Category Archives: Breakfast Blend

Breakfast Blend: The End of the World

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Skeeter Davis had a huge hit with this almost perfectly wrought pop song. She also has a rather startling look on this country music tv show.

More polish and muscle (and John Mellencamp) don’t disturb it.

Herman’s Hermits slow it down even more than Skeeter.

There are scores of versions of this song, but I couldn’t find a fast one. Mellencamp ups the pace more than anyone.

Breakfast Blend: The Rascals

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This is a Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame induction clip.

You are entitled to your issues about the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, we all are, (the idea is basically bogus, I think), but I think it’s pretty sweet to recognize these guys, which this event did.

And a shout out to Eddie Cavalieri for shouting out to Freedom Suite and Time/Peace, when the Rascals tried to make a difference.

The clip is long, but the intro clips are nice. And by then you should have enough to go on. Little Stevie isn’t wrong.

Breakfast Blend: 16 Tons

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Jeff Beck and ZZ Top are on tour, and last week’s encore in LA was recorded. The song 16 Tons is one of the enduring country chestnuts first recorded by Merle Travis in 1946 which became a hit for Tennessee Ernie Ford in 1955. It’s one of those songs I bang out on the guitar, singing along, in my living room, and that’s the approach the boys took last week. Until the guitar solos.

Here’s the original Merle Travis version. A lighter touch, for sure, and he explains how the whole company store thing worked.

Which led me to this version, with Billy Gibbons singing in front of Jeff Beck’s band. Much better sound and way more engaged vocals than the Beck with ZZ Top.

Breakfast Blend: 80s Caucasian Soul Horns

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There’s a new Taylor Swift single out called Shake It Off. The song will be a hit, it has the insistent beat of Pharrell’s Happy and the marketing might of Taylor Swift herself and all that’s at stake stoking her machine (her record label is called Big Machine), but the song it reminds me of most is Elvis Costello’s most unhitish soul foray on his 1983 album Punch the Clock, Let Them All Talk. The obvious tie in is the insistent soul horns, which would fit in well on a Dexy’s Midnight Runner’s song, but in typical Costello fashion they’re played for pure signifying noise rather than simple if numbing pleasure.

This clip is from an extended dance mix, which I’m not sure adds a lot of danceability to the track, but does open it up sonically.

Taylor Swift’s new album is called 1989 and I have no idea if that is a reference to the music of the 80s, but this video captured me from the git go. The mix of dancing and subtle jokes is totally winning. And while we can be certain Taylor wasn’t channeling Let Them All Talk, it is curious that her tune hits those same bleating horns hard, and is similarly self referential (though she never talks about the soul cliches).

Some will enjoy this, some will slit their wrists or puncture their eardrums, but I offer it up for its curious echoes…

By the way, on some plays the video is preceded by a clip of Taylor selling style for JC Penny’s, and watching her shill I don’t like her at all. But this video is really great. It elevates the song beyond beyond. I’m not going to stop watching, and probably won’t be able to, at least for a while.

Breakfast Blend: I Asked For Water

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When I was a mere boy I listened to a lot more Muddy Waters than Howlin’ Wolf, more by circumstance than design I think. I saved up and bought the Muddy Waters Chess box, but never got to the Wolf’s until later. So, when I first heard Lucinda William’s eponymous third album, her cover of I Asked for Water (He Gave Me Gasoline) was a revelation. This is a smashing version.

It’s a smashing version even after you listen to Wolf’s version, which is heavier and darker and even more mournful. I could listen to it all day long.

Breakfast Blend: Dub

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Sometime back in the 1970s producers found they could rearrange the elements of a song and turn it into something else.

The first time I heard of this involved the album King Tubby Meets the Rockers Uptown, which was produced by Augustus Pablo. He released an album, this was the title tune:

It was based on his production of Justin Miller’s song “Baby I Love You So.”

The Rockers version omits the words and spaces out the sounds. That’s the dub program.

I’m no historian of dub reggae or it’s somewhat recent progenitor, dub step, but the two are related by being producer acts rather than performance tracts.

And then there is Skrilex, uber dub producer, mixing Damian Marley’s performance, which sounds like this: http://youtu.be/PR_u9rvFKzE.

I’m not a fan, too crushing without dynamics for no apparent reason, but I can see why the kids like the harsher sounds. The ones that mystify their elders? Haven’t the kids always?