would see TMJ appear regularly on tapes and I got to know other songs like their zany take of “Seasons In The Sun” and the downright cracked “Take a Lot Of Drugs”, but the song that really stood out for me and became my favorite track from the group was a ditty called “Sort of Haunted House”.
Although the song appeared on the Mutiny Album somewhere in the middle, my friend Gerg had used the song as the cassette mix closer, and what a melancholy closer it was! Filled with catchy guitar picking, groovy bass riffs and that traditional Dark Humor TMJ was famous for, it instantly won me over the very first time I heard it!
The song is about a guy whose house is haunted by the memory of his late girlfriend, He welcomes her ghost because he loves and misses her, but as the song progresses, we find she got killed by a stray bullet when he shot her lover in their house! He is riddled with guilt and wants to be punished, but when he gets acquitted of the crime, he decides to make amends bykilling himself. He wants to join her wherever she is, stating, “I join you now, in Heaven or in Hell”, but in true Too Much Joy black comedy fashion, adds the thought, “I pray HE’S not there as well!” Hahaha!
As I recall, the album Mutiny didn’t fare that well, and many blamed it on Too Much Joy’s change from a zany punky band to a more insightful (if not still decidedly skewered) outlook, but whenever I hear this bittersweet, brilliantly crafted song, I always feel that they were heading in the right direction!
A perfect song to get you all into the Halloween Spirit!
Man, if there ever was a hall of fame for "Feel Good songs of the 90's", The Sundays ultra-catchy song "My Finest Hour" surely gets my vote! The penultimate track off of the band's debut LP "Reading, Writing and Arithmetic", one feels that they only tacked on "Joy" after it because the end would have been too uplifting for the album to end!
A melody about the eternal hope of finding that special someone in your life, tinged with the self-deprecating bitterness (a la Morrisey) all Sundays tracks seem to have, happy or not!
And who can resist the winsome Harriet Wheeler cat-calls at the end?
“Gala” was the first album I ever owned from 4AD shoegazer band Lush, and though I would go on to love anything and everything the band would subsequently put out(see my blog rantings here), my heart will always hold a special place for that first album.
Because Gala was more a collection of their EPs Mad Love, Scar and Sweetness and Light than an “album” proper, several songs appeared more than once on the tracklisting, among them two versions of Thoughtforms and two of SCARLET.
While the “newer” version of Thoughtforms became (to me) the ‘real” version of said song, Scarlet’s two version both had different things to offer for me. The newer version was more polished and dreamy (and bears a slight resemblace to “Monochrome”) while the ealier one was more “raw” in sound, almost live.It was THIS version that I slowly found myself attatched to, especially during the choruses where Emma’s Guitar chords sound positively sonic follwing the lines “But What’d you Say” and “When nothing’s meant ”, “What’d You Do” and “When all is Spent”.The tone of the guitars have this “british” feel to it and I for some reason, it reminds me of “Instant Party” by The Who on their “My Generation” album.
In fact, the huge, dreamy guitar washes during the lines “No one to fall…in love” and the subsequent spirally guitar picking behind the lines “Faceless, faithless night…vanity’s delight” all have decidedly Townshend-ish flavouring, at least in my opinion, and that’s a major Who fan talking here!
I fell in love with October Project from the first time I heard the strains of their first single “Bury My Lovely” all the way back in 1993, and have been a rabid, manic fan ever since! The vocals, the music, the lyrics… all of it blended together so well to create a whole canvas of dreamlike music that defied categorizing!
In 1995, the group released their second album Falling Further In, and to promote it, they appeared on a few radio programs and talk shows, and one fo the songs they chose to sing at these events was the awesome Funeral in His Heart. It was an “unplugged” version of that really caught my ear and made me really start appreciating the song- Mary’s powerful voice, Marina’s crystal harmonies, Emil’s piano and harmony vocal…throw in David’s guitarwork and Urbano’s toms, and you had a tight-knit combo that really kicked butt!
Later I was to acquire a performance they did for a Sony Records expo while promoting their first album, and was surprised to find they’d done “Funeral In His Heart” even back then…I guess the song wasn’t as new as I thougth It was! This live version, however, had a different ending to it than the album version- at the last chorus, the music ceased, and all four vocallists (Mary, Emil, Marina and David) all harmonized accapella:
“The World is falling apart…
He’s getting older
and there’s a funeral in his heart”
They repeat the lines as Mary adlibs around the refrain, and the song comes crashing to its end- to the overwhelming applause of the audience! Awesome!
Granted, I've loved everything Tanya has done since her days back in the Muses, from Green through Not Too Soon, her work with Kim Deal in both Breeders and This Mortal Coil, and her own projects including Belly and her self-titled albums,
but 'Vanilla" is really a rare gem, one of those hard-to-find songs that are worth every minute and penny of your searching, because the reward of getting your hands on the tune is SO heart warming, catchy, full of Tanya Donelly goodness.
Just the other day I was telling my friend Gerg that I consider Tanya one of the finest songwriters out of that whole Alt/Rock movement, in MY opinion , anyway!
The pic on the side isn't the cover for Vanilla, by the way, as most fans will recognize it as the cover to "The Bright Light", but the blurry cover of the Pretty Deep 7" isn't so great, and Tanya looks just fantastic on this cover, so I opted for this one instead!
