Hope you had a merry Christmas, y'all. Hope you got all that cool crap you wanted. More importantly, I hope you were able to spend good time with those people you love.
As this list approaches #1 (and one day it eventually will) I'm having a tougher time organizing these albums. They're ALL good, almost interchangeably so. So really, no matter what ends up in the top five or top ten or top thirty, everything is worth listening to. Promise.
In this set of five: Old-school hip-hop. Underground hip-hop. Indie rock. Finns.
30) Aesop Rock - Skelethon
I like Aesop Rock, but I have
a hard time deciphering what Ian Bavitz is saying. That's not
necessarily a bad thing as words and word usages play a large part of
Aesop Rock's music, and the poetry here is often just too rich for my
comprehension. Nonetheless, comprehensive or not, exquisite lyrical
images are painted and set to sweet no-nonsense beats. Rob Sonic and
Kimya Dawson, who are pretty much on opposite ends of the musical
spectrum, make contributions.
29) Pinback - Information Retrieved
The great thing about Pinback is how consistent they are. Newer Pinback sounds a lot like older pinback, and older Pinback is awesome. Newer Pinback is awesome. It's all awesome. And even though they hadn't released a full-length album in five years, Information Retrieved continues right along, dishin' out those mellowfied jams.
28) Grizzly Bear - Shields
I really liked Yellow House, which came out back in 2006, but for whatever reason I skipped out on 2009's Veckatimest. So Shields, for me anyway, is like a grand reuniting. And I was pleasantly surprised to see how they've changed over the years. While the instrumentation is still breathy and ethereal, Shields is considerably more focused. There are a lot of words (whereas on Yellow House there were hardly any), and the music itself doesn't meander so much. This makes Grizzly Bear quite a bit more accessible and, honestly, more rocktastic. I like it.
27) Burning Hearts - Extinctions
Finnish indie-rock! Burning Hearts is all those things I can't help but like: hushed lady vocals, Scandinavian accents, SYNTHS, some atmosphere, good hooks. There's some New Wave in there that gives the whole thing a subtle '80s vibe, hints of classic rock to give it a subtler '70s vibe, enough jangle to squeak in vague '60s and '90s vibes. Extinctions is music for all time! Little bit haunting, quite a bit catchy, completely excellent.
26) Public Enemy - Most Of My Heroes Still Don't Appear On No Stamp
Public Enemy released two albums in 2012. Most Of My Heroes is the one that I had a chance to listen to. Sorry, other album. Anyway even though Public Enemy has been fairly consistent about releasing an album every few years, every time they do it's considered a comeback. I call this the Weird Al Syndrome. But don't call it a comeback. Public Enemy is just as relevant and unabashedly direct and BEAT-tastic as ever. Chuck D still spits his intimidatingly confident message, and Flava Flav is still the group's exclamation point. And, above all, Most Of My Heroes is GOOD. This record JAMS. Dig it.
If the end of the world is eminent I'm sorry for having wasted your time. If it is December 22nd or beyond (meaning, congratulations! you survived), I'm only slightly less sorry for having wasted your time. But either way, decent tunes do make the day go by so much better. So whether you're dodging asteroids, hopping over newly-opened bottomless chasms, surfing the lava flows, or getting yanked out of your clothes by a good ol'-fashioned rapture, I hope you've enjoyed your past-year's soundtrack as much as I enjoyed mine.
I count two Canadian bands in this five. Northern saturation is nearing completion. Perhaps the end IS near.
35) Project 86 - Wait For The Siren
Man, I like this one. I initially gave Siren a courtesy listen just to see what Project 86 was up to. I hadn't bothered with them in I-don't-know-how-many years, so this was like getting back in touch with an old friend. Dude, my old friend is still awesome! This album jumps with energy and big anthemic choruses. And checking the credits, the personnel here is excellent. There's frontman Andrew Schwab of course, but check out Rocky Gray on drums! How did he get here? And the second track features devastating guest vocals from Bruce Fitzhugh. That alone is worth the price of admission.
