Thrifty Music: Covers That Never Were, but Should Have Been

 Posted by
Jul 032013
 
Eugene Church and the Fellows

Eugene Church and the Fellows

Greetings once again, fellow seekers of the rare, the rockin’, and the rubbish-y! I come before you bearing two more dusty discs for your amusement, scrounged from the flea markets, thrift stores and garage sales in and around our nation’s capitol.

Over the years I’ve been buying my music this way, I’ve come across a number of tunes that were originally introduced to me through “cover versions” by artists I grew up with. Old, scratchy blues 45s and 78s show me what the Fabulous Thunderbirds were listening to back in the 70s, and there are any number of uptempo party/soul records that clearly had a treasured spot in the record collections of members of the J. Geils Band.

Every now and then, I run into singles that sound like they should have been covered by this or that band from my youth. I’m presenting two of them to you today.

The first is entitled “Good News,” by Eugene Church, and I think it coulda, shoulda, oughtta have been one of those foot-stomping party tunes cranked out by the J. Geils Band during their mid-70s heyday. I can hear Magic Dick and J. doubling down on the faux morse code intro, and Stephen Jo Bladd joining in on the “hoo… hoo”s during the verses. Of course, the thing would have been sped up and rockified like all their covers, but that’s okay.

01 Good News

Next up: a song called “We Need Love,” which I would have loved to hear by NRBQ, and sung by Big Al Anderson — who, quite frankly, already sounds like he stole a trick or two from the vocal playbook of Ray Scott, the artist you’ll hear here. I just love the enthusiasm Scott shows for the lyric, which he manages to transform into quite a lusty affair.

01 We Need Love

I hope you enjoy, and, as always, I look forward to your responses.

HVB

Share

2013 Summer Reading

 Posted by
Jul 032013
 
Rock reading.

Rock reading.

Hopefully, it’s rapidly approaching that time of the year when you will be able to sit down with a glass of something cool and refreshing, and open up a good book.

You may not choose Simon Reynold’s Retromania, but last week’s NY Times Summer Reading Book Review contained synopses of three possible contenders. Do any of these appeal to you?

  • The Stone Roses, War and Peace. By Simon Spence. Read the cautionary tale of the number one contender for the “Band Who Blew It”!
  • I Would Die 4 U, Why Prince Became an Icon. By Toure. Based on a series of lectures presented at Harvard, including “Prince’s Rosebud.”
  • Yes Is The Answer And Other Prog Rock Tales. Edited by Marc Weingarten and Tyson Cornell. A series of recollections by people in the know. Rick Moody shares that Carl Palmer “dabbled in funk,” and other interesting bits and pieces.

What will you be reading this summer? Any recommendations for fellow rockophiles?

Share

Truth in Packaging (For Better and For Worse)

 Posted by
Jul 022013
 
Package.

Package.

You may recall this series that Mr. Moderator has run in the past. He posts an album cover and then says:

In 50 words or less, please describe how the album cover for Album Title, by Artist says all that there is to say, for better and for worse, about the music contained within.

It’s gotten to the point where I have trouble listening to new music; too often it’s a letdown. More often than that, the new release lives down to my expectations, expectations based primarily on the album cover art. I know that’s not right; I know I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but I do. As Paula Deen recently said, “I is what I is.” See if you don’t find yourself weeping in my strong embrace after you find yourself in the same boat with your reactions to the following relatively new releases. After the jump…

Share

Eye Candy

 Posted by
Jul 012013
 

stooges

The work of graphic designer Mike Joyce is a marriage made in heaven: Typography and Punk. Joyce has transformed the d.i.y. flyers announcing punk and indie shows–the collaged, the Xeroxed, the disposable–and treated them to Swiss modernist style (anyone seen the documentary Helvetica?).

These posters, re-contextualized, visually engaging, and slightly humorous, are an homage to great gigs (see how many you’ve attended), and the formalized text and images that arose out of Switzerland in the ’50s that focused on cleanliness, order, objectivity, and readability.

See the work here at http://www.swissted.com

They’re all also available as an 11 x 14 book, with each page perforated so you can hang ’em on the wall.

What's your favorite style of concert poster?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...
Share

Thrifty Music: Prince, J’accuse!

 Posted by
Jul 012013
 
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xq70ez

Greetings, fellow seekers of the wild, the weird, the wonderful, and the presumptively worthless! I come before you today with my usual slab of dusty vinyl scrounged from a flea market, featuring not just R&B third-stringers The Moments, but also their platooning labelmates, the Whatnauts! What could be better?

I’ll tell you what could be better: a full-on R&B conspiracy, featuring a mysterious man in purple who some around here love to hate.

Our story begins with the Moments and the Whatnauts, heard here collaborating on a great little chune called, simply, “Girls.” The groove is light and frothy, the melody pleasing, the sentiment positive and the singing tuneful, plus — what’s that I hear? A rare R&B deployment of a Mellotron! It’s a winner, and here it is for your enjoyment:

01 Girls-Part I

Up next, the villain in this case, one Prince Rogers Nelson, from his soundtrack LP “Under the Cherry Moon,” with one of my favorite Prince deep cutz, “Mountains”. As soon as I heard the Moments/Whatnauts number, I raced back to the stereo to play this track. Can you hear why?

08 Mountains

Have you twigged it yet? Here, this should help. First the opening chords to “Girls”:

01 Girls Opening segment, Whatnauts

Now, the opening chords to Prince’s “Mountains”:

01 Girls Opening segment, Prince

Let me make this even more plain. Whatnauts:

01 Girls Opening chords, Whatnauts

Prince:

01 Girls Opening chords, Prince

And, for my coup de grace, the two segments, “stacked” on top of each other:

01 Girls Opening chords, Stacked

What I find remarkable about this coincidence is that both sets of chords are played, a.) in the same key; b.) at the same tempo; c.) with the same general timbre/voicing; and d.) as an introduction to their respective songs. Now, to be clear (lest Prince’s lawyers be listening in): I don’t really think Prince “stole” his intro to “Mountains” from “Girls.” But I do get a warm fuzzy glow thinking of the possibility that he knew about, and liked, that obscure track enough to pay it tribute at the height of his fame. It’s probably just a coincidence, but my job here is to titillate and tantalize as well as enlighten.

I look forward to your reponses.

HVB

Share
 Older Entries  Newer Entries

Lost Password?

 
twitter facebook youtube