If you want more cool Bowie covers...well, we've got you covered...

Round two in our round-up of cool Bowie covers, and there's quite a number of 'em. Now, I wouldn't have bet that one of them would come from Dead Or Alive, who I only know as a slightly ridiculous-looking one hit-wonder with "You Spin Me 'Round (Lie A Record)". Then again, I wouldn't have figured that Culture Club would bring one of the highlights of Volume One in this We've Got You Covered series. The other unexpected and 80s-related joker in the pack is Midge Ure's cover of "Lady Stardust". 

The love of Brian Molko for Bowie (and Bowie's embracing of the band) are well-documented, his acoustic cover of "Five Years", done for French television, is still a really nice tribute. As for a less obvious fan, I wouldn't have figured Seal for a Bowie-fan, but his lovely unplugged take on "Quicksand", one of the lesser known Bowie classics, is a personal highlight of this set. Speaking of underrated songs that rarely get covered: Native American rock'n'rolller Stevie Salas covers Diamond Dogs-era obscurity "Dodo". "Little Wonder", from Bowie's little-loved Earthling drum'n'bass album is also a little on the obscure side, Run Toto Run's cover is a lovely, decidedly less noisy reading of the tune. "In The Heat Of The Morning" is one of Bowie's realatively unknown numbers from the pre-stardom Decca era and gets a fabulous reading from The Last Shadow Puppets. Another lost gem from that same era is "The Gospel According To Tony Day", covered exquisitely here by Edwyn Collins. 

The other possibility is of course to take a known number, but give it an unusual new coat of paint. That happens when bluegrass combo Cornbread Red cover "Under Pressure", while also unwittingly launching me down the Pickin' On...rabbithole. Unusual is also the word for the cover of "Ziggy Stardust", not so much because it's an acoustic unplugged version, but because it's done by the decidedly un-acoustic Def Leppard in the middle of a rowdy pub audience! And also unusual: Choir!Choir!Choir! and David Byrne, helped out by a ton of bystanders, making a huge sing-alone cover of "Heroes"! Covers from, among others, Fury In The Slaughterhouse and Hugh Coltman, are close to the originals and more workman-like, but still very fine additions to the series, bringing in some as-of-yet not covered songs to this second volume. 

And that's it. Eighteen high quality covers covering the spectrum of Bowie's music. Nothing more, nothing less. Yup, we've got you well covered again, David.  

Edit: I mislabeled an artist on the comp. It's Cornbread Red, not Iron Horse who cover "Under Pressure". I've changed the tagging in the new donloadable version. 

It's A Green Day...on Blue, Blue Grass...

The first compilation of the secret stash of goodies that was, unexpectedly, the Pickin On... series that I stumbled on by accident, was a pretty safe bet. It was, as a reader pointed out, a lovely compilation, but Neil Young and bluegrass were inherently very compatible, seeing how uncle Neil is in acoustic, country-ish mode half of the time, anyway and Tim Smith & Friends wisely picked from albums that emphasized that style, even though I would love to get "Trans" as a bluegrass album, but that's another story entirely. But yeah, Neil Young covered in bluegrass was a relatively safe pick, whereas this - our One Buck album of the day - is...a little less so. 

I don''t know how many of you are Green Day fans. Me, I'm not some crazy superfan but like most of their stuff. Billie Joe is truly underrated as a songwriter (but I'll get to that a little later on) and Tré Cool is one of my favorite drummers. Green Day's best songs are melodic, catchy, and kick some serious ass. They are also pretty much perfect for a bluegrass treatment: they are quick, they have hooks, and they are done in a straightforwad style (i.e. the famous four chords you need). Bluegrass adaptations do not necessarily work on, say, elaborate prog rock compositions, but punk rock? *Chef's kiss*

These versions really show what a great pop songwriter Billie Joe Armstrong is and always was. Sometimes you had the feeling he just had to squeeze some bad words in there to uphold appearances, because at heart he is a pop writer, whose pop just happens to be harder and quicker than a lot of other people's. Now this would be all fine and dandy, but still wouldn't amount to much if the Pickin On... folks had turned these songs into the 'Bluegrass muzak' a reader feared. 