34) Deerhoof - Breakup Song
YEP, DEERHOOF IS STILL WEIRD AND QUIRKY. And if you know what to expect when you're expecting Deerhoof, then you'll find Breakup Song is full of those songs that you've been expecting. And they're as glitch-tastic as ever. When comparing this album to previous ones I can't say Deerhoof brings too many new things to the table, but since they're in their own bizarre world anyway everything still stands out as bizarre genius. Amidst the bloops and the bleeps are these fantastic moments of musical clarity. And Satomi Matsuzaki's perfectly imperfect vocal delivery is... perfect. There are so many endearing things about Deerhoof that when they release just another album it's still something special.
33) Metric - Synthetica
Over the years Metric has developed their own specific and easily identifiable musical formula and, wisely, they've stuck to it for Synthetica. Like that upbeat catchy synthish rock-'n'-roll that was absolutely made to be accompanied by Emily Haines' no-frills vocals? Good, here's more! Synthetica is a good starter album for anybody trying out Metric for the first time. At this point in the band's career they've got their sound down to a science. All of the songs here are instantly accessible, even that track near the end that features Lou Reed.
32) ... And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - Lost Songs
Trail of Dead is still making music and I bet you didn't even know. I like Lost Songs. It's rawer and angrier and more direct than their past few albums, and a band like Trail of Dead really thrives on aggression. Lyrically, according to Wikipedia, this album is a response to the indie scene ignoring important world events like wars and social injustices and all that other stuff that rightfully should evoke responses from a creative community. Anybody craving a political Trail of Dead album, well, here you are. But lyrics are pointless if the tracks don't jam, and Lost Songs will rock you right out.
31) The Luyas - Animator
Animator is a cool little mellowful thing. Haunting, but not in a creepy sort of way. Lush, but not in a pretentious sort of way. Call it astral twee. And because I'm a sucker for airy lady vocals this is right up my bowling alley. Despite the light and fluffy nature of the music, upon repeat listens I'm struck at how solid these songs are. There is nothing passive or cute or shy going on here. It's just good celestial indie-pop dripping its chill all over you.
First of all let me explain how I write. I have a full-time job that's just mundane enough for me to mentally work out the things I want to blog about. I type out some vague notions in my mind, then I come home and spit it out here where I can shape it into something more coherent.
Those awful events in Connecticut occurred less than twenty-four hours ago. I read about it, followed the news for a bit, then went to work. And at work I couldn't stop thinking about the children. I couldn't stop. I have a child. I have another one on the way. They are the most valuable things I have. They are more valuable than myself. I would give everything. And I was thinking of my children and those children and the frustrating senselessness of it all. I didn't want to think about big stupid Flo Rida or my dumb inconsequential list of other people's music.
But music is therapeutic, and music is comforting, and music is an outlet and a channel. Writing is also all of these things. And I know I'm not writing "War And Peace" here, but I've got feelings, and they've got to go somewhere constructive, even if it's towards a project that is merely, ultimately, a fun little distraction.
So while I am still deeply troubled at what happened, more troubled than I've ever been at anything, I do feel better. Not happy -- I don't feel like I have that right yet -- but, yes, better.
In a surprising turn, it is Flo Rida who gives us the most appropriate lyrics for this situation. We are all, one way or another, human beings on complicated journeys. Life is a tumultuous, precious, REAL thing. I gave my daughter extra hugs before I left for work. I'll give her some more when we wake up in the morning.
Here are some songs I like. They helped me a little bit. I hope they can help you too. If not, that's okay. I hope your own jams help you through in your own way.
40) Flo Rida - Wild Ones
So... Flo Rida. I know. I KNOW. Shut up. First of all, "Good Feeling," despite being overplayed and appearing in every TV commercial and promo, is pretty much a perfect song. It could be the power of Etta James, but Flo Rida appropriates her into his own jam flawlessly. Secondly, I like Flo Rida's flow. He bounces those rhymes so smoothly, yet so rhythmically. And he spits those words faster than I can mentally process them. I don't know what he's saying because I can't think that fast. Thirdly, whistling. And fourthly, and most importantly, Wild Ones is not a boring album. These are perfectly crafted pop songs, and they don't screw around. They have one purpose, and that's to get your head a-bobbin'.
39) David Byrne & St. Vincent - Love This Giant
Man, this is an odd collaboration, and it is sorta supposed to be. Odd, but at the same time it makes a little bit of sense, and it's sorta supposed to be that way too. I don't know. Love This Giant is full of these serendipitous contradictions. This could be a David Byrne album as much as it could be a St. Vincent album, but somehow this doesn't sound at all like a David Byrne or St. Vincent album. Are you confused? GOOD, because even though these songs are weird, they are still completely accessible. And even though you'll be scratching your head, you'll also be groovin' your sweet groove-maker.
