June 22, 2017
Miracler
ST
Location
Santa Fe
Last time we saw ST,
he's just delivered the 2012 one-two punch Vacunado and Inmunizado to great fanfare, having already changed the course of Miracling history with 2011's Two Minute Warning and Welcome Spring and his maiden voyage, 2010's Rocket Sled.
Today's mix is red meat to this crowd, having placed its muse on the Pop Miracle charts more than any other artist. What/who/how, you ask? Let's look in.
Liner Notes by ST
“Gemini” – An incomplete catalog of songs that David Bowie apparently liked. Forty-five minutes of backward echoes. Covers are always interesting to me. Ignore the hubris-versus-tribute tension. How did the later artist hear what eventually became their version in the original? How did they decide to change the time signature? How did they arrive at the severe edits they imposed? How much of this was just Nile Rodgers saying “I think this could be a fun bass workout”? It’s funny to think about Bowie slowing down enough to listen obsessively to some of these, enough to eventually say “Y’know, I think I’d like to record a version of this.” Wondering how that changed in a world of increasingly portable, accessible music. I found this difficult to sequence and I don’t know if it would have been easier or harder if “God Only Knows” had been available for inclusion. I hope you hear something in this that you enjoy.
1. Around and Around / Chuck Berry
2. Sorrow / Merseybeats
3. Knock on Wood / Eddie Floyd
4. Cactus / Pixies
5. Don’t Look Down / Iggy Pop
6. Criminal World / Metro
7. Working Class Hero / John Lennon
8. Kingdom Come / Tom Verlaine
9. Try Some Buy Some / George Harrison
10. If There is Something / Roxy Music
11. Wild is the Wind / Nina Simone
TOBY BARLOW, YOU'RE NEXT!
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9 comments:
I've also wondered the whats, whens and whys involved when artists choose songs to cover. Few covers grab me as much as the originals. Pretty difficult when you've got Chuck and Eddie to live up to (although check out Frontier Ruckus' version of Save Your Heart For Me). It takes some getting used to , but I've always dug Verlaine's voice. Try Some is just classic Harrison. Discovered Metro and Duncan Browne recently, but I've never heard this one - really like their arty, proggy sound - sophisticated stuff for the time. Great concept, Stephen (and David).
Fun stuff! There are bazillions of covers that are better than the original -- or different in interesting ways. Thanks for Metro's "Criminal World" -- completely great and neat stuff. I always assumed this was a small press NYC R&B group and not a birth of new wave art rock band. I want the whole album! Roxy's "If There Is Something" is one of the greatest epics of all time. I dig songs that include lines about growing potatoes for love. I heard New Values years before I even heard/heard of the Stooges and yet I still somehow dig Bowie's wispy version of the song from the Iggy Needs Some Royalties Very Badly album. Also love Bowie's reading of "Sorrow" -- weirdly, his crunchy, slomo "I Can't Explain" is also tops. Kingdom Come is about equal. Bowie wanted Verlaine to play on Scary Monsters but the guitarist was literally taking hours to tune up so he was sent home. The neato cover not on here is The Modern Lovers' "Pablo Picasso." He sent some deserving people royalties, did our David.
This has a very compelling flow, like Nick I think the Roxy track is the standout here, but I had overlooked Lennon's track until now - but there is no other word for it than startling.
A great mix of tracks, sequencing and back story.
Paul Rhodes
What a great idea for a mix.
As crazy as he was, Chuck Berry could flat write a song. I can see why this one caught Bowie’s ear. Such a great hook.
Sorrow is a great song. It’s so groovy and I’ve always loved the backing vocals and more importantly, the most interesting pronunciation of the word ‘hair’.
Eddy Floyd is one of the greatest performers, among many, to come out of Stax. This is another great song.
What else can be said about the Pixies. I will never forget that Tuesday in 1988 when we were opening the new release boxes at Tracks and somebody, probably Rick, put on Surfer Rosa. Everything changed after that. I had never heard anything like it. We must have played it in full ten times that day. Plus, everything that Albini has recorded sounds like magic to me.
This is a great Iggy cut. I’m not sure if I’ve ever actually heard this record in it’s entirely. I should change that.
Well, I have never heard of Metro. Even after looking them up just now, nothing. I’m kind of embarrassed. It’s not like I was that busy in the late 70s. Sure, I had tennis practice, a fair amount of time feathering my hair, and big bags of really crappy weed to smoke, but I should have found the time to listen to some Metro. Oh, if I could only go back.
Ok, I’ll give Lennon this one. It’s a great song. I do prefer Marianne Faithful’s version though. Her raw, almost pained delivery is captivating.
I love Tom Verlaine’s voice. He could be singing almost anything and I’d be all the way in.
I’m going to have to go two for two on Beatles on this one. The Harrison cut is solid. I think I’m going to call a friend to let him know that I’m not, in fact, entirely anti-Beatle. He’ll be shocked. Maybe I shouldn’t. I have a reputation to maintain so lets just keep this between us.
I loved Roxy Music, and not just for the Country Life cover. Really, I mean it. I really do like the music. This is a great song.
Nina. There will always only be one. Every song she played proved it.
Thanks for a great mix, Steven.
Great theme and fine execution. Previous commenters have said most of what I could, so I'll just leave it at how much I loved the Merseybeats track; sounds like a long-lost AM radio version off of Magical Mystery Tour.
Covers and twins? As the Pixies’ Cactus is opening up it sure does sound like T Rex’s Bang A Gong. Lennon’s Working Class Hero is a Dylan song about John’s own life. It’s pretty easy to imagine young Lennon’s teachers whacking him on the hand with a ruler. After all, “They hate you if you're clever,” right?
The country-fried Roxy Music If There Is Something is my fave out of the mix, Steven. I don’t listen to that debut album enough!
What a creative and interesting concept for a mix, and very well executed. My husband is a big Merseybeats fan. We were listening to their CD hits comp on a roadtrip recently and only then did I realize that Elvis Costello also covered them when he did "I Stand Accused." That song sounds so E.C.-ish to me that I was surprised it was a cover. Bowie had that same ability to take a cover song and really make it his own.
(P.S. Roxy Music sounds like The Band here to me!)
A curious thing to me is how a different artist — merely by what you know about them and their take on a song — can completely change the song's emotional landscape. I'm thinking here of Nina Simone singing "Wild is the Wind." I put it on my playlist for my daily walk to work, and after a few plays I couldn't listen to it anymore as I found it too depressing. The Bowie version doesn't depress me; I find his version detached and polished like a gemstone. The Simone version feels so full of pain and so uncomfortably raw that it quite literally takes the spring out of my step.
Love the Tom Verlaine, the Pixies, and the Roxy Music — and the idea behind the collection as a whole.
Thanks as always ST!
Agree with all about what a cool concept this mix is. I too love Verlaine's voice yet only have Marquee Moon in my collection. But hands down that Roxie track, If There is Something, knocked me out about a third of the way thru, always a sure sign a song will now become a favorite. I guess it's the mesmerizing riff, Ferry's warble, the tension in the tempo, but it all works fantastically. Thanks so much for turning me on to this gem.
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