7 posts tagged “favorite songs”
California alt rock group Concrete Blonde are such terrific songwriters that their take on other artists’ tunes are largely overlooked- Unlike some other groups who merely “do” covers, this group takes songs they like and lovingly transform them into true Concrete Blonde masterpieces!
Songs like
George Harrison’s “Beware of Darkness”,
Thin Lizzy’s “It’s Only Money”
and Tommy James’ “Crystal Blue Persuasion”…Listening to any one of their covers and it is obvious that the band
has given the same amount of time and crafting to these tunes that they’ve
given to their own songs!
Of all these cover tunes that the band has produced, (and there have been many, many…!) the song that stands out in MY mind as one of their very best is their take of Roxy Music’s THE END OF THE LINE, featured on their incredible 1993 album MEXICAN MOON.
There are lots of reasons why this cover works so well, but a large part of is that by the time Mexican Moon came out, vocalist/bassist Johnette Napolitano and Guitarist Jim Mackey were seasoned pros; after travelling across the world a zillion times in as many tours, their experience shows through in their sound-No one croons like Napolitano with her low, growling whispers and powerful wailing, and when you add in the lush, layered guitars of Jim Mackey, you are left with pure perfection!
The End of the line was originally off Roxy Music’s 1975 SIREN album, and though I liked the song, I always thought of it as the opening to the avante-grade third track “Sentimental Fool” (since they were essentially connected) and never thought of its potential as a “single” type of song. WOW, how the Concrete Blonde version has changed my mind!
Over the years, I have made quite a few Concrete Blonde cassette mixes for people, and almost ALL of them have concluded with “End of the Line”… Just listening to Jim’s echoing reverb as he picks out the resounding notes on his guitar- with double-tracking and a guitar synthesizer, he’s created this beautiful guitar harmony , and then laid over this is the incomparable Johnette’s heartfelt singing- She sings with such passion, you really feel like the lyrics are hers, and when she hits those notes…MAN! Just awesome!
The End Of The Line
(Bryan Ferry)
Take a walk out in the rain
Called you time and time again
Everything is wrong-
You´ve gone
Reached the point of no return
The more I see the more I stand alone
I see the end of the line
Were you ever lonely?
Mystified and blue?
Realising only
Your number´s up
You´re through
Had my share of winning
Now´s my turn to lose
After a fair beginning
The game´s up
You’re through
Think I´ll walk out in the storm
Got no love to keep me warm inside
I see the end of the line
Now´s the time to take a dive
Take a magic carpet ride
Everything is wrong
You´ve gone
If you ever miss me
If I should cross your mind
You know where to find me
I´ll be waiting at the end of the line
Perusing W♥M’s review of R.E.M.’s RECKONING Album and their song “Don’t Go Back to Rockville brought back happy memories of 10,000 Maniacs’ “Candy Everybody Wants” Maxi-Single, which featured not only “Don’ t Go Back To Rockville” and “Sally Ann”, but a cover of ANOTHER famous artist…
I used to go out with this girl who had a love of music as much as I did, and at that time, her favorite group was The Smiths, (in particular their enigmatic lead singer Morrisey) while one of my favorite groups (still is, actually) was the awesome Jamestown Alt/Folk band 10,000 Maniacs.
So one day at work, I’m listening to the college radio station, and they’re spinning the latest single from Natalie Merchant and the boys, and I am pleasantly surprised to hear them do a cover of Morrisey’s “Everyday is like Sunday”!
I picked her up after work, and was about to tell her the exciting news, but before I could, she burst out, “Guess what, today I heard some BITCH trying to cover Morrisey’s Everyday is Like Sunday!!!”
Stunned, I defensively said “What?! That was no “Bitch”! That was 10,000 Maniacs!!!”
Then she said, “Oh…really?”
And I adamantly said “YEAH!!!” Ahahahahahahaaa!!!
Well, I can't remember if she ever gave the 10,000 Maniacs version a chance, although to be fair, she did like quite a lot of OTHER songs from The Maniacs. Too bad Morrisey never did a cover of one of Natalie's songs!
Have a listen here and decide for yourself!
When I started as the store artist for a record company in the 90’s the former artist had left written instructions all over the room to guide me to where everything was, as well as a Barbie Doll tied up in bondage hung from the ceiling!