38) Bloc Party - Four
The Party is back! And they're getting back to their raw roots. Angular guitars! Intensity! Rock 'n' Roll! This -- this -- is the band we used to love, and they've dropped whatever fluff they've accumulated over the years. Kele Okereke still remains one of my favorite vocalists and here he delivers the goods. Four is right in your face and would make a great soundtrack to an urban English heist film. I would totally watch that film.
"Coliseum"
37) Ellie Goulding - Halcyon
Ellie Goulding may not have the big voice, but she knows how to make big songs.
She still has a tremendous vocal range, but rather than belting it out
from her gut, she measures her voice out just so, using it to dot the
i's, cross the t's, and accent the ñ's. It's angelic. These songs are angelic.
And these angelically voiced angelic songs, they're about love and
broken love and vague poetic interpretations of personal things, and
they soar and they fall and they hush themselves to silence and then
they soar straight up again.
36) Rosie Thomas - With Love
It always takes me a couple tries to connect with Rosie's albums. The first time around I'm always a little bored, but it's because I'm not really paying attention. I'm tryin' on the pants but I'm not zippin' up the zipper. But all at once I'll find I'm listening -- like, really listening, like I'm in a good conversation. And she'll say something that resonates with me, and I'll nod my head because I'll understand what she's trying to say, and I'll nod my head because this is also music. And she has the most beautiful voice in the history of music, and somehow it's both fragile and bold, and I have to be careful which songs I listen to because I get right devastated. Anyway, With Love is disarmingly sweet and honest and soft. Listen closely for Sam Beam, extra closely for David Bazan, and probably Sufjan Stevens too because he's always somewhere in these things.
It's big end-of-the-year list time! Time to categorize all those favorite things that defined this past year. And while we'll forget everything about 2012 by April of 2013, we can still take time to recall the past twelve months before our abysmal short-term memory wipes everything clean.
Musically 2012 will be remembered as the year of the old friends, at least in my mind. We saw new releases by No Doubt, Garbage, Soundgarden, and many more. Most of that stuff I never bothered with. I try to leave my fond '90s memories untainted. But memories from the 2000s? Fair game. Check out who all came back from hiatuses, broken-upness, and generally long pauses. Pinback! The Casket Lottery!! Project 86?? And more!
So what follows for the next few weeks/months are the albums I liked. Old friends, new friends, guilty pleasures, etc. I tried to rank them, but I have such a hard time picking favorites and my opinion will change shortly anyway. BUT FOR NOW this is a temporarily definitive list of my top albums from 2012.
Like I mentioned before, I didn't listen to everything. There's a lot of good stuff I completely ignored for one reason or another. But of the things that slid across my radar, here are the ones that rubbed me the right way and struck those special chords that hold my guts together. Hopefully there are some nice things here you'll like as well.
Let's do this.
45) Further Seems Forever - Penny Black
It's hard not to compare Penny Black to The Moon Is Down. We associate a band so closely with its lead singer that when that particular lead singer leaves for a decade (maybe to pursue his own whiny solo career) and then comes back, we expect the band to sound like they did a dozen years ago. But no, these band members have been busy maturing as musicians and human beings, and when they decide to get back together and do something productive they're not going to spit out another The Moon Is Down. They couldn't if they tried, so they didn't. And I like these new songs, really! But I'm trying not to admit to myself that it means something when my summary of an album is only a defense of it that pays more attention to previous works. GUH.
Anyway, Chris Carrabba is still a hottie.
44) Eternal Summers - Correct Behavior
Honestly I don't know much about Eternal Summers. Sorry. But I know the band is from Roanoke, and I kinda like Virginia. And I know I dig the lead-lady's vocal style (direct, but not TOO direct, and pretty, but not TOO pretty). And I know I dig the music itself (teetering between post-punk and shoegaze, both of which I'm suckers for, especially if it's female-fronted). So Correct Behavior, it's full of all this stuff. I'd recommend this if you're running out of ideas for super-hip party background music.
