This shouldn’t be on YouTube. Prince doesn’t like that. I think it must be slowed down a little, to fool the piracy software.
It was scheduled to go up on the 25th, last in my Seven songs from the 80s set, but dangit, I just read that Prince died last night.
This was a pop hit, but did a song better catch the feeling of nuclear risk from that time? And why do we feel that risk no longer exists today?
Blondie landed on WBLS with this soulful one. Nothing more surprising nor right.
This is a Facebook thing. Silly but true.
No. 1:
I do love Brit pop. No question.
The other night I woke up somewhere in the middle of what should be deep sleep time, turned on the tube to ease me back into the arms of Morpheus, and in the process stopped at the Palladium channel, which is all concerts and music all the time.
As it happened, I stumbled into a long late night broadcast from Glastonbury a couple of years back, and this song and band.
I am not too sure about the band name, but this song is really nice and dreamy. And, the guitar player does some fun stuff with his 12-string on an axe that looks like he found it in a pawn shop (which is good).
Irrespective, I like this song a lot.
I posted about Jimmy Webb’s song Wichita Lineman, or rather Freedy Johnson’s version of it, a few years ago here. But today is the day for appreciating linemen (actually it was yesterday, but close enough), this seems like a good time to take a look at the Glen Campbell version, which was a No. 3 hit in 1968 (No. 1 on the country charts).
Campbell is backed on the record by the Wrecking Crew, of which he was a member.
Reading about the Campbell version, I learned about the many other covers of the tune. Most surprisingly? Kool and the Gang.
Jazzy instrumental, hard to not think of the lyrics though it goes to a totally different place.
The inspiration for the song, according to the Wikipedia entry, was a lineman working atop a telephone pole who Webb saw while driving across Oklahoma and brooding about a failed romantic relationship. Webb imagined himself on the pole, talking to his gal, his heart breaking. Webb called the image “the picture of loneliness.”
As a young aspiring hippie it was easy to disdain Haggard’s epic “Okie From Muskogee,” but at the same time have the Grateful Dead’s version of Mama Tried on replay on the phonograph. I actually listened to a lot of Haggard back then, he was one of the great country songwriters who escaped categorization. And Mama Tried is just a fantastic song.
This tune was Haggard’s last Top 10 country chart song, one of 71 he had in his career, from back in 1987.
This one is classic Haggard.
We watched Bridge of Spies tonight. Spielberg working from a Coen Brothers rewrite. What could be bad?
It isn’t bad, but it is thematically and historically weak. Donald Trump would say, Low energy. And it’s a fine reminder about the Cold War.
But this Lou Reed song, which is a major theatrical event, trumps. (No pun intended.) Because of the guitars. (Squaring the circle, it’s from the album Berlin.)
This is a fantastic tune by Peter Perrett, the singer songwriter at the heart of the Only Ones. This is by his 1996 band, the One, and was released on an elpee also called Woke Up Sticky.
It makes total sense that between their like (love?) of drugs, their romantic perspectives (cut by jaundice), mastery of classic rock tropes, and ability to twist them to their visions, Perrett and Johnny Thunder would bond.
Another great Only Ones tune.
Covered by Come, perhaps unnecessarily but effectively, in a Peel Sessions show in 1993.
What’s striking about the difference between these two versions is first, Peter Perrett’s voice, which is distinctive, assertive, brash.
But also, while Come rock it hard, the original is full of production tricks. Shifts of focus, subtle volume emphases, this is record making, while Come are playing live. The only known cover of this excellently energetic and melancholy tune.
