I’ve always liked this Stevie Wonder song. I like Petra Hayden. And I kinda like Bill Frisell’s guitar playing.
For those expecting Fu Manchu, go home, but Frisell is a guy who straddles the jazz world and some other world, which is not the one of hammered chords. But as this cover shows, he’s down with reverb and looping and extending his strings as far as he can. And it all sounds good, usually without sounding pretty.
I’ve seen him live a few times, twice with the great now-deceased drummer and composer Paul Motian and the great tenor sax player Joe Lovano at the Village Vanguard. I wish he got dirty more, at least sometimes, but on the other hand, that’s so old.
For breakfast lovely harmonies and harmonics rule!
Stevie Wonder was making sounds when this came out that no one had heard before.
Pete Patton won the first Lunch Quiz here at Rock Remnants, and so gets to program a Breakfast Blend. He lives in Manhattan’s Lower Eastside and works as a terrorism analyst. He says, “My life was thrown upside down when I first heard the Byrds and I was saved by Quadrophenia my junior year in high school, 16 years after it was released.”
Editors note: “Terrorist Analyst?” Tell me more.
Pete says:
The Poets I found out about on the Nuggets II set. I liked the name and was captured by their outfits. I believe all the original members save one, are now deceased. Here is one of their two big singles from Decca, “That’s The Way It’s Got To Be,” from 1965. Wooden Spoon: Singles Anthology 1964-1967 is available as an import I think:
Jumping ahead a few decades, another Glasgow-based band The Orange Juice. I always thought Edwyn Collins was an overlooked genius of the 80’s alternative scene. James Kirk and Steven Daly left after the first record and Collins kept going on with the help of Zeke Manyika, a drummer from Zimbabwe, to critical acclaim but not commercial success. Collins would be more remembered these days for his hypnotoc hit “A Girl Like You,” from 1995. Collins suffered a stroke and went into a coma and was hospitalized for six months. The road of his recovery can be seen in the documentary, “The Possibilities Are Endless.” There are so many Orange Juice songs to choose from but thought this version of “Rip it Up,” from the Old Grey Whistle Test from their 1982 album of the same name couldn’t be beat:
Teenage Fanclub, a band inspired by The Orange Juice and Aztec Camera but none so much as Big Star and The Byrds. Their 1991 album Bandwagonesque beat out Nirvana in Spin’s album of the year in 1991. Their whole catalog is a must own with the memorizing Gene Clark off their surprisingly maligned “Thirteen” album being a favorite. In my mind these were the guys who made Creation Records what it was long before the Gallagher Brothers came around. This track is “What You Do To Me,” from Bandwagonesque. They made an impression on Alex Chilton as described in his new biography, “A Man Called Destruction.”
Booker T and the MGs made a record covering all of Abbey Road, all in good fun and presumably economic bounty, just months after the Beatles album came out. McLemore Avenue is the location of the Stax studios in Memphis.
Plus another cover of a song with half the same name, not so surprising, but also from the early 70s. Greetings from Asbury Park.
Another of Elvis Costello’s secret songs was Stranger in the House. I have a copy that came as a bonus 45 in, um, Armed Forces, maybe. I can’t remember. Limited edition. Only a few thousand out there.
But then George Jones and Elvis recorded this duet, and the internet happened. I no longer believe my Stranger in the House b/w Neat Neat Neat is going to pay for my daughter to go to school for more than a day or two. But it’s still a great song. Heck, the Damned cover is awesome, too.
It is bizarre that Stranger in the House, Hoover Factory and Radio Sweetheart weren’t on My Aim Is True. Hard choices, I guess.
Here’s Radio Sweetheart as a singalong with a crowd that needed coaxing. I can’t imagine going there, but that’s a performer’s job.
Watched this modern classic last night with the family. The parents were touched by the way the movie makes romantic teen cliches feel a little new. The teen felt the movie worked like all movies, predictably.
What struck this parent most was the way John Mahoney did an almost perfect imitation of Remnant Gene’s vocal inflection and, perhaps, parenting approach. Mahoney has just one kid to work with, but I get the sense Gene was half of a team (hi Vickie) that got them out the door and on the way, and then the rest of the way there. I couldn’t find a Mahoney clip from the movie worthy of Gene, the trailer uses Mahoney as a foil, not the much more interesting character he plays, but the connection is striking, if dubious.
This being a Cameron Crowe movie, there is music. Crowe’s wife, Nancy Wilson, is the musical director. Two songs that are awfully nice to wake up to. First an excellent Cheap Trick tune:
And a Replacements tune that presages Paul Westerberg’s solo career, but has a very quirky arrangement that is a quieter moodier Replacements.
This tune is from the soundtrack of the movie, Spring Break, which had a cameo by the lithe young tennis player and beer scion Carling Bassett. I remember going to see the teen sex comedy in Times Square and being somewhat disappointed. The poster appears in the video. Bassett shortly thereafter dropped off the tennis tour. The song endures.
Thin Lizzy have a different song with the same name, that features Gary Moore killing it with an epic solo in a live show in Sydney in the 70s.
Bonnie Raitt did a fine version of the NRBQ song. As best as I can tell nobody has been foolish enough to try and top Thin Lizzy and theirs.