Thankfully, by the time they got around to taking care of Green Day, the powers that be pickin' had turned to full-fledged modern bluegrass outfits and given them reign to arrange and play these songs like they felt. It also helped that the three bands responsible for the Green Day covers here are three of the best in the Pickin On... stable. They all bring something slightly different to the table. Cornbread Red, Honeywagon and The Sidekicks are real bands instead of studio players drafted together, and you can feel that in these songs and arrangements.

It will of course never not be funny to hear a bluegrass player drawl "Well, maybe I'm a faggot American, I ain't part of the red neck agenda". Especially considering that Green Day's (in)famous 'protest album' American Idiot, which is richly presented here, wasn't so much a reaction to George Bush the younger -era politics, though that shoe fit supremely well, but a reaction from Billie Joe Armstrong to seeing band and fans at a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. 

This collection really reminds you how great these tunes are. So, whether you like Green Day, you like Bluegrass, or you just like some damn good pickin', A Green Day On Blue Grass is for you... 

Ruckus From The Movies: Come And Dance With The Dead, Baby!

Time to revive another series gone dormant. In this case, the long break was almost normal, as I had planned out the first three volumes, but nothing beyond that. So, with this fourth volume, we go in a bit of a different direction. After having featured three veteran hard rock acts, Dance With The Dead are a different proposition. About three years ago or so I had a little summer fling with the music subgenre they call synthwave. And I stumbled onto Tony Kim and Justin Pointer a.k.a. Dance With The Dead. These two childhood friends love two thing: 80s music and horror movies. From these two loves was born Dance With The Dead, whose original songs are mainly horror-themes pastiches of mid-80s synth and AOR rock, with a dash of heavy metal, including big synth riffs (usually by Pointer) and even bigger guitar riffs (usually by Kim). Their proper compositions are fn, if sometimes a little redundant, but they would occasionally remix known rock songs and film themes. Remixing is almost an understantement, as they would add tons of additional instrumentation.  

For this volume of Ruckus At The Movies, the focus of the compilation has changed a tiny bit, from songs that were featured in movies to (note the subtle title change) songs that come from movie soundtracks or were used in movies . John Carpenter's theme from "Assault On Precinct 13" and Carles Bernstein's theme from "a Nightmare On Elm Street" are total classics and so close to what the synthwave sound wants to capture (especially Carpenter's synth scores, obviously), that Dance With The Dead's re-imaginings don't have to go very far. And yet they do, as Kim adds some monster guitar solos that obviously aren't in the originals. 

Maybe these weirdos loving another weirdo explains their cover of Lindsey Buckingham's "Holiday Road", that was written for National Lampoon's Holiday. Then we have a cover of Luniz' hip hop classic "I Got 5 On It", that was used so effectively to spooky effect in Jordan Peele's Us. Now, while Us wasn't perfect - and neither were Get Out or Nope - it sure was a big, bold swing and in today's almost entirely I.P.-driven climate in Hollywood that is an achievement by itself. "Paint It Black" has of course been used in more than half a dozen movies, scoring the end credits of Full Metal Jacket and The Devil's Advocate and most recently featured in The Rock's flop comic book adaptation Black Adam. And finally, these two synthwave pranksters end proceedings with their take on the Theme from Gremlins. 

So, in order to appreciate today's modest One Buck Record - more of an Ep than a full-length album - you would need to have an appreciation for big chunky'n'cheesy 80s production. If you do, I guarantee a good time with some Ruckus At From The Movies...

Setting sails on the long river of Gordon Lightfoot's career...