43) Tilly and the Wall - Heavy Mood
It's been four years since their last album, so it's about dang time. Tilly and the Wall have foregone the tapdance-as-percussion schtick and have really matured as songwriters and musicians. You'd imagine that would translate to something more maudlin, but there are some triumphant and anthemic moments on this album. Sometimes it's okay to be less cutesy and more serious, especially where rock 'n' roll is concerned.
42) Dunes - Noctiluca
Noctiluca is cooool. Casual female vocals, airy guitars, muffled drumming, just-right distortion. It all comes together nicely and mellowly. And while listening you'll get the feeling that they're capable of completely shredding, like they're just on the brink. But this is a measured collection of songs, and the attitude and atmosphere is perfectly sustained from beginning to end. You'll like Noctiluca is consistency is your thing. This is the Dune's first album, so the future looks bright. But probably they'll break-up right away because all good bands die too soon.
41) Godspeed You! Black Emperor - 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!
Man, where have these guys been for the past decade? You can't just put ten years between full-length albums. Well, maybe you can as long as the new stuff is as ambitious and lush and majestic and PARANOID as the old favorites. And this time around it is. If you're planning on tackling 'Allelujah you'll have to make an effort. Two of the album's four instrumental tracks are twenty minutes long, and breaking this thing down into bite-sized chunks would be like watching "The Godfather" in ten-minute YouTube increments. So take an hour-long drive by yourself and let Godspeed provide the soundtrack. The music is very cinematic and you'll feel like something serious is happening, and maybe you'll even have a nice panic attack.
My 2012 top albums list is forthcoming-- just weeding and tweaking at this point-- but in the meantime why don't you get into the Christmas spirit by jamming out to Sufjan Stevens' new holiday album? It is festively titled Silver & Gold, and it contains FIFTY-EIGHT MOTHERFLIPPING SONGS' worth of Christmas fun/introspection/quirkiness.
Stream it or buy it, just don't overextend yourself.
[Note: I know this is only FIFTY-SEVEN MOTHERFLIPPING SONGS, but for some reason the track "Alphabet" isn't included on the embedded player.]
Indie banjo not your thing? Of course not, you like your Christmas music full of metal shreddin' guitars and tappity-tap double-bass pedals. So on this front I'm recommending Sleddin' Hill by August Burns Red. There are thirteen instrumental Christmas tracks (so no rah-rah vocals) but even as a novelty album you're still getting good quality music full of well-played (and studio-clean) instrumentation.
We as individuals like a lot of weird stuff. For example, I have a soft spot for Italo Disco and Norwegian Christian Death Metal and Phil Collins. But we as a large collective of record-buying peoples like a lot of broadly acceptable stuff, like Elvis and Rihanna and, uh, Phil Collins. But every once in a while something absurd swoops in from the fringes and clicks, grabbing all of our short precious attentions all at once. We spend money on it, we like it until we're sick of it, then we return to our normal bland selves.
I took a look at songs that have reached the number one position on Billboard's Hot 100 chart. I looked at every dang chart-topper since 1958, and I made note of the tunes that had no business lording themselves over less-popular songs. Seriously, America, what were we thinking? How did we let these songs happen?
As always, I apologize if the overabundance of YouTube videos hemorrhages your browser.
You can find all the songs from all the Hot 100 charts dating back to way-back-when at Billboard.com, but I sourced all the info from Wikipedia because everything there is organized nice and neat.
"The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)" by David Seville and the Chipmunks #1 from December 22, 1958, to January 18, 1959
It wasn't so odd for a novelty song to reach number one back in the late-1950s. And maybe it wasn't so odd that the song is sung by hula-hoop-loving chipmunks. At Christmastime anything goes. But what was so unreasonably strange about this song is that it remained at number one far into January. "The Chipmunk Song" is like the Christmas tree you're too lazy to take down or the Christmas lights you're convinced will still look good in April or the rank egg nog in the back of the fridge you completely forgot about. Also, is Dave, like, the Chipmunks' father, or what's going on here?
"Sukiyaki" by Kyu Sakamoto #1 from June 15 to July 5, 1963
The song's original title is "(上を向いて歩こう," but for some reason English-speakers had trouble with the pronunciation (give it a try!). So the tune, already a hit in Japan two years earlier, was renamed "Sukiyaki" and released Stateside. Sukiyaki also happens to be a Japanese-style beef stew. But who cares! Marketing in America! Anyway, people on this side of the Pacific loved it even if they couldn't sing along without sounding like a toddler muttering incoherent nonsense to himself (because that's how I think non-Japanese speakers speak Japanese, I guess).
