Category Archives: I Like This Song

Night Music: Hot Chocolate, “Everyone’s A Winner”

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Watched Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig’s Frances Ha tonight. Gerwig is both insufferably cute and overwhelmingly charming, in a story that is a tribute to her commitment as a writer and actor to her vision of life as a melding of grace and grit. Here it’s filtered through the lens of French movies of the early sixties, notably those of Francois Truffaut, which starred Jean Pierre Leaud playing Truffaut’s alter ego. Frances Ha Gerwig seems to play her own alter ego in a similar style.

In tribute to the Nouvelle Vague, Frances takes and impetuous trip to Paris when she is offered a pied a terre in the Sixth Arrondissement. The montagey staging of her visit is punctuated by Hot Chocolate’s fantastic “Everyone’s A Winner,” which is featured tonight to a much different purpose. Bon soir.

I Like This Song: The Edward, “It Hurts Me Too”

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This is an oddball album that came out in 1972, featuring a “band” made up of Nicky Hopkins, Ry Cooder, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts and Mick Jagger. The story apparently, is that during the Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed sessions, their producer Jimmy Miller, brought in Cooder to play slide guitar. This made Keith mad and he took off for a few days, during which the boys he left behind recorded these six sides.

One of them, Boudoir Stomp, is Midnight Rambler with different words. This one is a lovely cover of the classic Elmore James song. Great stuff.

For some reason, when I was in high school, I owned this but not Let It Bleed.

Nicky Hopkins drew the cover cartoon.

Night Music: Little Willie John, “Leave My Kitten Alone”

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I’m sure I heard the Beatles’ version first, and I discovered Little Willie John because of a story in Rolling Stone—so we’re not talking obscure—but still, this is a song that still sounds fresh to me today. A masterpiece.

And here’s an informative conversation about Little Willie John from a Detroit TV show.

I Like This Song: Chuck Berry and Keith Richards, “Carol”

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I should research where this clip is from, though I suspect it’s from that TV special Keith did with Chuck that made Keith realize he wasn’t the bastard son of Chuck. Rather, Chuck was a bastard.

What’s great about this clip is how generous the music is. Once they get past the stuff that isn’t working, they really enjoy playing. Maybe all the more so for all the awkwardness that it takes to get them there.