My first post to The You Tubes

Last week, I had a song stuck in my head that I hadn't heard in years, Ghost Riders In The Sky. While I concede it's a little corny and old fashioned, I like it a lot. I'm not sure what brought it to mind, but I think it might be that it's similar in rhythm to an old folk song named Buffalo Skinners, which I have on my iTunes list sung by Raphael Boguslav, a folk musician in the 1950s and 1960s who went into calligraphy as a profession. You can see his calligraphy work on The You Tubes through this link.


Thinking about Ghost Riders In The Sky running through my head, it only made sense I get a version on my computer. I mean, what's 99 cents? And 99 cents on a credit card bill seems even smaller. There are about a jillion versions, the most famous by the baritone singer Vaughn Monroe. The song is made to be dramatic and bombastic, and after Monroe made a big hit of it, every version thereafter seemed to be about virtuosity or big production values.

But then I listened to about thirty seconds of a version by Burl Ives. He was the first to record the song in February 1949 and his version is very simple, just Burl singing in his haunting tenor voice and strumming a guitar. much sparser than Monroe's big hit recorded a month later or the famous jangly guitar version by Duane Eddy decades after. I decided to plunk my money down to get the Burl Ives version.

I went to The You Tubes to see what was there. There were lots of versions, naturally, including one by Burl Ives. But it was a later recording that made a big production number of it, like almost all recordings after Monroe set the standard. I decided I would put up the Burl Ives original.


I made a "video" with iMovie. It's just a title card and pictures of Burl alternating with illustrations of the story. I thought it would be better than looking at a blank screen.

The process takes a while, but now that I know how to do it, I'll be adding more videos to my channel. For the most part, I'll stick to putting up songs of my own to avoid any copyright hassles, but I'm also thinking of putting up some of the really rare stuff I have on my ITunes collection, most especially the songs of Raphael Boguslav from his album from the 1950s Songs From A Village Garrett.

Let me know what you think, either with comments here or in the comment section of the video.

The day came, to my surprise.

When my mom died last year, I posted a few songs for her and one for my dear departed friend Mina Millett, who died years earlier much too young. The song for Mina was Put Your Records On by Corinne Bailey Rae. Mina never heard this song, since it was recorded after she was gone, but Ms. Rae looked so much like a young Mina and the song reminded me so much of good times with Mina on picnics and the like, the bright lively tune always made me cry to the point of sobbing uncontrollably.

Today, I listened again, singing along as I always do.

Today, I was able to sing the song all the way through.



So, Matty Boy, you didn't cry at all?

Read carefully, Hypothetical my friend. I didn't say that.

LL Cool J keeps it real.

Sarah Palin will be hosting a show about inspiring American stories on Fox News, and in the promo it shows she will profile ordinary Americans as well as famous people like Toby Keith, Jack Welch and LL Cool J.

Except nobody told LL Cool J.

The rapper whose name means Ladies Love Cool James put a message out on Twitter that he gave Fox an interview two years ago, that he had no idea it would be on this show he never heard of, and he considered the whole thing pretty desperate. Fox has reconsidered and pulled his segment from the show.

I am so glad he did this, because I would never again have been able to listen to my favorite Cool J beats. Out of respect for the man keeping it real, I give you his 1989 hit Goin' Back To Cali, pulled fresh off The You Tubes. It's definitely old school, as in hip replacement old, but still I love it.

Cool J and Sarah Palin? Excuse me, I don't think so.

Do rock stars die younger than the rest of us?

Indulging my morbid curiosity again, I decided to find a list of 100 rock and rollers to see if they tend to die younger than the general population, much in the same way I tested the theory about the premature death rates of baseball players and football players last weekend.

Again, I decided to find a list of 100 people, this time born in 1944 or 1945 and check how many were still alive. I started the list by going through all the bands in the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame, and when that list did not produce enough people born in those two years, I looked at the bands who produced hits in 1967, figuring a lot of those people would be the right age that year.

To choose 1944 and 1945 means the Beatles and the Stones were slightly too old, but not the Beach Boys, the Kinks, the Who, the Supremes and a lot of other bands who first hit big in the mid 1960s. For example, all three of the most famous guitarists to play with the Yardbirds, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page are all born in those two years. The biggest surprise to me was that Debbie Harry of Blondie was on the list. She's a few years older than Cher. The next biggest was Bob Seger, whose success comes about ten years later than that of his contemporaries. All these people are still alive.