The author of one of those (in)famous 1000 Records You Need To Listen To Before You Die/Become Deaf/Become Incontinent was asked why in his book  he didn't include a single album by Gordon Lightfoot. His answer was sad, but almost understandable. He said that while Lightfoot made great music, there wasn't a single album that would define him as a artist. Which is totally true. Lightfoot made many very good albums, no bad and only a few mediocre ones. But he never had that one classic album that would catapult him into these 'Best Of' or 'Must Listen'-lists. It's terribly unfair. Some artists or bands can have a career of uninspired mediocrity and still make appearances on these lists if they managed an album that became a modern classic for one reason or another, while Lightfoot toiling away at his craft for more than sicty years isn't repaid in kindness. Lightfoot was kind of always there, and everyone can attest to the beauty of his music, but he hasn't really left his footprint (pun fully intended, thank you very much) on music history. Which is why, nstead of music journalists, we let one of the best ever to do the singer-songwriter thing be the judge, jury and executioner:

If you can't trust Dylan, who can you trust, AmIrite? 

Anyway, so this new Lightfoot project. What happened while I was preparing Shanties is, what usually happens when I launch myself into a new project: I go on a music binge and listen to eveything I have from the artist in question. When I worked on Warren Zevon in January, I listened to almost his entire oeuvre, same for Queen a month later. So working on that Lightfoot comp made me relisten, slowly but surely, to all twenty studio albums, plus Sunday Concert and the two Gord's Gold comps. That is a lot of Lightfoot to listen to. First observation: Yes, the standards are really high, because there is nary a bad song among these hundreds of songs, though that ratio is getting worse in career decades three, four and five. But we'll cross that bridge when we get there. The idea was to make a career retrospective that covers Lightfoot's career from his debut album Lightfoot! in early 1966 all the way to his last album, Solo in 2020. This retrospective will be three CD-length albums chock full of great music,which I will dole out in single installments. If you are anything like me, in between your record collections and the music you download, you probably have way more music than you get to listen to in short order, so this will come slowly and individually to give you time to listen, but thse albums will eventually make up a nice box set of sorts when complete. For the first two write-ups I will run quickly through the albums the songs come from and occasionally why I picked some of them instead of others. 

Today's first installment of A Life In Song is subtitled Long River and covers the period from 1966 to 1971. I didn't put any of Lightfoot' juvenilia, like the horrid MOR country stuff he cut in 1962, on here, because this really is supposed to bring the best of the best, not cover every corner of his long career. So we'll start with four tracks off Lightfoot!, two showing Lightfoot at his purest, with just him and his acoustic guitar on "Long River" and "Sixteen Miles (To Seven Lakes)". Early and often covered classics "Early Morning Rain" and "Steel Rail Blues" complete the line-up before  giving way to the "Ballad Of Yarmouth Castle" which I have discussed in great length on Shanties. Let me just add here that, on second thought, it being left off his studio albums of the time was probably more a question of bad timing rather than some sort of conspiracy. He debuted the title in January 1966, right after the release of his debut album, but then it was another 15 months before the follow-up, so by that time the topical "ballad" was a bit passé. Next is a song that is a bit of departure for Lightfoot, the very jngle jangle-y "Spin Spin" that dutifully became a hit in Canada and nowhere else and for some reason will not get a decent release from United Artists. This is a version of the song that he recut in Nashville, possibly for a U.S. release that never happened, but it's more driving and, uh, jingle jangle-y, so it gets the nod over the original single version. 

The Way I Feel was a decent follow-up to Lightfoot's debut, here presented by "If You Got It", where Lightfoot sounds so youthful and happy, that I simply had to include it, and "Go-Go Round", which has one of the album's most memorable melodies. And then there's "Canadian Railroad Trilogy", a total classic, and probably in the top ten of Lightfoot songs. Epic storytelling, in every sense of the word. The following year's Did She Mention My Name? has the great title song (with two lines that always make me smile - "Is the landlord still a loser? Do his signs still hang in the hall?"), the vaguely protest song adjacent "Boss Man" with some interesting backing vocals and the two magnificent ballads "Wherefore And Why" and "The Mountains And Maryann", that with their orchestrations would point to Lightfoot's future. Follow-up Back Here On Earth from later in the year has classic ballads "Bitter Green" and "The Circle Is Small" (a decade later pointlessly remade by Lightfoot) and, as a more personal favorite, "Long Way Back Home", one of Lightfoot's numerous wanderlust numbers. 