Incidentally the song was loosely translated and rerecorded by R&B groups A Taste of Honey in 1981 and 4 P.M. in 1994. It was a moderate hit for both but, disappointingly, neither versions expounded on the beef stew theme.
"Dominique" by The Singing Nun #1 from December 7, 1963, to January 3, 1964
A few months after "Sukiyaki" came "Dominique," a song about I don't know because it's in French. I would not recommend looking up The Singing Nun on Wikipedia unless you want to become very sad. I won't even provide you with a link. Oh, shoot, that was hypertext wasn't it? Well, enjoy your sorrows and cry every time you hear this bouncy French ditty.
ANYWAY, number one hits were getting quite silly at this point, so thankfully the Beatles came to put an end to this crap...
"Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey" by Paul and Linda McCartney #1 from September 4th to September 10th, 1971
Guh... Nevermind.
I have listened to this song close to a thousand times in my lifetime and I JUST. DON'T. UNDER. STAND. It's like Paul swept up a bunch of random British weirdness off the ground and stuck it all together with yellow ticky-tack and somehow that was a song you could play on the radio.
"My Ding-a-Ling" by Chuck Berry #1 from October 21 to November 3rd, 1972
Did you know Chuck Berry's only #1 pop single in the US was a song about tallywhackers?
"A Fifth of Beethoven" by Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band #1 from October 9 to October 15, 1976
You know what Ludwig Van Beethoven would have loved? Hearing aids, for sure, but more than that... DISCO! Beethoven would have been all over those drum machines and synthesized violins and lines of cocaine and stuff. If only the great composer had taken better care of himself and lived 150 more years who knows what kind of funktacular music he would have written.
By the way, just to show you how messed up the disco era was, the song that knocked "A Fifth of Beethoven" off of the top spot? "DISCO DUCK."
"Medley..." by Stars on 45 #1 from June 20 to June 26, 1981
For what I presume to be legal reasons, the official United States title of this track is "Medley: Intro-Venus-Sugar Sugar-No Reply-I'll Be Back-Drive My Car-Do You Want To Know A Secret-We Can Work It Out-I Should Have Known Better-Nowhere Man-You're Going To Lose That Girl-Stars On 45." Everywhere else in the world it was more reasonably referred to as the "Stars On 45 Medley." The song is a disco mash-up of Beatles tunes (plus "Sugar Sugar" plus the guitar intro to Shocking Blue's "Venus" plus a generic disco intro and outro), but instead of manipulating the original recordings into a funky four-minute mix a band from the Netherlands was hired to lay down completely new recordings.
This bears repeating. That's not John Lennon's voice you're hearing. That's his non-union Dutch equivalent.
"Baby Got Back" by Sir Mix-a-lot #1 from July 4 to August 7, 1992
This is a song about butts. For 35 days it was the top song in America. Thirty-five days. This song about butts. In America. The top. Song. Butts. That's where poop comes from, you know.
Honorable mention: "Gangnam Style" by PSY
"Gangnam Style" has held steady at #2 for the past four weeks. I'm already over the song and I wouldn't be terribly upset about not hearing it ever again, but that music video will be mesmerizing forever. I hate how awesome it is and I would totally vote it for president.
This wouldn't be the first time a song became insanely popular based on the merits of its video, but we are now definitively in an era where a website full of bigoted/ignorant/uneducated commenters dictates what music will inescapably saturate our airwaves and become an integral part of our pop culture. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go dance like I'm riding a tiny horse.
It's ten years ago. Like, right now the calendar should say 2002, maybe 2001. I don't know how -- I ain't no rocket surgeon -- but certain events have transpired that have me convinced we've stumbled into a way-back DeLorean machine.
THE IRREFUTABLE EVIDENCE
- Twothirtyeight are back together and rehearsing in preparation for DeLuna Fest in Pensacola and a "thank you" gig in Atlanta. Instagram has the proof.
Twothirtyeight's last studio album, You Should Be Living, was released in 2002. They broke up shortly after. And now they're back! No word yet on a tour, or any new material, or any new releases. In the meantime check out Chris Staples' fantastic solo material. All kinds of streamy and downloadable goodness on his Bandcamp site.