I also inherited her CD/Cassette player, and a few scattered cassettes that were piled in the corner where the electronic equipment was stored… To this day I’m not sure if these cassettes were hers or not because she’d written to me telling me all the stuff she needed had already been taken out and moved to her new job. So I was free to do whatever I wanted with what was left.
So one day, I was working on a big project and after a few hours, had exhausted my supply of the CDs I’d brought along with me to get me through the long day. I needed music, but I sure didn’t feel like listening to the same CDs over again. Then I remembered the stack on Cassettes in the corner, and right at the top of the pile was an album that caught my eye featuring an artist named Vanessa Daou. The tape read : Vanessa Daou reading from the works of Erica Jong. Hmmm, sounded interesting, to say the least!
So I put the cassette in, and was instantly taken in by the lush, nu-romantic sound of the opening track… this wasn’t ANYTHING like what I was expecting! I don’t know, maybe I was thinking it was going to be something like spoken word. OK, some of the tracks on the Cassette DID ring of “dialog with the music as a backing track”, but I was surprised at the very ROXY MUSIC-ish, ethereal keyboards that backed up the words.The song was titled "The Long Tunnel of Wanting You", Dark, Moody and HIGHLY Suggestive (and with Erika Jong, what else would you expect) , VERY Very catchy stuff!
Like most of the stuff I tended to get into long after it had originally come out, the CD was out of print, and I had to take a weekend to visit the various used CD stores peppered around town before I got ahold of a copy of my own!
And though many people have since told me "This CD is whack!", it's still one that I find myself yearning to listen to, particularly when I'm in my retro-80's mode! Ahahahaha!
One day, back in 1992 or so, I was listening to the radio, and on came what sounded like a brand new song by Robert Smith and the Cure! Fun, jingly, and with an incredibly catchy chorus, I was surprised when the radio DJ announced it was in fact, a group called Presence!
Presence? Who the heck were these guys? And why did they sound so much like the Cure? Back in the days before the Internet, one couldn’t attain such information so easily! Then one day, after playing the song (which I had now known was called “Act Of Faith”), the DJ offhandedly stated that it was a song by a new group from a former member of the Cure! “So!” I thought to myself, “Robert Smith has split up the Cure, and formed a new group called Presence!” Right?
Well, no, not really.
I was to later find out by way of a magazine (ah, back when information was only found in the printed word!) that although it WAS a former member of the Cure, it wasn’t Robert Smith at all (who was quite happily still with The Cure, thank you very much) but Laurence Tolhurst, one of the original members, first as a drummer, then later on keyboards, before leaving (under circumstances I still don’t know for certain) the group after the Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me Album.
So it was Laurence Tolhurst’s group! Then I thought to myself, “Wow, I never realized how much he and Robert Smith sang alike! It must be all that time working together that did it! Right?
Well, no, not really.
You see, after his departure from the Cure, Tolhurst reunited with Michael Dempsey (he himself another ex-Cure member) to create an almost doppelganger sounding group to the Cure itself... As for the amazingly Robert Smith-ish vocals, they’d simply gotten Gary Biddles, a talented singer who sounded like a exact clone of Robert Smith, to fill Robert’s shoes!
Sadly, the group never really caught on, and their album Inside turned out to be their one and only release. But for what it’s worth, it’s quite a catchy record, and for light-hearted pop tunes, it certainly satisfies, and is still a joy to listen to!
Presence:
Gary Biddles/ vocals
Alan Burgess/ drums
Roberto Soave/ bass guitar
Rob Steen/ guitar
Lol Tolhurst / keyboards
Chris Youdell / keyboards
Way back in 1973, there was one song on the radio that me and siblings just loved, and that was Paul McCartney and Wings’ BAND ON THE RUN. Single. We loved the catchy refrains, the three-part song changes, and the easy to understand story of a guy breaking out of jail. It was this knowledge of the story that led us to think Paul was singing “MAN on the Run,” and we would sing those lines as loud as we could whenever the song came on. My mother was quick to correct us, saying that the words were in fact, BAND on the Run, a fact that we just couldn’t believe. The song was about a guy in jail, right? And he broke out and now the cops are chasing him, right? So it had to be MAN on the run!
