Slumberland

Continuing to browse after watching that Otis Redding video, I found the whole darned show: Pt.1, Pt.2, Pt.3, Pt.4.

It’s all freaking great. Otis does “Satisfaction,” “Respect”, and more, and Eric Burdon does a killer version of “Hold On, I’m Coming”. And that’s not all.

Enjoy!

While randomly browsing YouTube I came across this video of a blistering-hot performance by Otis Redding on Ready, Steady, Go! in 1966.

If this doesn’t make you want to dance around you might possibly be a zombie.

Someone on Metafilter mentioned this a few days ago, with a comment something like “what is up with this video?” But until I got around to watching it, I could not have imagined how weird the video really is. Someone on YouTube put it best: “I’m not sure if I just watched a music video or a prom clip of a transvestite hooker with her klingon date. A great song has just been ruined. But I might watch this video 500 more times, just to be sure.”

I bring you: Hall and Oates, “She’s Gone”:

While browsing YouTube tonight I found this set of charming covers of songs by Michael Penn, Erasure, A-Ha, and others. The videos aren’t much to speak of, and the performances are unpolished, but the singer, ExUSAF, has a good voice and does a fine job with songs like Penn’s “Try” and “Long Way Down”. And he hits the high note in “Take On Me” much better than I do. If you are the type of 80’s music cover geek that I am, the little piano break in “Take On Me” will totally win you over.

Oh, what the heck. Here are a few of the songs I liked best, after the cut — enjoy!
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While I was going through photo albums looking for photos to upload to Flickr, I found a group of photos that I took on April 10, 1994, at the Seattle Center memorial vigil for Kurt Cobain. These are the photos.

I looked online for articles about that day, and surprisingly, found very little. Here’s something I wrote about it myself on Metafilter, a few years ago.

It’s hard to believe that 13 years have already gone by.

There are two kinds of road trip mix cds. One is the fast, loud, drive very fast sort of mix, the kind with tons of noise and energy. Then there are the ones you listen to when you’re driving along on a dark highway under a full moon, feeling a bit more thoughtful about things, even sort of melancholy.

I remember when I moved to Minnesota, and I was driving on a back highway through Montana, very late on a winter night (taking the shortcut to Belle Fourche so I could avoid most of Wyoming), and the moon was out, the clouds kept moving across the sky rapidly, a friend of mine was sleeping in the passenger seat, and my radio kept picking up ghosts of pop music broadcasts — most of which were playing George Michael’s “Father Figure” (which should date this trip pretty well for you, right there). I hated that song before, but the sound of it seemed to fit my mood. I was moving away from the only place I really knew, taking a gamble in moving to a new town with no job.

So, over the years since then, I’ve made a few mixes that seem to match that late night melancholy road trip mood. Here’s one. It’s just slightly too long for a CD so I guess I’ll be playing it from my iPod.

1. “Finally” — The Frames
2. “This Modern Love” — Bloc Party; I don’t remember buying this but it was with my iTunes purchases. (Was it one of the free tracks?) Anyway, it seemed to fit into the flow of this mix.
3. “Conversations” — The Posies
4. “Landed (Strings Version)” — Ben Folds; for the last year or so I have listened to this song over and over. It starts out like Elton John playing James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” but it’s so much better than that could be. And the strings version — it should be overkill, but it’s perfect.
5. “Chicago” — Sufjan Stevens
6. “Only Living Boy in New York” — David Mead; a cover, of course. It blends perfectly into the final note of the previous song, and starts a little piano trilogy.
7. “Known Diamond” — Ken Stringfellow
8. “Can’t Help Falling in Love (Again)” — eels; another cover, only two minutes long and a simple gem of a recording.
9. “Levi Stubbs’ Tears” — Billy Bragg; perhaps the best song in his career. It’s hard to decide really, but this one is genius. The last four songs in the mix are almost more than one can take, I suspect. There’s a lot of drama in those 15 minutes. Better tone it down with:
10. “…Baby One More Time” — Fountains of Wayne; another cover.
11. “Nothing Wrong With You” — Finn Brothers; there are a lot of musicians I loved when I was 15 that have disappeared from the music scene. Thank God the Finns haven’t. (I had good taste at 15, huh?)
12. “Begin” — Ben Lee
13. “Mixtape” — Butch Walker; OK, here we get into the songs that a current 15 year old would probably love and would discover from the soundtrack of a WB show or something. This and the following two songs really have that feel. Very “high school drama.” But we all have these high school drama moments.
14. “Brighter Than Sunshine” — Aqualung
15. “Bad Day” — Daniel Powter; yes, I know, I am ashamed.
16. “Forever in My Life” — Prince
17. “Gentle Hum” — Finn Brothers; segues perfectly into:
18. “Weight of this Word” — Sarah Bettens and FLORiS; segues perfectly into:
19. “Respected” — Howard Jones; as in, 2005-vintage HoJo. It’s filed under “Electronic” in iTunes but it’s basically the same old Howard Jones, with a good pop hook and synthsizers. Anyway, this song and the previous have one of the best segues ever; they blend together like one song.
20. “Walter Reed” — Michael Penn; dear God, I love Michael Penn. Why is he not a household name?
21. “American Tune” — Paul Simon
22. “Thunder Road (the live piano version from the 1987 box set)” — Bruce Springsteen; both of these last two seemed appropriate for the quieter parts of a road trip.

