Category Archives: music

Feb23

Happy Birthday, George Harrison: 10 Cover Versions

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Happy Birthday, George Harrison: 10 Cover Versions

George Harrison had always been seen as the kid brother to his bandmates John Lennon and Paul McCartney. But, that would change.

Although it took him a while, George soon became as good a songwriter as his partners in The Beatles had become, and did so largely on his own steam. Yet, that was the kind of artist he’d always been, focusing his ear for melody early on in his solos, which were meticulously and very patiently wrought, as much as they were inventive, and later to be applied to some of the most celebrated songs in rock history.

Yet, by the mid-to-late 1960s, he’d pen some of the most enduring songs of that group’s catalog as a songwriter. This would be a skill he’d take with him into his solo career as well.

So, in celebration of that skill, and of the birth of George Harrison which is coming up this Saturday, February 25, 2012 (he would have been 69!), here are ten distinguished covers of Harrison’s songs that span his most fertile period. In that time, he mastered acoustic folk styled tunes, sumptuous psychedelia, Indian traditional music, and of course straight ahead guitar pop too. As such, the artists who covered his songs are varied across the stylistic spectrum as well, from pop crooners, to soul men, to blues players, to singer-songwriters.

Take a listen! Read the rest of this entry →

Feb20

Roxy Music Perform “Avalon”

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Roxy Music Perform “Avalon”

Listen to this track by new romantic trailblazers and former first-tier glam-rockers Roxy Music. It’s “Avalon”, the title track from their final (to date) album from 1982, Avalon. The record was something of a breakthrough record Stateside after the seven albums that had made their name in Britain. Having said that, their North American breakthrough would take a while saleswise, even after the band were no longer recording under the Roxy name.

The singles from this album were released just when the era of US college radio was building up a head of steam, and where the songs gained their initial exposure. Success in the U.S mainstream would arrive eventually , finally receiving Rolling Stone’s blessing as #31 on their 100 Greatest Albums of the 1980s list.

But despite the potential for even greater successes, this would be their final (recorded) curtain under the Roxy Music name, with a shift in style that moved them into more refined sonic territory carried forward by lead singer and head writer Bryan Ferry.

Things were definitely changing for Roxy Music. But, it wasn’t just because this would be their last album as a band.

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Feb16

Etta James Sings “Tell Mama”

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Etta James Sings “Tell Mama”

Listen to this song by much-missed R&B stylist, and elementally gifted vocalist Etta James. It’s “Tell Mama”, a broiling example of full-on soul-power, charged with the fire of the blues, as taken from the album of the same name, Tell Mama, from 1968.

The record and song was something of a comeback for James, who first broke out in 1960 after  some minor dents in the R&B charts previously. She had become sidelined by the middle of the decade by a series of personal problems, including a growing heroin habit. Her addiction to drugs would continue to be a personal millstone around her neck for many years.

Yet, the sheer power of her voice, and the uniqueness of the same, would remain undiminished. And this tune is my favourite of her songs, which is really saying something given the quality of her output.

The comeback itself was successful, with this song being top 10 on the  R&B charts, and with the album being her first for almost half a decade to hit the Billboard 200. This tune would become something of a signiture hit, along with “At Last”, her version of Willie Dixon’s “I Just Want To Make Love To You”, and another cut off of the same LP – “I’d Rather Go Blind”.

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Feb13

Cat Stevens Sings “The Boy With The Moon & Star On His Head”

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Cat Stevens Sings “The Boy With The Moon & Star On His Head”

Cat Stevens in 1976 (Photo:William McElligott)

Listen to this song by former ’60s British pop pin-up turned ’70s bearded folky hit-maker Cat Stevens.  It’s “The Boy With The Moon & Star On His Head” a spiritual parable positioned as a traditional English folk song. The tune is taken from 1972′s Catch Bull At Four album, his follow-up to the immense Teaser & the Firecat record. Because of the momentum created by that previous release, Catch Bull At Four was his best-selling record.

Cat Stevens had enjoyed some success previous even to his celebrated early ’70s albums as a pop star. He’d changed his name from Steven Georgiou to Cat Stevens in the ’60s, enjoying some success with respectably charting songs in the UK,  like “Matthew & Son”, “I’m Gonna Get Me A Gun”, and “I Love My Dog”.