A few weeks later, we were out shopping with my mother and her friend and her kids, and when we heard the song blasting out of the record shop, we felt vindicated when her friend’s kids ALSO started singing “MAN on the Run, Man on the Run!” We triumphantly ran to our mother, saying, “See! See! Even THEY say that the song goes “Man on the Run!” My mother simply stated as-a-matter-of-factly,“I don’t care WHAT they’re singing, it’s BAND on the Run.”
Well, as we all know, dear old Mom was totally correct, a fact that we were forced to accept when we had the chance to buy the single one night at our local Woolworth’s- and right there on the label the title of the song was printed, and it was indeed BAND on the Run! I remember us playing that single over and over again, staring at the curious Apple logo on the record as it spun around, not knowing that Paul McCartney had ever been a part of another group called the Beatles, only that he was part of this group called Wings, and they rocked! I remember me and my brothers and a couple of friends even created little skits to “act out” to the song, singing part one in jail, part two breaking out of jail, and part three with us running around the apartment like loons, playing cops ‘n’ robbers, all the while Band on the Run blasting out of our phonograph speakers!
We loved that darn song so much, that it was quite exciting and significant news when one day I came home from riding my bicycle, and my brother and his friend Miles called me over, and said, “Hey, listen to this song…it SUPER COOL!” Glancing at the single on the record player, I saw that they were playing the flip-side of Band On the Run, an ominously titled song called “Nineteen-Hundred and Eighty Five”. Maybe it was the title, but right away I got the feeling of the song’s grimness (if that’s a word), and even then I got the feeling like it was part of a bigger epic work.
Plus, the song seemed LONG, and after awhile, I started fidgeting, wondering just what it was that my brother and his friends thought I’d think was so cool. “Wait a little…it’s coming!” they assured me. The song played on and became more and more dramatic, as synthesizers droned on louder and louder along with horns blaring, till it all came crashing to an incredible crescendo… and then, as the song droned to fade-out, the strains of Band on the Run chimed in! WHAAA!!! I stared open-mouthed at the guys, and they grinned back, proud of their discovery of the “hidden” Band on the Run track! “That WAS cool!!!!” I exclaimed, putting the needle back to the beginning of the single to listen to again. There it was again! This was genius! Pure Genius! “Holy Cow,” I thought, this is the coolest discovery of all time!
Not having any idea of any connection to Orwell’s 1984 (or whatever McCartney’s actually referring to), I still got the gist of the theme when Paul sang lines like “Oh, no one ever left alive in Nineteen-Hundred and Eighty Five will ever do,” or, “I didn’t think, I never dreamed that I would be around to see it all come true”, that this was a song supposedly taking place after some devastating holocaust or something where not too many people had survived.
So the song gave me that uneasy feeling anyway, and when the Moog Synthesizer started underscoring the song after the first verse, the futuristic sounding instrument transformed the melody into a quasi-science fiction-ish drama soundtrack. When I would listen to the track, I’d close my eyes and picture in my mind great abandoned republics and huge, vast dead seas in strange worlds as the song unfolded, the tune was THAT rich with feeling.
And that ending… It got to the point where it didn’t even matter that the snippet of Band on the Run was attached to the end- No matter how many times I played it, that HUGE crescendo still was the most incredible finale I’d ever heard, and it blew me away EVERY TIME!
Well, we truly played that single to death, and there soon came a time when the 45 record just could not play anymore without jumping and skipping as soon as the needle hit the vinyl. When I really thought about it, it was a miracle that the single survived as long as it did in our destructive house. At this point the record really shoulda been tossed, but there was SO much sentimental attachment to it, we kept it anyway, storing it away in our 45 record box as we moved onto the newer singles for our collection, like Ariel by Dean Friedman, I’m Your Boogie Man” by KC & the Sunshine Band and even later classics by Paul McCartney like Let Em In and Silly Love Songs!
At some point I made the very grown-up transition to buying albums instead of singles (or at least as well as), and I began to entertain the thoughts of buying some older Paul McCartney albums as well. The obvious first choice was the LP Band On the Run,as it featured the single that started it all, but I was happily surprised when I found out that Band on the Run ws the album opener, and Nineteen hundred and Eighty-Five was given the highly respectable position of album closer! I immediately bought the album (albeit a used copy, all my wallet could afford) and ran home to throw it on.
