Tag: music

Making Music, Literally

It’s just my pushback against W.W.C.T.G.Y.T.B.N.C.O.S.Y.A.O. – the World Wide Conspiracy To Get You To Buy New Copies Of Stuff You Already Own.

I used to occasionally buy music from Amazon. But since I canceled my Amazon credit card – because the issuing bank was going to slap on some minimum payment every month even if I had no balance – thus denying me access to some Amazon points I’d get from purchasing from them, I’ve been less inclined.

Still, I occasionally need new music. Or music that is new again to me. I have a bunch of LPs in the attic I cannot access because the area is under long-delayed refurbishing, including insulating.

The thing to do: go to the library, take out albums I already have on vinyl, copy them, then listen to them. Understand that I have absolutely no guilt about doing this.

I have purchased the music; I still have the music in my possession. It’s just my pushback against W.W.C.T.G.Y.T.B.N.C.O.S.Y.A.O. – the World Wide Conspiracy To Get You To Buy New Copies Of Stuff You Already Own.

These are some of the albums I’ve checked out, and copied, recently:

Pinups – David Bowie. This is an album of covers of songs made noteworthy by the Who, the Yardbirds, the Pretty Things and more. LISTEN to Friday On My Mind, originally done by the Easybeats.

Diver Down – Van Halen. The only VH I ever owned, it shares a common song with Pinups: Where Have All the Good Times Gone? , a Kinks song. It also features Dancing in the Street and the Roy Rogers theme, Happy Trails. LISTEN to Big Bad Bill (is Sweet William Now), a song from 1924.

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere – Neil Young. Two very long songs dominate this album. But LISTEN to the minor hit single Cinnamon Girl.

Fresh Cream – Cream. The debut album from the group featuring Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker. LISTEN to I’m So Glad, a Skip James blues tune from the 1930s; they would perform this live to greater effect on the Goodbye album.

Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. – Bruce Springsteen. Oddly, I couldn’t find any studio recordings on YouTube from this album except a couple that were lousy recordings. I was planning on using Blinded by the Light, which was covered successfully by Manfred Mann.

Led Zeppelin III. Always liked this largely acoustic album with songs such as Friends and Tangerine. LISTEN to Gallows Pole, a cover of a Leadbelly song.

Q: Are we not men? A: We Are Devo!-Devo. This is the premiere album of the group, which featured Mongoloid, Uncontrollable Urge, and functionally, the title song, Jocko Homo. LISTEN to (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, a cover of the big Rolling Stones hit.

Legalize It – Peter Tosh. LISTEN to the title track of the 1975 reggae album by one of the seminal figures in the genre.

Songs for Beginners – Graham Nash. Nash’s first solo albums, after his time with the Hollies and while he was still with Crosby, Stills, and (sometimes) Young. LISTEN to Chicago/We Can Change the World, which has hints of sounding quite current.

All Hallows Eve

I shaved my beard and a mustache, Susan and a couple of her friends made me up, with a dress from a second-hand store, a wig and shoes from somewhere, and we went to the party, she as “Sid”, and me as “Shirley”.

The odd thing about Halloween, as I think back on it, is that I have almost no recollection of the costumes I wore while trick-or-treating as a child. I’m sure I went, mostly in my grandmother’s neighborhood, but as to what I wore, it’s a total blank. It doesn’t help that most of the photos from my childhood were lost, so I have no cues. And I pretty much gave up the gig by the time I was a teenager, though I may have been called upon to take my baby sister, who was (and still is!) five years younger than I.

I may have donned a costume once or twice in college, but it was in my mid-twenties when I really began dressing up.

One year I wore a Frankenstein mask and a seersucker suit; really stylin’. Another time, I had a skeleton mask with a wizard’s hat and my college graduation gown; there’s a great picture somewhere of me leaning on a car reading the Daily News Sunday funnies in this outfit.

But my all-time favorite outfit was one planned by my girlfriend at the time, Susan, when I was 25. I shaved my beard and a mustache, Susan and a couple of her friends made me up, with a dress from a second-hand store, a wig and shoes from somewhere, and we went to the party, she as “Sid”, and me as “Shirley”.

The outfit, along with my affected high-pitched voice actually fooled people; no one knew who I was, though they were confused as to what I was dressed up as. It wasn’t until later in the evening, when my “five o’clock shadow” started to appear, that people started figuring things out.
Sid and Shirley

I don’t dress up now, but the daughter does. I enjoy the holiday more vicariously now.
***
Samurai Frog’s Halloween posts over the years. Mucho posts.
For Thom Wade, Halloween lasts at least four weeks. My favorite post: The Top 10 Horror Themes in movies
An Open Letter to Pumpkin-Flavored Seasonal Treats
A recipe for candy corn.
Reader Wil on traditions.
And since nothing says Halloween to me like Mussorgsky, LISTEN to Night On Bald Mountain

From Which “Grapevine” Did You Hear It?