He also would score some success as a songwriter of material for other people, including “The First Cut Is The Deepest”, a hit initially for P.P Arnold, and then for others down the decades (Sheryl Crow, Rod Stewart). Yet, it would be in the next decade where he’d forge his musical path, with a sort of baroque-flavoured folk style infused with a sense of the spiritual.

This tune is certainly one of those, starting off with a scene of  ’60s free-love, and eventually turning to a less carnal, and more mystically informed theme of spiritual wisdom, with a prescription for love and connectedness as a pay-off.

In some ways this wasn’t just a song, but it was Stevens’ story as an artist, too. But, how?

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Feb9

Jesca Hoop Sings “The Kingdom”

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Jesca Hoop Sings “The Kingdom”

Listen to this track from transplanted-to-Britain American singer-songwriter and experimental popist Jesca Hoop. It’s “The Kingdom”, the second track off of her 2009 full-length record Hunting My Dress.

Jesca Hoop had contacts with the music world even before she herself started her professional recording career,  being the daughter of folk-singing Mormons in Northern California, where she learned her craft for close harmony. Later on, she served five years as Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan’s nanny, of all things.

Subsequently after Waits championed her, she appeared as an opening act for artists as diverse as Matt Pond PA, Mark Knopfler, Eels, and The Polyphonic Spree. She’s sung back-up for Peter Gabriel. After having opened for Elbow, Hoop has moved to Manchester on the invitation of Elbow singer Guy Garvey.

She’s also worked on soundtracks, working up songs for the film Riding The Bus With My Sister, with soundtrack composer and drummer Stewart Copeland, who then appeared on her song, “Seed of Wonder“, which appears on her 2007 debut album Kismet.

But, Hoop has a singular voice of her own besides all of the artists with whom she’s had contact, with this song standing out for me as an example of her ability to balance weighty moods with light as air music. Read the rest of this entry →

Feb6

Klaatu Performs “Sub-Rosa Subway”

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Klaatu Performs “Sub-Rosa Subway”

Listen to this track by Canadian space rockers and Beatles reunion suspects Klaatu. It’s their 1977 hit single “Sub-Rosa Subway”, a song that bothered the charts less than the rumours surrounding it bothered the music press and rock fandom at the height of the “will-they-or-won’t-they” era of hoped for Beatles reunions of the mid-to-late ’70s.

And for Beatles fans, this tune was certainly a treat to the ears, making many a Beatles circa ’67 musical reference as it does. The song was a double-A side hit with another song of theirs, “Calling Occupants (Of Interplanetary Craft)”, which would later be covered by the Carpenters, of all people. Both songs appeared on the band’s 1976 LP 3:47 EST.

Yet, with this song it wasn’t just that the tune sounded Beatlesque. At the time, it was actually thought to be a surreptitious move on the part of the Fab Four themselves to reunite, with “clues” that were thrown around to make the “Paul Is Dead” rumours of a decade previous seem almost sensible.

But, Klaatu were a real band -Terry Draper, John Woloschuk, and Dee Long – albeit one that owed a debt to the Beatles on this song. Even they were surprised, and probably not just a little put out, to learn that a journalist had outed them as being a front for a real life Beatles reunion.

How on earth did this happen? Read the rest of this entry →

Feb2

Chris Whitley Sings “God Left Town”

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Chris Whitley Sings “God Left Town”

Chris WhitleyListen to this track by modern bluesman and national steel guitar-slinging songwriter Chris Whitley. It’s “God Left Town”, a deep cut on his 2004 Internet-and-gig only album, and his ninth, War Crime Blues. The song showcases Whitley’s skill as a guitarist who is able to  hold the threads of an arrangement, and of emotional currents together by the strength of six strings, and a foot stomp.

This is to say nothing of his voice, which here is like a voice of one crying in the wilderness. It’s like hearing the words spoken through a sandstorm, obscured by the noise of emotional turmoil as created by the roiling lines of the guitar. And then, the whole thing just stops.

It’s hard not to connect this song, and others on War Crime Blues (such as a cover of the Clash’s “The Call Up”)  with a time of unique absurdity, when wars in Iraq and Afghanistan raged with seemingly no end in sight, and for no definable purpose. By the time this record was created, George W. Bush had been inexplicably re-elected after initiating all of that. It was high time for a protest record.

Yet, really it seemed like a record or a song that crafted well-reasoned arguments as to why the war in Iraq was immoral, nonsensical, and waged clearly to protect the private interests of corporations was not really going to cut it anyway. No one was listening to reason.