- David Bazan, who has never really gone away (nor would we ever want him to), is on a Control tour. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the release of Pedro The Lion's Control, Bazan will be singing the album's songs on the road. Chronologically, alphabetically, I don't know. It doesn't matter. Great album, great musician.
I have my tickets stuck to the fridge, so you will likely hear more about this later.
- Further Seems Forever is back together, and not only are they back together... they're back together with Chris Carrabba! And not only are they back together with Chris Carrabba, they are also touring! And not only are they back together with Chris Carrabba and touring, the band is also releasing a brand new full-length album! Squeal!
Check out the first single, "So Cold," with Chris looking as chick-magnety as ever.
Carrabba, as you will vividly recall, left Further Seems Forever in 2001 to do his Dashboard Confessional thing. FSF's last studio album, Hide Nothing, was released in 2004. But now everybody is back together and being productive!
So maybe the clock hasn't been turned back. Maybe it's still the present day. And maybe all of these reunitings and tributes are for us geezers who can't let go of our glory years. But if my old favorite bands still want to dish out the songs, I'm more than happy to sit here and eat it up.
Man, I loved Steve Sabol. I didn't know him personally, of course, and his career began decades before I was even born. But to a kid like me whose appreciation of sports and film were on an equal plane, Sabol's work was absolutely mesmerizing. Before I even knew who the man was I was absolutely captivated by the slow-motion images of looming football players set to dramatic orchestral music. It all seemed so epic.
As somebody who never really fully matured into true adulthood what I really loved were the bloopers. The "Football Follies." Watching Sabol's follies was like watching a variety show. There would be a series of short segments, and each segment centered around a theme or told a silly story. The narratives really made the videos endearingly entertaining.
We take it for granted, the aesthetics of the football highlight reel. Steve Sabol pioneered a lot of that. Early on he did a lot of the camera work himself. Not content with a high static shot from the fifty yard line, Sabol's images were tight and intimate. And more often than not the best images were just off the playing field, like players gabbing on the bench and psycho fans hollering in the bleachers.
Beyond the imagery, Sabol also pioneered the technique of hooking everybody up with a microphone. Audio was key, and sound-catching dishes could record the grunts and clangs of offensive lines meeting defensive lines, but only lapel mics could catch actual conversation. And in-game football conversation is awesome, especially when coaches are wired up. Players taunt each other, complain about the heat, talk about whatever, but the coaches are viciously ruthless.
And that brings us to the bleeps. Half the fun of an NFL Films production from the 80s is hearing the naughty words bleeped out. Imagine Stevie Wonder getting elbowed in the stomach during a harmonica solo, or the sound an old Macintosh computer made when you sat on the keyboard. That's what Jerry Glanville ended up sounding like in these films every time he tore into a referee. It was great.
Steve Sabol died Tuesday at the age of 69 from a brain tumor. He transformed the way we watch football. He turned a pile of men mud-humping each other into a triumphant spectacle. He leaves behind decades of work, hours of film, and tons of documented football awesomeness. I owe Sabol much of my football fandom, and I miss him already.
While doing fake internet research for my last post I stumbled across two videos that were too good not to share, but I didn't have any place to casually insert them. So here they are.
First we have Otis Redding doing his thaaang on British television when... oh, hi there, Eric Burden! And from that point to the end of the video there is nothing else awesomer. Sweet percussion, horn sections, and a whole truckload of gyratin'. NOTHING.
And then there's this. It requires precisely zero explanation. Just make sure you wait for the printer.
First of all I apologize for the video-heaviness of this post. Just give it a second to load up or crash your browser or do whatever it is it's going to do.
Now, this is about cover songs. But this is about cover songs you may not have known were cover songs. Or maybe you did know they were cover songs and you were just keeping it a secret. Either way, I hope you enjoy this mass of information I'm suddenly heaping upon you.
Cover songs! Popular ones! From the 1960s!
When there weren't yet very many songs to cover!
