November 23, 2009
This week, we're listening in on music from the MTV Unplugged series, 50 Cent, Carrie Underwood, and Janet Jackson.
If you love Nirvana's version of David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold The World", we encourage ... no, we demand you to check out the original: a truly scary sci-fi styled song in the vein of Ziggy Stardust about a guy who no longer recognizes himself (he's in a dress on the album's cover); a kind of glitter rock take on Elvis Costello's "Stranger In The House. "If you're a Bowie fan but just own a best of, don't miss out on what many consider one of his best songs from one of his best albums -- the first to feature his famous Spiders From Mars lineup (as well as other crucial early sides "The Width Of A Circle", "All The Madmen", and "The Supermen"). The constantly repeated guitar riff, courtesy of Bowie collaborator Mick Ronson, is, despite the song's melodic quality, the real hook and one of rock's greatest riffs ever. Which would explain its presence on Guitar Hero 5. There's also a version by Lulu (a forerunner to the R&B-fueled songstress Duffy best known for the hit "To Sir With Love") with Bowie playing sax and Ronson playing guitar that's worth discovering.
November 16, 2009
This week, we're listening in on music from the Pixies, Roy Orbison, Juan Gabriel, Calle 13, Luis Fonsi, Bobby Fuller Four, The Rolling Stones, and The Beach Boys.
The virtues of The Rolling Stones' tracks Wes Anderson has chosen for his latest film, Fantastic Mr. Fox, aside, we'd like to use this opportunity to talk about the time in the Stones' career when they stopped being the white British R&B Stones, but well before they became the Rock (with a capital R) Stones of Sticky Fingers, Exile On Main St., and practically everything that came after. We call it The Great Lost Middle Period. December's Children (And Everybody's) showed the beginning of some cracks in their original model. Rockers and R&B covers like "Talkin' About You," "She Said Yeah," and "Route 66" were joined by very atypical quiet, poppier, more introspective sides like "The Singer Not The Song," "Blue Turns To Grey," and especially "As Tears Go By."
That burgeoning style broke open full circle on their next album, Aftermath (the UK version), when for the first time Jagger/Richards penned every single track. Aftermath is arguably on a level with Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and Exile On Main St. for the music's variety and stunning consistency in quality. Hits like "Mother's Little Helper", "Stupid Girl", "Lady Jane", and "Under My Thumb" are balanced by the aforementioned "I Am Waiting", The Searchers and Hollies friendly "Take It Or Leave It", and their own stabs at rhythm and extended blues on the 11-minute "Going Home".
Aftermath's high point is the 5-minute version of "Out Of Time", which lyrically belongs in the company of "Mother's Little Helper", "Get Off Of My Cloud", and "Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown" -- songs sung from a superior and critical point of view. That "Time" is sung with more gentle musical underpinnings doesn't make it any less powerful.
The Stones' least appreciated album, Between The Buttons, soon followed. Sure, it had hits like "Let's Spend The Night Together" and "Ruby Tuesday", but the majority of its tracks rarely scrape the sounds of oldies AM radio or hipper-than-thou FM stations that choose to dig back. It's a shame, though, because tracks like "My Obsession", "Complicated", and "Miss Amanda Jones" that straddle the style between beauty, vulnerability, and exalted superiority continue to be overlooked.
This period was bound to end, and it did with Their Satanic Majesties Request, the Stones' psychedelic record and, attempt to match The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's. The album didn't meet those standards, but its four best songs, "Sing This All Together", "2000 Man", "Citadel", and "She's A Rainbow", are up there with the best psychedelic hippy-era pop of its time.
If you like this forgotten nether land in the Stones' career, skip all the way up to their highly underrated (and best '90s-era album) Voodoo Lounge and check out "New Faces", a song with noted harpsichord accompaniment that seems like Mick plucked directly from this under-appreciated and often ignored period.
November 9, 2009
This week, we're listening in on music from Yoko Ono, Cornelius, Guitar Wolf, Yo Gabba Gabba!, Owl City, and Kris Kristofferson.
We've been mentioning the great American songwriters from pre-rock giants Cole Porter and George and Ira Gershwin to Brill Building greats like Goffin/King, Greenwich /Barry and such Motown staples as Holland-Dozier-Holland and Whitfield/Strong, yet have given short shrift to country music's equally accomplished class.
Let's begin to rectify this and talk about Kris Kristofferson's legacy as a songwriter. There's the trilogy that introduced him to pop audiences in a one-year period between 1970-71 that included Sammi Smith's "Help Me Make It Through The Night", Ray Price's "For The Good Times", and Janis Joplin's "Me And Bobby McGee". Let's also add "The Talker", popularized by Waylon Jennings, "If You Don't Like Hank Williams", Kristofferson's defense-of-country-music manifesto performed by -- of all people -- Hank Williams, Jr., "Nobody Wins", an early '70s hit for Brenda Lee, and Ronnie Milsap's "Please Don't Tell Me How The Story Ends", just a few more among the 400-plus existing covers of Kristofferson songs out there.
November 3, 2009
This week, we're listening in on music from Madonna, Monty Python, The RZA, as well as the original artists that Rod Stewart covers on his new album.
You may be a newcomer to Rod Stewart because of his Great American Songbook series, conceiving of him as an apt interpreter of pop and classic rock, but that has really always been the case. Almost from the beginning (around 1969), his first four solo records revealed how great his taste, record collection, and music vocabulary are -- with an early version of the great Irish songwriter Ewan MacColl's "Dirty Old Town" (most of us already familiar with via The Pogues), an early version of Eddie Cochran's "Cut Across Shorty" (back in 1970 when minor '50s rock icons were not so fashionable), great reinterpretations of The Rolling Stones' (actually The Valentinos') "It's All Over Now" and "Street Fighting Man", a terrific cover of The Small Faces' (his Faces' predecessors') "My Way Of Giving", and three of his very best: "Country Comforts" (one of the top early Elton John/Bernie Taupin covers -- possibly even better than Elton's original on Tumbleweed Connection), Tim Hardin's "Reason To Believe" from Every Picture Tells A Story (actually the original A-side of "Maggie May"), and on Never A Dull Moment, his cover of Etta James' "I'd Rather Go Blind." Again, all of these were done before '50s and '60s R&B/rock rediscovery became hip. That these gems were all in the company of such stellar original compositions as "You Wear It Well," "Every Picture Tells A Story," and "Maggie May" make it all the more remarkable.