You might remember that the death rates for the samples of 100 athletes in the 64 to 66 year age range in 2010 were lower than the expected number of 16, with the number of baseball players who didn't survive at 13 and football players at 9. As you might expect, musicians did slightly worse that the general public at 18 of 100. Given the small sample size of 100, this difference is not considered statistically significant.

The name all music fans would recognize on the list of musicians that didn't survive is Bob Marley. Also among the famous fallen from that time period are the Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson, the Who's John Entwistle, Noel Redding of the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Pigpen McKernan of the Grateful Dead. Among the living from that time period are Stephen Stills, Rod Stewart, Roger Daltrey, Pete Townsend, Diana Ross, Gladys Knight and Van Morrison.

While I mistrust "common sense", these small samples do agree with what we should expect. Athletes on average take better care of themselves, and as such they tend to survive better than the general public. Musicians tend to party harder than the average, and they do not survive as well.

Alex Chilton, 1950-2010

Alex Chilton, who got his big break in music as the lead singer with The Box Tops at the age of sixteen and later went on to form the very influential power pop band Big Star, has died at the age of 59. The latest incarnation of Big Star was slated to play at the SXSW festival in Austin this weekend. Here are three songs he wrote for Big Star, Thirteen, In The Street and September Gurls.

Won't you tell your dad get off my back?
Tell him what we said 'bout Paint It Black.



I wish we had
A joint so bad.



December boys got it bad.

Best wishes to his friends and family, from a fan.

Wonders of Science news!

Once again, people interested in obscure vinyl from the 1980's have found out about The Wonders Of Science through that modern wonder of science The InterTubes, and someone has contacted me about my old band and the records we pressed. Sadly, the Padre and I don't have any extra copies of the the first record we made together, the EP entitled The Record Of The Same Name, but I still have copies of our single The Big Picture with B-side My Only Desire.

The person inquiring this time is a nice young fellow named Josh Cheon, a native of New Jersey now living in San Francisco. He wants to make a compilation album (on vinyl, naturally) and I gave him a copy of the single. It would be easier for him if we had the master tapes, but I lost mine many moves ago. After all, we only recorded this stuff 27 years ago!

In any case, if Josh decides to include our stuff on his compilation, he might go with the B-side My Only Desire for brevity's sake. LPs sound better if each side is held to less than about 22 minutes.

I will keep you informed of any progress.

One degree (and 25 years) of separation

As I have mentioned before, back in the 1980s Padre Mickey and I formed a band called The Wonders Of Science. It was just the two of us who recorded our first EP The Record Of The Same Name, but when we decided to go on stage we added some members so the music wouldn't just be the two of us and a drum machine. From left to right in the picture, we have the Good Padre, yours truly, the crooning Travis Hunt and Lexi, our drummer. We recorded two records on our own dime, made a music video, but we were a local band playing mostly in the South Bay Area from San Jose to Palo Alto with a few gigs in San Francisco.

When I left the combo in 1985, the rest of the guys recruited a lead guitarist, Steve Swayzee, and made a major change in musical direction. Instead of a synthesizer band, they were now a guitar combo and changed the name to A Cruel Hoax. They also put some of their songs on vinyl, and their gigs ranged further afield, from Chico in the north down to Hollywood. But still, A Cruel Hoax played their last gig in 1989, local heroes who never got a recording contract, much like The Wonders Of Science.



You might think the story of two garage bands that played back in the Reagan era would just be a fading memory, but one of our contingent, our young drummer Lexi, later changed his name to Lex and gained some national recognition on the first major reality show Survivor. His blond swoopy hair was replaced with dark spiky locks and he went for several piercings and tattoos. He was still drumming with bands, and in 2005 hooked up with some guys from the band Smash Mouth, a San Jose band that had a couple hits in the late 1990s. The new band is called The Maids Of Honor, and their songs have been heard on the network TV shows Mercy and Dirty Sexy Money. Their first album was released last month on the Halfway To Hell label.



Best wishes to The Maids Of Honor on their record release and especially to my old band mate Lex. Nice to see hard work and persistence pay off.

AutoTune the news #6

If you haven't seen this yet, it's really good. Who knew John Boehner was a Backstreet Kid? The best parts are Hell, No! and Wake Up Dead. These aren't just good pop tunes, these are smash hits!