1. “Mad World” — Tears For Fears
2. “Day After Day” — Badfinger
3. “That’s Just What You Are” — Aimee Mann
4. “Let Love Rule” — Lenny Kravitz
5. “Girl U Want” — Devo
6. “I Can’t Get Behind That” — William Shatner Featuring Henry Rollins
7. “He’s Waitin’” — Sonics
8. “Pickin’ Flowers For” — Best Kissers In The World
9. “Robert Bradley’s Postcard” — David Mead
10. “Love My Way” — Jon Auer

No commentary today, just a quick Random Ten:

1. “Switchboard Susan” — Nick Lowe
2. “So Sad About Us” — Steve Brown; a Who cover from the Who’s Not Forgotten tribute album
3. “The Wait” — the Pretenders
4. “Try a Little Tenderness” — Otis Redding
5. “Barely Breathing” — Duncan Sheik
6. “Picking Up the Pieces” — Difford and Tilbrook
7. “A Little Knowledge” — Scritti Politti
8. “The Medication is Wearing Off” — eels
9. “Wouldn’t It Be Good” — Nik Kershaw
10. “The Harder They Come” — Joe Jackson (cover of the Jimmy Cliff song)

Well, I didn’t try to make an Irish-themed Random 10 this week, just the usual first 10 songs in iTunes’ Party Shuffle. So here goes…

1. “Fake” — The Frames (hey! an Irish band!)
2. “New Mistake” — Jellyfish
3. “Flavor of the Week” — American Hi-Fi, whom I saw in concert a few years ago, opening for…
4. “You’ll Never Be a Man” — Elvis Costello. Who is of Irish descent.
5. “Too Shy” — Kajagoogoo
6. “Chorus” — Erasure
7. “Hoy Hoy” — The Collins Kids (old rockabilly track)
8. “Limitless Expressions” — the Posies
9. “Touch Me I’m Sick” — Mudhoney
10. “Narcolepsy” — Ben Folds Five

Dang it, I just got over that nasty lower-respiratory virus, and now I’ve got another one. Or maybe the same one. I don’t know. It sucks, it’s not fair, and I’m going to pout for a while. And listen to a new Random Ten:

1. “Maureen” — Fountains of Wayne
2. “I Can’t Go For That” — ProGrammar; this is the Hall & Oates song, covered by a guy doing all a capella and human beat box stuff. It’s kind of fun.
3. “The Fourth Dimension” — the Ventures; this is a cover of the Frantics’ song “Werewolf” (well, I think the Frantics themselves might have been covering it as well — I’m not sure), without the horror-movie narration and with more “spacey” sounds.
4. “Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s My Home)” — Paul Young
5. “Say You’re Wrong” — Julian Lennon; I admit to an inexplicable soft spot for Jules.
6. “Common People” — William Shatner; one of my favorite singles of the last few years.
7. “The Imposter” — Elvis Costello
8. “Pale Shelter” — Tears for Fears
9. “Weather With You” — Crowded House; one of my least favorite CH songs — the chorus to me sounds more like an old beer commercial jingle than a great song. But it has its moments.
10. “Message to my Girl” — Split Enz

No theme this week, just completely random. I’ve been sick for the last week and a half so I haven’t really been up to much posting. But a random ten is pretty easy.

1. “So Long Baby Goodbye” — The Blasters
2. “Conversations” — The Posies
3. “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes” — Patrik Tanner. OK, this is not a covers theme list, but I have so many of the darn things that they will appear anyway. An Elvis Costello cover.
4. “Photograph” — Jason Falkner. Yes, a cover of the Def Leppard song!
5. “Wide Boy” — Nik Kershaw
6. “Honey Hush” — Big Joe Turner
7. “Dancing With Myself” — The Donnas. Another cover!
8. “This Is Pop” — XTC
9. “Karma Chameleon” — Culture Club. Actually, this is one of my least favorite Culture Club songs. I think I have it because of the mix cds I made for my high school reunion (which didn’t get played anyway).
10. “Finally” — The Frames

OK, I am listening to my Covers Smart Playlist in iTunes, so this is what you get for a Random Ten this week. Covers. Enjoy!