Sunday Concert was a contractual obligation album, the mandatory live album to get out of his contract with United Artists, but at least Lightfoot loaded it with a number of unreleased songs, including "Ballad Of Yarmouth Castle" and "Apology, the latter of which is feautured here. He signed with Reprise, hoping that they could break him through in the U.S. His debut for Reprise, starting his collaboration with producer Lenny Waronker, was indeed the commercial breakthrough Lightfoot had hoped for, though it took a bit of time. Originally entitled Sit Down Young Stranger, it really took off when "If You Could Read My Mind" stormed the charts in early 1971, more than eight months after the album was released. It was thus dutifully retitled If You Could Read My Mind. If you had to pick an album that comes as close as possible to representing him, it probably would be this one for the early folkie years. Sure, there's more orchestration than on most UA albums, but this is sort of the ideal album of Lightfoot the romantic bard. It was also the first Lightfoot album I ever bought and I love it dearly, resulting in it being represented by a whooping five songs. Even then I had to leave a song like "Cobwebs & Dust" on the outs. Tough choices, everywhere. 

This collection ends with three tracks from 1971's Summer Side Of Life. The title song is so jaunty and well, sunny, that you can easily overhear the lyrics about the young man, seemingly a Vietnam war vet, crying all day long. Like in the equally featured "Sit Down Young Stranger", Lightfoot acknowledges that war ithout taking specific political sides, other than a general 'war isn't great'-attitude. As I stated in my first write-up for Shanties, he felt uncomfortable as a decideldly political writer or protest singer, so contemporary concerns mostly bubble up as subtext. Also featured are the lovely "10 Degrees & Getting Colder", another song about being on the roaad, and his ode to Canadian unity, "Nous Vivons Ensemble", featured here in slightly edited form. 

And that's it, that's Gordon Lightfoot's Life in Song, Vol. 1, with two more volumes coming up in the next weeks to complete this career-spanning box set courtesy of your friendly neighbourhood blogger OBG. So, get on that long river and let yourself be carried by some wonderful melodies and performances of Mr. Gordon Meredith Lightfoot. 

Deja Vu on Starboard, Sir, Deja Vu On Starboard...

'Huh?' you might be thinking, 'is good ol' OBG getting senile early'? Did he forget that he just posted this very Gordon Lightfoot comp a few weeks ago? No, no, he didn't. Call it Shanties 2.0. Call it fixin'. Call it whatever you want, but the fact is that Shanties was a good idea, but the execution could have been better. Now I could just sneak back and post the new version of Shanties in the old write-up, but no one in particular would see, notice or care. Given the absence of any coments activity in the last weeks, it's already hard to see whether any of you fine folks see,notice, or care, so I wasn't just gonna rework that and leave it in the dust pile of posts come and gone. But don't worry, after the re-worked Shanties, we'll get to some more Gordon Lightfoot. As a matter of fact, the next months we'll all be light on our feet around here...

So, what caused me giving Shanties another look? Well, listening back to Gordon Lightfoot's entire discography, for one thing, for that big Lightfoot project coming your way very soon. Listening back to albums I hadn't listened to in about twenty years revealed that I had simply forgotten two songs that were perfect for the concept. "Marie Christine", with "Ballad Of The Yarmouth Castle" M.I.A. for three years, is thus the very first of Gordon's boat songs. But it is somewhat hidden in the middle of Back Here On Earth, an album I don't much listen to, so I completely forgot about it. As for the other forgotten shanty, "Triangle", well, I first heard that one as one of the really wet, misbegotten re-recordings Lightfoot did on Gord's Gold Vol. 2. 