Yay, Flags of Many Lands™! Yeah, Eritrea!

Some Eritrean wanted to know about the Pythagorean Theorem, and this is as good a place as any to find out.

It's getting harder to find countries who haven't stopped by yet, but I'm still waiting for visitors from Ethiopia and Djibouti, neighbors of Eritrea.

Four for mom and one for Mina

My mom Kara was cremated yesterday. She wanted no memorial service, but she wanted folks to sing during the time. I was teaching class and found out the exact time only later, so no singing from me at the appointed time, unfortunately. My sister Karlacita! sent a list of songs that she and mom chose for the occasion, and I've added a few choices of my own. None of the songs I've chosen is perfect, but then again, neither am I.

The Waters of Babylon David LaMotte

This song was chosen by Karla, and it is the closest to perfect of all the selections. She gave a link to the version from Mad Men, where the beautiful song is played as we watch a dialog free montage of the ridiculously beautiful cast, including Rosemary DeWitt, Jon Hamm, Maggie Siff, January Jones, Christina Hendricks and Jon Slattery. (Yes, the guys are ridiculously beautiful, too.) Embedding of that is disabled, so I chose this version of David LaMotte singing a round with himself using one of those echo machines I know instill avarice in my baby sister.

What'll I Do Bearly

My first choice is almost perfect. It's one of the greatest songs Irving Berlin ever wrote, which makes it one of the greatest songs ever written by anyone. It's about lost love, so it fits the mood. The only flaw is the line "wondering who's kissing you", but ignoring that, the lyric fits my mood almost precisely. There were a lot of versions on You Tube, but this was my favorite for being the best of the simplest. This guy is a German singer, he looks a little ragged but he has a lovely voice and excellent taste, so he is the one I most identify with, if I may be a little immodest.

Texas Girl at the Funeral of Her Father Randy Newman

Here the imperfection is obvious in the title, as we have the wrong gender of the missing parent. Still, it's a lovely tune. There's a version sung by Linda Ronstadt, whose voice is much prettier than Newman's, but I love the strings behind Newman in this version.

I Am Weary, Let Me Rest The Cox Family

The flaw here is that the song is about a child dying in the arms of her mother, which is of course the other way around from what happened this week for me and mine. But I love the sound of the Cox family, especially lead singer Suzanne. When singing together, my family can sound pretty good on occasion as well.

Put Your Records On Corinne Bailey Rae

This perky tune is probably not a sad song for the rest of the planet, but I first heard it and saw the video a few months after my friend Mina Millett died. Ms. Rae looks like Mina when she was young, and to think of how few summers were allotted to Mina still hurts me.

Every few months I listen to this to see if I can get through the whole thing without crying. Obviously, not yet.

Have a good weekend and thanks to everyone who has sent me their condolences and best wishes.

New Poll: Best 1970s sitcom theme, with lyrics

There are a lot of choices in the themes with lyrics division this week. Without lyrics not so much.

All In The Family
The Brady Bunch
The Courtship of Eddie's Father
Good Times
Happy Days
The Jeffersons
Love American Style
The Love Boat
Mary Tyler Moore Show
Maude
The Muppet Show
The Partridge Family
Three's Company
Welcome Back Kotter
WKRP in Cincinnati

There were more on the list, but I cut some where I didn't think there was a good choice for listening on You Tube, like Chico and the Man, and songs I never really liked, like Laverne and Shirley. Still, there's fifteen choices here and you can vote for more than one. Voting will close next Sunday.

New poll: Best 1970s sitcom theme, instrumental

Not as many good choices for instrumental sitcom themes in the 1970s. Clearly, the powerful lyricists had terrified the TV industry into submission. What ever the case, here are seven choices of instrumental sitcom themes.

Barney Miller
The Bob Newhart Show
M*A*S*H
The Odd Couple
Sanford and Son
Soap
What's Happening

I was thinking of disqualifying songs from other media, like The Odd Couple and M*A*S*H, which were taken from the movies that were made first. (For the young people, yes it's true. There was a time when a movie would get made, be a success, and producers would create a TV show based on the movie. Strange, but true!)

We think of jingle writing as a lower form of creativity, but some of these are fantastic and some are written by big stars. Sanford and Son is a Quincy Jones composition and What's Happening is the work of Henry Mancini. Those guys and other were definitely not minor leaguers.

The polls are open until next Sunday and you can vote for multiple songs. Heck, it's almost like a democracy or something!