1. “Common People” — William Shatner (Pulp)
2. “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” — Daryl Hall and John Oates (Righteous Brothers)
3. “Hounds of Love” — Futureheads (Kate Bush)
4. “God Only Knows” — Elvis Costello and the Brodsky Quartet (Beach Boys)
5. “Smash It Up” — Posies (Damned)
6. “Hold Me Now” — Eijyu (Thompson Twins)
7. “…Baby One More Time” — Fountains of Wayne (Britney Spears)
8. “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” — Al Green (Bee Gees)
9. “What Is Life” — Shawn Mullins (George Harrison)
10. “Stop Your Sobbing” — Pretenders (Kinks)

I have a post on MetaFilter today about the Pacific Northwest party beverage “spodee” (fruit and alcohol), and it’s possible relation to the old R&B song “Drinkin’ Wine Spodee-O-Dee”. Basically, I always wondered if the name of the drink was related to the song, and did as much Google research on it as I could; I couldn’t find anything directly tying the two together, but it just seems very likely that the song inspired the name. (But it’s possible it was the other way around, I guess.) I found a lot of great songs while looking, though. (From Stick McGhee to Big Joe Turner, Big Jay McNeely, Wild Bill Moore, and lots of other pre-Elvis rock and rollers, mostly found via the Rock Before Elvis website.)

The funny thing is that I generally don’t drink alcohol (only on the rarest of occasions), and I don’t think I’ve ever had spodee. But it was an interesting topic to look into.

Here we go… another Random Ten, courtesy of iTunes’ Party Shuffle:

1. “Tracks of My Tears” — Mary Beth Maziarz. I don’t know anything about this artist, but I was looking for covers of this song and found this nice piano version.
2. “Burning Down the House” — Talking Heads.
3. “Teacher Teacher” — Rockpile. It wasn’t until recently that I knew that this too is a cover song. I can’t resist singing along with the harmony part during the chorus.
4. “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace Love and Understanding” — Speaking of Nick Lowe (in Rockpile)… he wrote this one.
5. “I Can Feel Your Heartbeat” — Partridge Family. Um, yes. I ‘fess up to owning this. I had 3 or 4 Partridge albums as a kid, and two David Cassidy solo albums, for that matter.
6. “Burn and Shine” — the Posies.
7. “You Drew” — Ken Stringfellow.
8. “Into the Sunset” — Neil Finn.
9. “Valotte” — Julian Lennon.
10. “p.s. you rock my world” — eels. Yes, this also ended the mix tape I posted a couple of weeks ago. Coincidence.

OK, here’s another Random Ten:

1. “Beyond Belief” — Jon Auer, covering one of my favorite Elvis Costello songs.
2. “Casimir Pulaski Day” — Sufjan Stevens
3. “The Ghost that Feeds” — Ray Parker, Jr./nine inch nails — mashup by nathanchase.com. This is a mashup of “Ghostbusters” with “The Hand that Feeds”, and it’s hilarious. The two songs do fit perfectly together. Genius.
4. “Something About You” — Level 42. I don’t know why I love this song in all it’s 80s glory, but I do.
5. “So Sad About Us” — Steve Brown. This is from the Who’s Not Forgotten tribute album. A fairly straightforward cover, until the middle, when with a resounding “cello cello cello”, it suddenly kicks into an excerpt from the Who’s mini-opera, “A Quick One,” then back to “So Sad…”, ending with the bass riff from “Happy Jack.”
6. “All of My Heart” — ABC. This is actually a perfect segue from the previous song. We still hear “Look of Love” all the time, and sometimes “Poison Arrow”, but this song never gets played on 80s radio stations. But it’s great, if you like that lush, dramatic ABC thing.
7. “Coming Right Along” — the Posies.
8. “Walk — Don’t Run” — the Ventures. Well, now, that is an odd juxtaposition. The previous song: dark and slow. This one: not so much.
9. “If It’s Love” — Squeeze. Getting even more cheerful! This song is one of the greatest power-pop songs Squeeze ever recorded. The record company let it rot, as record companies do. It’s great anyway. You can’t help but bounce your head side to side like Ringo when you hear it. (If this wasn’t Random Ten, though, I would have put Glenn Tilbrook’s solo track “One For the Road” before this song, as the perfect follow-up to “Walk — Don’t Run”.)
10. “Look Sharp!” — Joe Jackson.