songs from the new OK Go album and the songs they more or less remind me of.

CoverMania

Whew, it's been a little while.

Another covers post for ya, with a solid dose of Neil Young and a side order of Pixies. First off, one of my favorite Neil Young tunes, "Down By The River," covered by Buddy Miles (who was the drummer in Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys). This is the version from his funktastic 1970 album Them Changes, which is only available today as a fairly expensive import CD, so this is a vinyl rip from the album I picked up for $6 recently. (vinyl lives! yeah right, what a pain.)

And for a more somnolent, nearly 10-minute take on the same song, we go next to a collaboration between Low and the Dirty Three, from their In the Fishtank session.

To continue the Neil Young thread, we go next to "Winterlong," a song I heard first as covered by the Pixies. It also appeared on Young's 1977 compilation Decade and was recorded by the Pixies for the 1989 Neil Young tribute album The Bridge.

That wouldn't be the last tribue album the Pixies contributed to. After their reunion in 2004, they recorded "Ain't That Pretty At All" for the Warren Zevon tribute album Enjoy Every Sandwich. If you know the name Warren Zevon at all (I didn't), it's probably as the man behind "Werewolves of London" (oddly enough, played by Adam Sandler on the tribute album). For the full story, see his Wikipedia page, but suffice it to say he was a highly gifted songwriter (with a fantastic dark sense of humor and a drug problem - song titles include "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner," and "Lawyers Guns and Money") and I highly recommend checking him out. "Ain't That Pretty At All" first appeared on the 1982 album The Envoy, but it's also included on the WZ compilation (I guess the term "greatest hits" wouldn't really apply) A Quiet Normal Life. Again, I highly recommend.

The Pixies have of course been around well long enough to be covered themselves, and this little gem recently came to my attention: TV On The Radio bravely covering "Mr. Grieves" a capella, on their Young Liars EP. The original of course appeared on the seminal Doolittle, and if you don't have that then I don't know, just... just go away and come back when you've had it on repeat for a week.

Well, that does it for this week. I close with "Hey Joe" because at least thematically, it brings us back around to "Down By The River," although it's not quite perfect since it's pre-Band of Gypsys and thus... no Buddy Miles! Oh well, next time we'll aim for a perfect circle of covers...

Dark End of the Street

At the end of the bonus disc that comes with the extended version of the Elvis Costello album The Delivery Man, I was pleasantly surprised to find a short but sweet version of this classic ballad.

Elvis Costello and the Imposters - Dark End of the Street

Originally recorded by James Carr, Dark End of the Street has been covered many times, some better than others. In my humble opinion, the unusual phrasing of the chord progression that helps set this song apart is obscured by renditions that are too slow (e.g. Ry Cooder) or arrangements too ornate (Aretha). In contrast, the version I've been hooked on lately strips it down to what really makes it a classic: those chords, and of course the lyrics. And it helps that the subject matter works so well as a country song.

The Flying Burrito Brothers - Dark End of the Street

One more version I just happen to have on the hard drive.

Percy Sledge - Dark End of the Street

Off the top of my head, there aren't too many pop songs sung from the perspective of the adulterer. Your bonus mp3 for today is an old blues number of just that sort. Quite a bit more lighthearted, variously attributed as traditional or, frequently, to John Lee Hooker, and sung here by R.L. Burnside on his album Acoustic Stories.

R.L. Burnside - Meet Me in the Bottom

Protest music past and present

Only a few days left to follow through on this...

Impeach the President, 1973, by The Honeydrippers.

Impeach the President, 2006, from the DJ Green Lantern mix Alive on Arrival.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Parts and Labor new album

Parts and Labor have a great new album out, Receivers, and I'm already hooked. Like 99.9% of all bands, they continue to mellow with age.* Of course, "mellow" is a relative term. When you start out where Parts and Labor did, it means there's still, thankfully, plenty here to scare the shit out of whichever overhyped and overbearded midwestern or Canadian neo-folkie you're currently digging.

You can stream the whole album from their website, and if you like it, pick up a cd/lp from Brah Records, or Jagjaguwar (home to some of the aforementioned bearded folkies).

On a related note, our friends (and P&L labelmates) Pterodactyl have a new album in the works as well. I'll be mentioning this again when it comes out in the spring, but in the meantime you can hear a sample on their website.