Before it all went bad.

In many ways, Michael Jackson got what he wanted. Friends and family members talk about how he wanted Thriller to be the most successful album of all time.

Mission accomplished.

He wanted to be the wealthiest man in show business. He called himself The King of Pop. He married Elvis Presley's only daughter.

He wanted to be Elvis, and sadly he got the whole package. He was hugely successful, he descended into parody though he still had his loyal fans, and he died way too young in a creepy seclusion.

Let me also say this. I like Michael Jackson's music much more than I liked Elvis Presley's. There are two Elvis Presley songs I can listen to.

Trying to Get to You and Blue Moon of Kentucky.

For me, that's what he sounded like before it all went bad.

I like some of Michael's stuff on and after Thriller, but Thriller was the beginning of the end. From my perspective, it wasn't the most successful album of all time. It was Chapter One in the book The Events Leading To His Death. I was watching Michael Jackson videos on MTV last night, and the thing that comes through most clearly is the huge wellspring of stupid and misplaced anger once he became the biggest star in the world.


Here are some songs from the time before it all went bad.

ABC Not my favorite J5 song, but still a great groove.

I'll Be There A sweet song from a sweet kid.

Ben The rock critic Robert Christgau considers this the biggest mistake of Jackson's career, the love song to a rat. Christgau is wrong. I'm all about listening to the music, and this is a lovely song.

Don't Stop Till You Get Enough and Rock With You Here are two from Off The Wall, his first solo album. It's very much an album from the disco age, but the leadership of Quincy Jones gives it just the right level of production.

While I admit it's odd to end a tribute to a dead guy with someone singing a cover version of my favorite song of his, here is the British singer KT Tunstall doing a completely stripped down version of I Want You Back. While the Jackson Five version is still my favorite recording Michael Jackson was ever involved in, it's great to hear this song away from all the production. Ms. Tunstall is young enough that when she grew up, there was always a Michael Jackson, and her version is clearly the tribute of a fan.

Everyone's entitled to an opinion.

So far, the voting for favorite theme songs for 60s sitcoms is very, very close. Not surprisingly, with as many good choices as there are, there is no clear cut leader. Get Smart and The Addams Family are the leaders in the no lyrics and lyrics division, respectively, but there are plenty of songs within a vote or two of the lead.

Yay, freedom of choice!

But here's the thing. The theme for The Patty Duke Show has one vote. And it's my vote.

Click on the link and listen to the lyrics. "One pair of matching bookends, different as night and day." How can you not love that line?

Given that I know some of my regular readers are just as immature as I am, I thought there would be some love for "A hot dog makes her lose control". But so far, I, like the cheese, stand alone expressing my love for The Patty Duke Show theme song.

It costs you nothing but a second of your time! You can make an old man happy! Or, a middle aged man happy. Whatever.

It's a free country, at least until Obama and his socialist puppet masters open up the re-education camps. You can do what you want. But nobody else loves this song? I find it hard to believe.

Non-random 1, 6/5/09

I could say I'm posting this picture of Julie Newmar in lingerie to remind you to vote on your favorite Catwoman, and to lobby for my personal favorite, but that hardly seems necessary. There have already been more votes on this than on Sherlock Holmes, and the public so far is in agreement with me that Ms. Newmar is the best choice, followed by Eartha Kitt and Michelle Pfeiffer.

If I wanted to make the most obvious joke, I'd write some double entendre about Julie Newmar and wood, but I'm not going for the obvious, for once.

For me, Catwoman is more than just a silly character from a campy TV show with a fondness for pussycats and pilfering. She is a metaphor for the decisions we make in love, decisions that are barely decisions at all, we feel so compelled to make them.

The 20th Century Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh wrote lyrics to a tune from the 17th Century. The song is now known as Raglan Road, and the first verse is as clear a piece of writing about what love does to us poor fools as I have ever heard.

On Raglan Road of an autumn day
I saw her first and knew,
That her dark hair would weave a snare
That I might one day rue.
I saw the danger and I passed
Along the enchanted way.
And I said: 'Let grief, be a fallen leaf
At the dawning of the day.'