Luckily, Chris Whitley’s record, and this song, isn’t about that at all. It’s about something more primal than that.

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Jan30

Teddy Thompson Sings “Take Care of Yourself”

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Teddy Thompson Sings “Take Care of Yourself”

Photo: Anthony Pepitone

Listen to this track by British folk dynasty progeny, and superlative singer-songwriter besides, Teddy Thompson. It’s “Take Care Of Yourself”, a gem of a tune from his 2011 album Bella.

The album traces the episodes in meeting someone, falling in love, and then being faced with the reality of having to say goodbye. The music here on this track can be described as a sort of country-folk torch song along the lines of a Chris Isaak, k.d lang, and Rufus Wainwright. Teddy Thompson and Rufus Wainwright are well acquainted as friends and artistic collaborators, too. The commonalities between the two are notable,with both artists forging their own paths, and being the offspring of folk-singing families albeit on either sides of the Atlantic.

Teddy was born in 1976 while his parents Richard & Linda Thompson had been living in a Sufi community outside of London. This was around the time when they were creating some of their most celebrated work as a duo in I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight and Pour Down Like Silver, among others.

As such, his pedigree as a musician and songwriter is well-established, and the melancholy found in his own work is come by honestly. Since he established himself as a musician, he’s played a part in the creation of his parents’ solo records, including as co-producer on his mother’s Fashionably Late album, and has been the opening act for father Richard in the 1990s. But, in 2000, he struck out on his own with his own recording career apart from his work with his parents.

And with this song, he brings maturity and subtlety to one of the more bittersweet chapters in the span of a love affair; the mutually agreed upon break-up. Thompson treats his subject matter seriously, and accentuates his writing with an emotionally infused vocal delivery, helped along by twangy guitar, and swelling strings, the latter inspired by the strings Buddy Holly used on his records, and arranged in this case by producer David Kahne. His soaring vocals towards the end is a real treat, evoking yet another style; a sort of Bobby Hatfield-like soul-pop.

What comes out of all of that is a song that sounds as though it could have been written in any era, perhaps because the ecstasies and sorrows of love are just as timeless.

For more information about Teddy Thompson, check out the Teddy Thompson official site.

Enjoy!

Jan26

Graham Parker Sings “Partner For Life”

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Graham Parker Sings “Partner For Life”

Listen to this track by former angry young man turned happily-married stalwart singer-songwriter Graham Parker. It’s “Partner For Life”, an ode to love, commitment, and the realities of adult relationships as featured on Parker’s 1995 album 12 Haunted Episodes.

By the 1990s, Parker had been prolific as a writer and performer, even if his mainstream success didn’t match that of his contemporaries to whom he is often compared; Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson, both of whom held Parker as an influence. He had become, and remained to be, a cult artist.

Parker had been through the wringer with various major label record companies as a result, suffering a lack of support and poor sales of his albums. Or was it the other way around, with the lack of support resulting in his cult status?

Either way, he’d established himself as an artist with a consistent body of work, despite the hardships and vicious cycles he’d experienced while tangling with the majors. He  certainly succeeded in consolidating a lasting core audience, doing so by being a steadfast songwriter, record maker, and tireless live performer.

By this record, he’d cut the shackles of major label skulduggery loose and gone indie on the Razor & Tie label. As such, there is a certain liberation that can be heard in a song like “Partner For Life”. And there is another kind of liberation to be found in this song, too.

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Jan23

Heaven 17 Play “Temptation”

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Heaven 17 Play “Temptation”

Listen to this track by Sheffieldian one-time Human League splinter group, and sonically ambitious hitmakers in their own right, Heaven 17. It’s their smash UK single “Temptation” as taken from their 1983 album The Luxury Gap.

One of the features here is guest vocalist Carol Kenyon, who sings in a Northern Soul influenced style, contrasting the synth-pop groove. The tune would also incorporate a full orchestra, creating even more textural contrast, and producing a high-charting single that year for the band, reaching number 2 in the UK pop charts.

The Luxury Gap was the group’s second record, after 1981′s Penthouse and Pavement. The band had been one of the most prominent proponents of Northern synth pop, although initially split off from the Human League, a project that was abandoned by keyboardists Ian Craig-Marsh and Martyn Ware. They’d left the band in the hands of vocalist Phil Oakey. That version of the Human League under Oakey’s leadership would become an international success with a new line-up.

But, Craig-Marsh and Ware had pop smarts of their own to draw from. Read the rest of this entry →