Little Queenie’s real name is Leigh Harris, and she recorded this Ray Davies cover in 1999 under her own name. (thanks to Powerpop for the link.)

And how did the Kinks do it?

I’m glad to hear them both.

So, I’m thinking about the original Pretenders with longing. So, how about this Tattooed Love Boys:

Compared to Neil Young on the new album?

The guitarists rule.

Just an excuse to listen to Dreadlock Holiday.

10cc – dreadlock holiday by gazaw

Which is pretty amazing. The most literal video is also the most ironic. I’m not sure Wolfman Jack would approve.

Keith, on the other hand. moved to Jamaica at some point, and ended up having a band of local musicians record as Wingless Angels.

The beauty of Keef’s album with Wingless Angels is it really is the music his Jamaican neighbors/friends/accomplices played. As he says in his book, you can hear the crickets. This is way closer to the gospel of Rastafari than that of Island Records and the international hit machine’s embrace of the Island.

There are virtues and tradeoffs either way, compromises explicit and implicit.

In the end, it comes down the music.

This tune popped up in my Youtube list today, because (I’m pretty sure) Sugar Pie DeSanto is doing a show a Littlefields, a small club in my nabe, in a few weeks. So I played the song. Sugar Pie DeSanto and Etta James cut this one in 1966, and it rocks.

So I thought that it might be good fun to see Sugar Pie, even though Etta James died a few years ago. But then I found this clip and I was conflicted.

On the one hand, the band seems strong, if kind of professionally bland. And she’ll be playing with a different band. On the other, Sugar Pie seems more adept at dirty dancing than singing these days, as that clip shows.

So, what do you do? Do you go to the show? Or do you avoid the discomfort?

John Denver wrote this song, which from his lips is thin and sentimental. Sentiment is a key part of its appeal, but back in the 70s Toot and the Maytals found a delicious reggae groove beating under it’s melodic heart.

Many years later, in Japan, Hayao Miyazaki wrote the great “Whisper of the Heart,” a movie love story in which the protagonists’ dreams all come together with a down home reworked rendition of Denver’s classic tune.

After his three-album foray into born-againedness, Dylan eventually decided to make a rock record. He looked for a rock star producer, talked to David Bowie, Frank Zappa and Elvis Costello, but was turned down, and ended up with Mark Knopfler. The result was something of a comeback album called Infidels.

I’m a big fan of the first of Dylan’s Christian albums, Slow Train Coming, but I lost interest in the others, and don’t think I’d ever listened to Infidels until today. I needed something in the background while editing football profiles, if you know what I mean, something to fill the space without making too much noise or too much singing along.

The first song on Infidels is a typical long story song called Jokerman. It’s pretty good, with some cool syncopated drums and a prominent bass line, and some understated slide guitar. You can hear it here.

It turns out that Dylan hired Sly and Robbie as his rhythm section for these sessions, explaining the distinctive bottom. It also turns out that he conceived this record after befriending Mick Taylor, the former Stones’ guitarist, with whom he intended to collaborate. Taylor, Sly and Robbie play a huge part on this album, which after Jokerman loses much of its sense of melody and turns into a series of vamps, with Dylan bleating on top. Well, not really on top, since his voice is mixed behind the music, kind of in the distance.

It turns out that Knopfler had to go on tour before the album was mixed, and Columbia pressed Dylan to turn the sides in in order to make the Christmas season release date. Dylan turned them over to the engineer, who did the final mixes. Knopfler wasn’t pleased. But it isn’t the sound of the album that irks as much as the lack of melody. Good for editing, bad for paying attention to, apart from Jokerman, which is of a little interest musically.

Some months later, Dylan made his first public appearance in a good while, on Late Night with David Letterman. He performed three songs with a band of new wave kids, who chunked up Jokerman, so it was less island and a little more Sunset Strip.

Thanks mostly to Wikipedia for these facts, if they are straight, and this good story otherwise.

Stumbled on this stuff this morning, via this site.

Not surprising, there was a vibrant Japanese beat music scene in the 1960s, called Group Sounds, which borrowed from the harmonies and sounds of the British Invasion and psychedelica and turned them into something else.

Too soon to curate, too good to wait.

Lind and the Linders

The Toys

The Jacks