While the re-recordings of his United artists material on Gord's Gold made sense commercially (instead of licensing tracks, Warner Brothers preferred to just recut them if necessary), they also made sense artistically: Lightfoot would rework the songs in his then current folk-pop style including orchestrations and steel guitar, hallmarks of his mid-70s style. But the re-recordings on Gord's Gold Vol. 2 made no sense and served no purpose, and to take MOR-leaning material and making it even mushier by having everything sound more artificial and flat was a terrible idea. So I had "Triangle" written off as a failure, and thus didn't listen back to it in preparing Shanties. When I did relisten to Lightfoot's collected works, I was surprised how good 1982's Shadows, of which "Triangle" comes, actually is. This was, for me, the first album that really dipped into the MOR-sound that would define his 80s albums, but it's sharper and better than I remembered it, and certainly better than the Gord's Gold Vol. 2 remakes make it sound.  

And finally, I threw off a track because "Sea Of Tranquillity", despite its name, is mainly about critters living in the woods, something Lightfoot himself pointed out in his song comments for Songbook. Switch critters for sea creatures: I finally decided to re-install "Ode To Big Blue", which was originally on the short list, into the line-up. Again, relistening made me realize that the song was better than I remembered it, and is deserving of a spot on Shanties. 

So here's the improved Shanties, now having a more fitting ten tracks for 44 minutes of music, all ready to leave port and take you out into the oceans, once more. If you liked the first version of Shanties, then you'll obviously like this, bigger, better and bolder than before. So, heave away, boys, heave away...

...and be back in a day or two, for the start of OBG's big Lightfoot project around here...

Caroline Now! Or, A Better Bye Bye To Bri...

When I reposted my two Beach Boy alt albums last week to commemorate Brian Wilson's passing, it wasn't a particularly great solution, mainly because those two albums - great as they are, and they are plenty great - didn't feature Brian a lot. But, as said in that write-up, I browsed through the virtual Brian Wilson and Beach Boys archives on my computer and didn't find anything that was in 'ready to post' shape. Call it a sign of the times. Because what I didn't do was browse my physical music collection for something fitting to post, otherwise I would have happened upon Caroline Now! The Songs of Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys right away. Now, the fact that I didn't think of that album right away, tells you that it isn't in heavy rotation, and truth be told, I had a bit forgotten about it. But if the goal is to clebrate Wilson and his songwriting, it is a particularly fitting choice and listening back to it is also better than I remember. 

Caroline Now! is the antithesis to the 'stars go and cut a classic, well-known number by an artist' modus of a lot of tribute albums that results often in well-meaning karaoke.. And I say that as someone who likes well-done well-meaning karaoke from time to time. The concept of Caroline Now! was to focus not on the usual big songs, but rather the more unknown songs of Brian Wilson, done by some very modestly known musicians. The biggest name on here is probably Alex Chilton, who has been One Buck Record-ed before, or depending on your preferences St. Etienne or The High Llamas, all affirmed and obvious Beach Boy fans. Anothe really obvious fan of the Boys' music if obviously Teenage Fanclub's Norman Blake, who contributes a lovely reading of "Only With You". This project actually grew out of sessions that involved Blake and Chilton in Scotland under the direction of musical directors David Scott (of The Pearlfishers) and Duglas T. Stewart (of BMX Bandits),  and then grew to include indie artists from around the world contributing a song to the planned compilation, until it grew to 24 tracks. It then came out on a tiny German record label.  

So, while I played with the idea of tightening the album up a bit, I finally didn't because different folks might find songs I'm not too fond of to their liking, and since this is out of print for about 24 years I figure those who want to hear it, should hear it in its entirety. I did, however, reseuence the whole album, because that was one of my peeves with it. It had about five of my least-liked songs on this thing in the first ten tracks, so for me it never built much momentum. There's a reason why I had pretty much forgotten about this album. So, my resequencing hopefully help with that, it definitely doesn't hurt.