"Twist And Shout"
The Beatles were so good at songwriting that people forget about their early-year cover songs. And they performed those cover songs so well that people forget that they were cover songs in the first place. Take "Twist And Shout." Listen to John Lennon lose his mind and lose his vocal chords. The story goes he was sick as a dog, but the vocals absolutely needed to be laid down. So Lennon guzzled a carton of milk and tore through the track in one take. Or something like that. Another version I heard describes how he screamed the words while lying on his back. Milk was still involved. Who knows how much of that is true. Regardless, the song is now -- and forever will be -- a Beatles song, despite the fact that it's a hand-me-down.
The Isley Brothers had taken "Twist And Shout" to #17 on the charts in 1962, and while a lot of people actually do recognize that the Isley Brothers recorded the song a year before the Beatles did, not too many people know that a year before that a little-known group called the Top Notes (guided by a young producer named Phil Spector) first recorded the song. The Top Notes' 1961 version, titled "Shake It Up, Baby", is an agitated little rock number and sounds absolutely foreign next to the Isleys and the Beatles. In fact, the song's co-writer, Bert Russell, felt Spector screwed the whole thing up and decided to produce the song himself with the Isley Brothers. Spector would later become a world-famous producer and thus had the last laugh, but now he's in prison, so maybe not.
"Land Of A Thousand Dances"
If you don't recognize the title, you definitely recognize the NA-NA-NA-NA-NAs. And Wilson Pickett absolutely crushes it, shoving so much soul and swag and funk into your ears that if the song was a couple minutes longer your head would very literally explode from awesomeness. Pickett's tune peaked at #6 on the US charts in 1966, but DID YOU KNOW the song was a moderate hit the year before for a peculiar little band called Cannibal & The Headhunters.
The Headhunters came from east LA, which automatically made them tougher than any of the other bands in the mid-1960s. They gave themselves individual nicknames like Scar and Yo-Yo and Rabbit and Cannibal. And they recorded their creepy version of "Land Of A Thousand Dances" a year before Pickett decided to turn it into something less unsettling.
But, like the Isley Brothers and "Twist And Shout," "Land Of A Thousand Dances" is often attributed to the Headhunters and not to its true originator. R&B singer Chris Kenner wrote and recorded the song in 1962. As you listen you'll notice two things: 1) Kenner's got soooul, and 2) no NA-NAs. Cannibal & The Headhunters added the NA-NAs because apparently somebody along the way forgot how the song went. It turned out to be the most endearing part of the song, and that's why Wilson Pickett kept it when he recorded his version, and that's why up until you started reading this blog you thought it was simply called the NA-NA song.
"Respect"
Quick, what song do you think of when I say Aretha Franklin? You think of "Respect" because that is her signature song and also because I used the song title as the header. But yeah, "Respect," not "Freeway Of Love." However, lemme tell you about a fellow named Otis Redding.
Otis Redding's Wikipedia page is full of fascinating material, but basically it comes down to Redding being an intense man of music. Not only was he a prolific songwriter, his live shows were soul-tastic. You know him for "Dock of the Bay" (which became his only #1 song, and only after he died in a plane crash, because the universe hated Otis Redding), but he also penned and recorded a funky little ditty in 1965 called "Respect." That song went to #4 on the R&B Singles chart and up to #35 on the plain old white people music chart. In 1967 the song was presented to Aretha Franklin (with tweaked lyrics) and she recorded the "Respect" you know and love today.
Is is ironic, then, that Otis gets no "respect" for writing a song called "Respect"?
I once listened to a recorded live performance of Otis Redding performing "Respect." With an audible shrug he talked about how Aretha had taken the song from him, and that he, in this very performance, was going to take it back. And then he commenced to sing the holy living soul-funkin' crap out of "Respect." But he could never really take the song back because Aretha had turned it from a juicy soulful romp into a palpable soul-pop nugget. And nothing is more delicious than soul-pop nuggets.
"House of the Rising Sun"
This is one of the most popular songs from the 1960s. You know it. I know it. And we both sound awful when we try to sing along. But you've probably gathered at this point that The Animals were not the first to record it.
You can find "House of the Rising Sun" on Bob Dylan's self-titled 1962 debut album. It's all mournful and warbly and folky, and with good reason because Dylan's version was heavily influenced by New York folk legend Dave Van Ronk. Here is a clip from the excellent documentary No Direction Home regarding the song.