Which iteration should be considered the original? Surely, one could make a case for the Miracles’ version. But many experts would pick the version first released, and that would be the Pips’.

I love good cover versions of songs. Came across a rather fine list from Popdose. And I so agree with the opening statement: “It’s generally agreed upon that if you don’t have any new flavor to add to the original, you shouldn’t bother doing a cover.”

Certainly can’t argue with the top two, “Respect” by Aretha Franklin, originally performed by Otis Redding; and “All Along the Watchtower” by Jimi Hendrix, originally done by Bob Dylan. Both of the original artists have acknowledged the transformative nature of these covers. A previous list I saw contained songs that I had never heard of in the Top 10, which I discovered were less than six years old; seems to me these songs need to stand the test of time

But I have one nit to pick over this list, and it’s around the song “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” As noted here and elsewhere, the song by Motown staff writers Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong was first recorded by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles on August 6, 1966. And Marvin Gaye recorded his version on April 10, 1967. But Berry Gordy, the head of Motown, hated the song & vetoed the releases by both artists.

Gladys Knight and the Pips’ version* was recorded next, and was very reluctantly released by Gordy. It went to #1 on the R&B charts for six weeks, and to #2 on the pop charts for three weeks in the fall of 1967.

It was only after this point that the other two versions were released. The Miracles’ was just an album cut, but Marvin Gaye’s single was #1 for seven weeks on both the R&B and pop charts in the late fall of 1968, a Grammy Hall of Fame winner in 2001. “Gaye’s version has since become a landmark in pop music. In 2004, it ranked No.80 on Rolling Stone’s list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. On the commemorative 50th Anniversary of the Billboard Hot 100 issue of Billboard magazine in June 2008, Gaye’s version was ranked as the 65th biggest song on the chart.”

So two questions exist for me: first, which iteration should be considered the original? Surely, one could make a case for the Miracles’ version. But many experts, such as Brian Ibbott of Coverville, would pick the version first released, and that would be the Pips’.

Also, how could the panel pick the perfectly fine version of this song by Creedence Clearwater Revival* over the Marvin Gaye classic, even if the latter did get overplayed in the 1980s, around the time of the movie the Big Chill? Not so incidentally, I don’t own the Miracles’ version, but I do have CCR, Gaye, and the Pips, which is actually my favorite take.

And while I’m thinking about Marvin, I would definitely find room on that covers list for Wherever I Lay My Hat, originally done by Gaye, but covered by Paul Young.

*Link to the music

NOT SHY question

The title song of Simon and Garfunkel’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme is Scarborough Fair/Canticle.

I happen to catch the song Magnet and Steel by Walter Egan at my bank, which is also a Starbucks You can LISTEN to it HERE. The backstory: Stevie Nicks sang on this track, and provided inspiration for the lyrics.

I’m a sucker for albums that have a title song but isn’t the title of the album. The album title is Not Shy, a reference in the song. “With you, I’m not shy.”

In Kill to Get Crimson by Mark Knopfler, the lyrics of Let It All Go include “I’d kill to get crimson on this palette knife.”

The title song of Simon and Garfunkel’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme is Scarborough Fair/Canticle. Negotiations and Love Songs, and Shining Like A National Guitar are collections of Paul Simon’s songs. The titles are taken from lines in the songs Train in the Distance and Graceland, respectively.

And of course, Nevermind by Nirvana is in reference to a word/words? in Smells Like Teen Spirit. (Oh, speaking of that song, a cover by 2 Cellos.)

Got any other examples of lines of songs that provide the title of an album?

And the “Wichita Lineman” is stuck in my mind

“‘And I need you more than want you/and I want you for all time’ is simply a genius couplet, no doubt about it.”

The song Wichita Lineman, written by Jimmy Webb and performed by Glen Campbell, keeps popping up in my life.

First I was watching a segment of CBS Sunday Morning (aired on July 31, but I watched later), where Webb was interviewed. He indicated that, after he’d given Campbell “By the Time I Get to Phoenix”, Campbell wanted “another ‘Phoenix'”. Webb replied that he didn’t have ANOTHER ‘Phoenix’. He wrote most of “Wichita Lineman”, but he wasn’t finished; nevertheless, Campbell recorded it, using a guitar solo where Webb thought the song was incomplete.

Then Campbell, who had announced that he had Alzheimer’s in June was interviewed by ABC News in August. He shared the fact that the favorite of his songs was Wichita Lineman, as he noted his favorite lyrics. As Johnny Bacardi noted here: “‘And I need you more than want you/and I want you for all time’ is simply a genius couplet, no doubt about it.”

Here’s the studio version and here’s a live version.

What songs are currently stuck in your mind?

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