Personal highlights include the radio Sweethearts' country-rock take on "Honkin' Down The Highway", Spanish trio Souvenir's 60's girl group-ish French-language take on "Girl I Can Tell" (as "Ne Dis Pas"), The Pearlfishers' "Go Away Boy" and Kle's "fabulous "Rainbow Eyes", which was part of Wilson's unreleasd Sweet Insanity album. If you like 80s and 9s cult bands Belle And Sebastian, The Vaselines, The Apstels, or Orange Juice - you'll find key members doing tracks here. The producers even recruited some contemporaries: 60's pop band The Free Design reunited after thirty years for this project and their lovely take on "Endless Harmony" (which for me personally blows the original out of the water), Alex Chilton is here - as mentioned - and the album ends with L.A. gadfly/producer/manager/svengali/charlatan/hipster Kim Fowley and his take on "Almost Summer". 

So, this is a much better and more fitting to sweet, crazy ol'  Brian Wilson, the gentle giant of songwriters. Just listen...and remember...it's almost summer...and an endless harmony...

Spend a wam spring evening on the backporch...with Sierra And Chase

It's springtime...almost summer. actually here today you'd say it's the dog days of August with a frankly too damn hot 35+ degrees. If we were futher south, we ould hear the crickets sing. Or, you know, we ca bring the crickets to you, together with some sweet, failiar melodies in some sweet vocal harmony. Springtime could also men hanging out on the front  or back porch, having someone pull out an acoustic guitar and just jam on some ol' songs you like. And if the person who picks up the guitar is an Eagleson, all the better. The imagined debut album of Sierra Eagleson did surprisingly strong numbers in January - and deservedly so - and the eagle-sonned eagle-eyed among you might have seen the name Chase Eagleson already in my re-imagined Kurt Cobain musical extravaganza, when I needed an Elvis impersonator (don't ask...or read about it in the write-up) and Chase's fantastic version of "Can't Help Falling In Love" fit like a glove. Yes, in the Eagleson family, talent runs deep as both siblings have their own career doing moody acoustic cover verions of popular songs, both old and new. Chase is also a bit of a handsome devil, so that's almost unfair.

 Anyway, the answer to the old question of 'What's better than an Eagleson?' is of course 'Two Eaglesons', especially if they are singing in harmony together. Beautiful stuff, as you will hear on the album of the day. The two have duetted dozens of time, but for this album I only chose songs that I really liked - covering "Hey Ya!" as a slow, downbeat, acoustic number inches a bit too close to novelty for my taste - and I also included one solo number each, Chase covering Radiohead's "Falke Plastic Trees" and Sierra Peter Gabriel's classic "Solsbury Hill" (also recorded with some birds and other beasts contributing...). Chase is indeed a bit of a Radiohead-head, also covering "High and Dry" with Sierra. On that song, as on others, Chase sings on top and Sierra takes the low harmony, to often stunning effect. 

Chase and Sierra are alternating lead vocals here in a deliberate sequencing decision. Their cover of "Landslide" has some beautiful Banjo picking, It's part of the opening trio of classic 70s hits that the Eaglesons have probably heard in the music collection of their parents, the others are Gary Wriht's "Dream Weaver" and James Taylor's "Carolina In My Mind", which opens the album. Not with an acoustic strum, but some bird chirping, as they recorded that one in a nature park of some sort, so you have the natural choir of bird voices in the background of the song. And then, to show that they (and me) are not only classic rock-retro-minded, I programmed Gorillaz' "On Memory Hill" and the aforementioned "Fake Plastic Trees" afterwards. Later a cover of indie-folkster Gregory Alan Isakov also shows up, flanked by some other 70s gold like "Your Song". And the album ends on a familiar note - at least if you have listened to Brush Fire - as Sierra goes back to her moody cover of Springsteen's "Dancing In The Dark", here as a duet medley with Chase singing "I'm On Fire". 

If you were mean-spirited - which I'm sure most of my readers aren't - you could call this high quality karaoke. But I think that would do these covers a grave injustice. Chase and Sierra find notes and nuances in these songs that maybe wasn't there in the first place. When even an old, mildly hoary warhorse like "Your Song" cn be turned into a winner, we're onto something here. So, sit down on the back porch with Chae and Sierra and their guitars, let the bird and beasts around you add their ten cents and and spend a lovely evening listening to these siblings picking and harmonising...