{"id":18728,"date":"2013-05-09T15:40:04","date_gmt":"2013-05-09T19:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=18728"},"modified":"2013-05-09T15:40:04","modified_gmt":"2013-05-09T19:40:04","slug":"tremendous-songs-that-somehow-lack-a-definitive-version","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/tremendous-songs-that-somehow-lack-a-definitive-version\/","title":{"rendered":"Tremendous Songs That Somehow Lack a Definitive Version"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I love Lou Reed&#8217;s &#8220;Satellite of Love.&#8221; I love the song, I should say, as performed by <strong>Lou Reed<\/strong>. There&#8217;s something inherent in its structure that draws me in whenever I hear him perform it. However, to my ears, there&#8217;s not a <em>definitive<\/em> version of the song. My love for the song is due to an accumulation of the song&#8217;s structure, or DNA, if you will, and multiple recorded versions I have heard. I don&#8217;t know if there&#8217;s a song like this for you.<\/p>\n<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FH2EgYq_NCY?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe>\n<p>The original, commercially released studio version from <em>Transformer<\/em> is pretty damn good, but like the rest of that album (beside the exquisite &#8220;Walk on the Wild Side&#8221;) I feel it suffers ever-so-slightly from <strong>David Bowie<\/strong>&#8216;s razor-thin production and Lou&#8217;s campy performance. The twinkly piano style is not exactly my cup of tea either. To me, these factors bring an <em>A<\/em> song down to a <em>B+<\/em> level.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Any version with the early-&#8217;80s\u00a0<strong>Robert Quine<\/strong>-driven band, especially this one from the <em>A Night With Lou Reed<\/em> video, gets me over the sometimes too-wispy humps of the original album version, but there&#8217;s Lou&#8217;s tough-guy, 1-note bark of a live singing voice to contend with. I am always turned on, however, when the band kicks into the Power Rock ending and Lou starts hopping about and making his First-Big-Boy-Goes-Poopy-on-the-Potty faces. That makes up for all the excitement that&#8217;s otherwise lost in Bowie&#8217;s backing vocals on the album version&#8217;s coda.<\/p>\n<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UCMCS_xwtNk?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe>\n<p>The 1975 version from <em>Lou Reed Live<\/em>, the <em>Rock &#8216;n Roll Animal<\/em> leftovers album, has cool, probably studio-overdubbed vocals, and twin-guitar interplay right out of the gates. It lacks, however, the late-night, &#8220;inner voice&#8221; feeling that the song seems to be all about. In another world, this version may have been the best song <strong>Be-Bop Deluxe<\/strong> ever recorded.<\/p>\n<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/298FDuOPNIM?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;\">I&#8217;ve already pumped up &#8220;Satellite of Love&#8221; as a flawless piece of songwriting design. Perhaps I&#8217;ve overlooked the one inherent flaw in the song&#8217;s design: the middle eight. It necessitates some kind of campy delivery that seems out of place in either the song&#8217;s sincere <em>Transformer<\/em> performance or any of the more macho live performances. It fits in well, however, on this sloppy Velvet Underground run-through of the song, an outtake from the <em>Loaded<\/em> session, I believe. Too bad the lyrics were not complete and that Lou and the band occasionally threaten to fall into that Grateful Dead-like &#8220;Lonesome Lisa Says&#8221; vein that makes too much of <em>Loaded<\/em> and the <em>Live 1969<\/em> album a slight bore for my tastes.<\/span><\/p>\n<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vPDNnbuoHhg?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe>\n<p>Anyhow, those are my opinions of the minor shortcomings of the recorded versions of &#8220;Satellite of Love&#8221; that I know best. I still love the song, but I&#8217;m always surprised that I don&#8217;t love any particular version of the song. Is there a song that works that way for you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I love Lou Reed&#8217;s &#8220;Satellite of Love.&#8221; I love the song, I should say, as performed by Lou Reed. There&#8217;s something inherent in its structure that draws me in whenever I hear him perform it. However, to my ears, there&#8217;s not a definitive version of the song. My love for the song is due to <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/tremendous-songs-that-somehow-lack-a-definitive-version\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[68,723],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18728"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18728\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}