It's a very popular Irish ballad now. Nearly everyone with a drop of Irish blood has recorded it, and not just the men. Mary Black, Lorena McKennitt and Sinead O'Connor have all sung it, as have Van Morrison and Tommy Makem and Liam Clancy. The best known version is by Luke Kelly, singing with the Dubliners. Kelly's version was in the film In Bruges, a British crime drama/comic tragedy set in the picturesque Belgian village. The films stars Colin Farrell, a reminder that women are just as capable of being fools at love as men are.

Enjoy.

So what should Susan Boyle sing next?

That's a very good question, hypothetical question asker!

For those of you who haven't heard of Miss Boyle, she's a contestant on this year's edition of Britain's Got Talent, and her video on You Tube has gone crazy viral since it was put up earlier this week. There are several different version of it on You Tube, but the main one now has over twenty six million hits since Wednesday. Blog buddies Pissed Off Patricia and FranIAm both have links. I heard it first through an e-mail sent to me by my sister Karlacita! The Huffington Post is weighed down with bloggers who got e-mails from family members who rarely if ever send viral stuff, but Susan Boyle has certainly hit a nerve.

If you don't know the story yet, the show Britain's Got Talent is in the regional section where they pick the people who will be on stage for the next few weeks. This is the time when the producers will pick a few completely hopeless people with dreams to go on stage who humiliate themselves completely. American Idol does the same thing. The most famous example is William Hung, a homely engineering student with no voice who parlayed people's disbelief into a minor celebrity status.

Well, Susan Boyle may be as homely as members of Monty Python were when they dress in drag, but she has a professional quality voice and she chose the perfect song for her debut, I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miserables. It is right in the sweet spot of her range and the song is about life crushing the dream of a woman, which is what we expect is Miss Boyle's life story. About this, I'm not so sure. She's a devout Catholic and she spent many years taking care of her ailing mother. While the story presented on TV is that she's a 47 year old unemployed virgin spinster who lives with her cat, she does have a social life, both at church and singing karaoke in the local pub.

The thing is, she can't surprise us again. We now know she can sing. Ten years ago, she had a recording of Cry Me A River on a charity CD released by a Scottish newspaper. It's not perfect in some of her choices for phrasing, but all the notes are definitely there. It would be an excellent choice for another song for her to sing on the show, but she needs more tunes if she continues on the show. Currently, British bookies have her as a prohibitive favorite to win the whole thing.

A song like Don't Cry For Me Argentina would be very easy for her to sing, but completely out of character. She needs to choose more songs that people can identify with her life story. Here are a few modest proposals.

Solitude by Duke Ellington
There are a jillion great loneliness songs. This is one of the best.

Here Comes the Flood by Peter Gabriel
"Lord here comes the flood.
We shall say goodbye to flesh and blood.
If again the seas are silent and any still still alive,
It'll be those who gave their island to survive.
Drink up, dreamers, you're running dry. "

The Green Song by Elvis Costello
The One True Living Elvis wrote this song for operatic soprano Annie Sofie Von Otter, a duet between a person alive and another who is dead. I don't know if Susan has the high note in her arsenal, but it's a lovely tune that matches her life story taking care of her mum.

When She Loved Me by Randy Newman
Sarah McLachlan sang this in Toy Story 2. People who don't cry when they hear this... I'm not sure they are people.

Children Will Listen by Stephen Sondheim
Since she wants to sing show tunes, this might be the easiest of these songs to sell to Ms. Boyle. Again, I don't know how high her range goes. Another good choice from Sondheim would be Not A Day Goes By, which has a shorter range and the right emotional message.

What would you like to hear her sing?

Perché Vesti La Giubba?

Hypothetical question asker! I never knew you were bilingual.

Vesti La Giubba is the famous aria from Pagliacci, the well known opera written by the obscure composer Ruggiero Leoncavallo. It's not fair to call Leoncavallo a one hit wonder. He's more like a half hit wonder. While he wrote a lot of operas, Pagliacci gets performed more than all the rest combined, which is unusual success for a two act opera. Since opera goers expect several hours entertainment when they buy their tickets, Pagliacci is always part of a double bill, usually with La Cavalleria Rusticana, written by another half-hit wonder composer, Mascagni.