The album was great, every song was fresh and just as groovy as the singles I already knew from them (like Jet and Helen Wheels), and when it finally got to the last song, I have to say…as soon as my ears heard that opening piano piece, I was instantly carted back to that childhood science fiction feeling I’d felt when I was a kid. It was no mistake- this was a grand, momentous song, and I was convinced that this LP was that epic drama that I’d always suspected Band on the Run and Nineteen Hundred & Eighty-Five was culled from.
Well, that was then. Of course later I would expand my love of Paul to his work with the Beatles (yes, to an extent, I retroactively got introduced to the Beatles!) and it's now hard to imagine a time when I thought Wings was the only group he'd been in. But until his Beatles roots came into focus for me, Paul McCartney and Wings was the group of my life. From Nineteen-hundred and Eighty-Five to Junior's Farm, Listen to What The Man Said, through Silly Love Songs, and Let 'Em In, all the way to Arrow Through Me, I've loved and worshipped all of his songs. But although I've collected all the Beatles ,Wings and Solo works from Paul, the Band On The Run LP is still my among my very favorite albums from the Macca...from LP to CD, to Gold Disc and 25th Anniversary Deluxe CD, I've got 'em all! Because, you know, sentimentally, its the tops!
Youtube-ing around for old Tanya Donelly Belly PVs like Feed the Tree and Gepetto (the original PV with Belly as a trio, not the slick remake with Gail Greenwood), I came across a wonderful treasure-trove of old Throwing Muses performances from 1987, 1988 and 1991 and spent the night reliving the glory days of Tanya and her original partner (and half sister) Kristen Hersh. These were performances from the Hunkpapa and Real Ramona era, and I just drank them up! It made me sad to think that the two sisters weren't working together anymore.
Imagine my surprise when I came across clips of a semi-unplugged concert taken only a few months ago (last October) featuring Tanya and Kristen together, performing their old Throwing Muses hits! WTF?! HOLY CRAP, I was just taken aback! A real dream concert appearance!
Some kind soul had uploaded maybe ten to twelve clips of this incredible concert featuring songs like Sinkhole, Rabbit's Dying,and Pandora's Box, but the one clip I watched over and over again was their performance of Red Shoes, one of my favorite tunes from my favorite Throwing Muses record, The Real Ramona.
The two sisters have always had a real dynamic approach to guitar playing, with each girl "overlapping" over the other one to create this very intricate sound (that they dubbed "Math Rock"), and I think this song is a really great example, with Tanya's very 4AD flavoured slide guitar gracing Kristen's guitar picking...
A terrific performance... when are these gals gonna get together and make a new Throwing Muses album proper?
(Yes, I know that Tanya guested on the Muses last album, but that doesn't count! Let's get a Tanya/Kristen co-written album and get either Fred Abong or Leslie Langston back into the studio with them! Of course, David Narcizo's gonna be in the mix as well!
Crossing Fingers....
Anyway...
While browsing around online for the video of the song (which features Mary looking particularly attractive, I must say) I came across this really cool video - someone had taken Going Home and arranged a beautiful instrumental piano version of the song which actually adds to the allure and mystery of the tune...simply awesome!
Going Home
They say there's a place
where dreams have all gone
They never said where
but I think I know
It's miles through the night
just over the dawn
on the road that will take me home
I know in my bones
I've been here before
The ground feels the same
though the land's been torn
I've a long way to go
The stars tell me so
on this road that will take me home
Love waits for me 'round the bend
Leads me endlessly on
Surely sorrows shall find their end
and all our troubles will be gone
And I'll know what I've lost
and all that I've won
when the road finally takes me home
And when I pass by
don't lead me astray
Don't try to stop me
Don't stand in my way
I'm bound for the hills
where cool waters flow
on this road that will take me home
Love waits for me 'round the bend
Leads me endlessly on
Surely sorrows shall find their end
and all our troubles will be gone
And we'll know what we've lost
and all that we've won
when the road finally takes me home
I'm going home
I'm going home
I'm going home