Though Van Ronk's version would not appear on a record until 1964, he had been performing his arrangement of the song for years. And guess what? Though Van Ronk arranged the song into the familiar tune we know today, he wasn't the one who originally wrote it. In fact, nobody knows for sure where "House of the Rising Sun" came from because it is OLD. Van Ronk picked it up from somebody in the 1950s, who had picked it up from a Kentucky girl on a 1930s field recording, who had learned it from God knows where, and so on and so on until one day somebody discovers the lyrics on the other side of the Rosetta Stone.
"Turn! Turn! Turn!"
The Byrds were folk-rock staples in the late 1960s, pumping out hit after hit that were really actually electric-guitar'd Bob Dylan covers. I'm not even joking. In 1965, after recording and releasing two consecutive Dylan-cover singles, the band instead turned to a Pete Seeger song. "Turn! Turn! Turn!" was something Seeger had arranged in 1959 and was recorded by a few other folkies in the following years. A group called the Limelighters recorded the song in 1962 and left quite an impression with the band's back-up guitarist, a fellow named Roger McGuinn. McGuinn would rearrange the song for Judy Collins in 1963, and then again for himself and his own band, The Byrds, in 1965.
But where had Pete Seeger glommed those lyrics? If you were good at Bible Quiz you would know the answer already. Turn with us, in your King James Bible, to Ecclesiastes Chapter 3, starting from verse 1. Read until you get to the words "worketh" and "laboureth" because those aren't in the song. Nobody is one-hundred percent sure who wrote the book of Ecclesiastes, but there's a pretty good chance it was King Solomon. I don't know if he gets royalties or not.
For as long as it had been decided that hipness and irony could co-exist artists (and wannabe artists) have retrofitted their work to not only make it appear older, but to make it appear nostalgically older. This has made photo-filtering apps like Instagram insanely popular. Swedish electro-disco musician Johan Agebjorn released a track only available on 3.5" floppy disc. Google Maps turned the earth into a Nintendo playground this past April Fool's Day. All for the aesthetic thrill of reveling in the imperfections of old technology. When done well the results can be startlingly beautiful. When done unwell... then you just fuzzed out a perfectly good photograph of your dog.
To my infinite amusement, Sleeping At Last just posted four "8-bit" tracks up on NoiseTrade. Now solely the project of frontman Ryan O'Neal, the Illinois-based Sleeping At Last is one of the few remaining active remnants from when emo ruled the world a dozen years ago. Normally the music is soft and introspective, but these remixed songs play like the soundtrack to a lost Zelda game.
This is retrofitting done well.
For comparative/contrasting purposes the original versions of the songs are included in the free(!) download.
I don't know how long this whole thing will be up. However long a "limited time" is. Check it while you can.
Despite releasing an album every couple years since 1985(!) and having a dedicated cult following, it is hard to find people who have heard of The Choir. I don't know why they are so invisible and ignored, but they have always been supported by their tight fan base (which explains why Wikipedia, with its open-contributor policy, gives the band several lengthy sections while AllMusic and their selected fleet of music writers give the band's profile only two sentences). It could be they way they've been [mis]marketed over the years. Too artsy and intelligent and coffee-house for the general CCM crowd, but too Jesusy for anybody else.
According to Last.fm's user-generated charts (which will wonderfully waste hours of your time) the average Choir listener tends to be very male and very 40-ish. So I guess if you're an old guy then this band is for you. But, as you can see, there are people like me who like Cat Power (although I'll be the first to admit I'm not a 22-year-old female) and still dig The Choir. So... whatever.
[Er... maybe I AM a 20-something woman]
The Choir is freely offering their 2010 album, Burning Like The Midnight Sun, on NoiseTrade. It's good. Surprisingly good, especially for a bunch of old guys. This isn't a re-formed Eagles halfheartedly
pulling themselves together for another easy-listening go-round. The
music here is fresh and alive and not at all what you would expect from a
group of guys who've been doing the same thing for almost thirty
years. Man, even U2 blanded out, but The Choir sound like they're
cutting these tracks with the exuberance of a first professionally made
album.
In that NoiseTrade download they also snuck in a track from their just-released album, "The Loudest Sound Ever Heard." The song has a 90's shoegazey glam vibe to it, so if you were into the Prayer Chain or Luxury then you might be into it. I don't know if the whole album sounds that way, but I do see Leigh Nash is featured on a track, so there's that.