*a thesis I hope to expand on in a future post. in the meantime, I challenge anyone to show me a counter-example.

Bob Dylan versus...

I. Dan Bern

Dan Bern's been compared to Bob Dylan ad nauseum, and it's obvious why. I've been a huge fan of Bern's from the first time I heard him though (once I realized it wasn't Dylan), and once you get to know Bern's songs, the similarity quickly fades into the background.

The similarity is certainly nowhere more in your face, though, than in "Talkin' Alien Abduction Blues," which is clearly an homage/pastiche/rip-off of Dylan's "Talkin' World War III Blues" from the classic album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Bern's take on Dylan's satire of Cold War paranoia (make what you will of Bern's choice of modern parallel for the '60s fear of nuclear annihilation) appears on Bern's first release, the 1996 Dog Boy Van EP. I like to think Bern saw the endless Dylan comparisons coming, and simply decided to get this one out of the way right off the bat. These are fun to listen to back to back.

Dan Bern - Talkin' Alien Abduction Blues
Bob Dylan - Talkin' World War III Blues (youtube)


II. PJ Harvey

I was re-listening to PJ Harvey's great early album Rid Of Me and re-discovered her cover of "Highway 61 Revisited," which frankly I'd never really paid attention to before. I think I've become more obsessed with covers in recent years.

Anyway, not much to say about this cover except that it's a lot of fun, and certainly strays far enough from the sound of the original to escape the common cover pitfall of just being a bad copy.

PJ Harvey - Highway 61 Revisited
Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited (youtube)

N.B.: This post is in no way inspired by or in reference to James Taylor's new album of cover songs, cleverly entitled Covers, which is just lame. James Taylor is lame.

Beck: Modern Guilt (and thoughts on going mp3-legit)

I finally broke down and made my first legal digital music purchase yesterday. Don't worry, I'm still a cheapskate: Amazon had Beck's new album, Modern Guilt, on sale for $5, so I just went for it. I could have easily found it elsewhere for, uh, around $0, but I still tend to buy stuff I like on cd, usually by seeking it out used or online, which is still as cheap or cheaper than a digital album from iTunes or Amazon. And it's Beck, so I very much expect to like it, and there's no way I was going to find the new Beck cd for $5, even used. Oddly, though, I think there was another factor that contributed to this spur-of-the-moment decision: the album's boring cover. Cover art and album packaging are still something I like a lot about physical music formats. In this case, however, the cover is really not compelling at all (I sort of agree with this guy). (The third factor was the DRM-free mp3 format, which meant zero hassle buying at work and transferring to home for the ipod, or anywhere else.)

So, the album? I'm giving it a first listen as I write this, and my initial impression is that it's most similar to the Beck of Sea Change and Mutations, but with more production, as you would expect from a collaboration with Danger Mouse. More Guero-style beats, bleeps and boops, but mixed together with that introspective mood and the acoustic guitar hearkening back to the very early One Foot in the Grave. Beck is amazing. He has a set of styles that he likes to use, and is very good with, and almost every album mixes them together in slightly different proportions. The result is often a sound that seems totally new and unique, and like something that only he could pull off. And it's always held together by his unmistakable lyrics and voice. Modern Guilt, I suspect, will grow on me much as Guero did, sneaking up on me until I find myself in the car some day, singing along every word to a song that I didn't realize I knew so well.


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Now playing: Beck - Gamma Ray
via FoxyTunes

mp3 news

Hello!

Sadly, all the old mp3 links are dead (file storage service mediamax went bye bye).

Here's a random 7" I ripped using Garageband, to hold you over.

Maybe I'll scan the cover for you some time. If you leave a comment.

brief rant re: pretentious hipster record reviews

Memo to the editors at Dusted (and Pitchfork and all the rest of you): for those of us not "in the know," i.e. those that actually might be looking to the record review for information or analysis rather than with a pre-existing opinion, the following sentence might be better positioned at the beginning of the review, rather than in the last paragraph:

"Only a couple of the record’s 10 tracks are actual songs."

Well, that's good to know. Thanks for the tip-off!

summer mix tape

The RIAA strikes back.

A rock/pop mix "tape" thrown together for your summery listening pleasure. Some stuff you know and love, and a few more tracks that you probably haven't heard. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!