Do I blame this Florence + The Machine cover of Buddy Holly‘s “Not Fade Away” on Tom Waits and his percussion and production crew from the early 1980s? I think so, and it’s time musicians stop dicking around with junkyard percussion, already!
Mighty Awful or Mighty Underrated? You Make the Call!
This year marks the 20th anniversary of EC’s Mighty Like a Rose. I haven’t listened to it in, oh, I don’t know, 10 years or more. Maybe Mod, with his new-found respect for Mitchell Froom, will find it a heretofore neglected masterpiece. Maybe it will have more than the one song I remember thinking was any good. (Couldn’t Call It Unexpected.) Let us rethink Mighty Like a Rose, and revisit Bearded Elvis of the summer of 1991. (I saw him twice–twice!–on that tour, with the Replacements opening.)
How To Be Dumb?
What was it about this record? The dodgy production? The ugly cover? The beard? The overwrought arrangements? The unwelcome presence of Marc Ribot? The undercooked songwriting? I mean, for instance, did it really take Elvis Costello and Paul McCartney to come up with “So Like Candy”? Let the critical reassessment/feeding frenzy begin!