While Leoncavallo never hit the heights of glory that Verdi or Puccini did, there is absolutely no question that Pagliacci is a cultural touchstone. It's mentioned in the lyrics of the standard from the American songbook (I'm Afraid) The Masquerade Is Over, and likewise in the Smokey Robinson/Stevie Wonder classic Tears of a Clown. The hit from the 1950's Mr. Sandman hopes for a cross between Pagliacci and Liberace. (Hint to the ladies: You really don't want either part of that.) Pagliacci is mentioned in movies as far apart in time and type as Singin' In The Rain and Watchmen. On TV, Tony Soprano complains to his therapist about having to be the sad clown and Cesar Romero as The Joker lip-synchs Vesti La Giubba on the 60s TV show Batman. Of all the cultural references, Crazy Joe Davola on Seinfeld may be the only one who saw the opera, as his version of the sad clown Canio is much more menacing, not to give too much of the plot away.

But as to hypothetical question asker's first question, "Why Vesti La Giubba?" Why is this aria and the opera it comes from still famous to the general public in a way other operas better known to the opera going public aren't?

The answer may be in this little piece of trivia. Enrico Caruso (pictured above) recorded Vesti La Giubba in 1907 and it became the first record to sell one million copies. The aria and opera are riding that high crest from over a century ago to this day.

A clever parody and a brilliant original

My New York friend in the advertising biz sent me a link to this parody ad for a TV spot for Trader Joe's from an outfit called Carl's Fine Films. TJ's customers will definitely feel the twinge of recognition, and while it makes fun of the store, it is clearly written with love as well.



The tune is entitled Águas de Março, (Waters of March in English) with music and lyrics by Antonio Carlos Jobim. If you know five bossa nova songs, chances are Jobim wrote four of them. While The Girl From Ipenema is the biggest hit, a group of Brazilian journalists in 2001 voted this the best Brazilian song of the 20th Century. I went to The You Tubes to find my favorite version, and this duet by Jobim and Elis Regina won that competition hands down.



Last year, I sung the praises of the coolness of Pérez Prado, the Cuban bandleader. Tom Jobim deserves the same level of respect in my book. Jobim is by no means obscure, but if you go on The You Tubes and look up the stuff he did, you may be surprised at just how much of music we associate with Brazil is really just this one guy.

One of my heroes and... One of My People?

I have been a fan of Elvis Costello for a very long time, ever since I heard one of his albums, probably Armed Forces, while visiting my sisters Karlcita! and Jenny in Southern California way back in the late 1970s. He now has a show on Sundance Channel called Spectacle, where he interviews people about music and plays music with them. Among his guests in the first season are Sir Elton John (also the producer), Tony Bennett, Bill Clinton, Lou Reed, The Police and Norah Jones. I'm not paying for premium cable right now, so I haven't seen it, but it definitely sounds interesting.

Elvis has written about a jillion songs, and I have heard at least three quarters of a jillion of them, and I've noticed a recurring theme in his lyrics.

Giant women and/or tiny men.

Gosh, why would you notice that, Matty Boy?

Hypothetical question asker, don't be a scamp.

So I talked to my collage artist blog buddies Undersquid and Trinket999, presented them the lyrics and asked them to come up with collages, either work they had previously done or seen, that would fit the lyrics. In two cases, each of my talented artistic pals actually created a new collage for this project, completely out of the goodness of their hearts, just because I asked them to do stuff and didn't pay them.

I mean, how cool is that?

So here are some lyrics of Elvis Costello, matched with collages created by some of the most talented and generous of My People.

He's coming home now and here's the surprise,
You wouldn't believe the lies that he tries,
She cuts him down to his favorite size,
She pads, paws, pads, paws and claws.
Song: Pad, Paws and Claws
Collage artist: TheShrinkee, whose work was introduced to me by Undersquid.


Georgie grew to hate her name, it sounded like a tiny man,
The one she had told I can't see you, but I'll call you whenever I can.
Song: Georgie and Her Rival
Collage artist: Undersquid

He's trapped in his own parallel dimension,
That's why I'm so forgiving,
But how can I possibly forget to mention those fifty foot women
Who put the fascination back into my science fiction twin?
Song: My Science Fiction Twin
Collage artist: Trinket999 (original work first published here)

I thought I would go to the sea and shrink down very tiny,
And slide into the telephone wire that runs under the briny.
Song: Crawling to the U.S.A.
Collage artist: Undersquid (original work first published here)

So there is some artwork exploring the possible gigantic interests of Declan Patrick McManus, known to the world as Elvis Costello, consummate songwriter and who knows, maybe one of My People, spreading the word of Our Agenda.

Top Ten Cover Albums

Taking a page from my blog buddy DistributorcapNY, today I am going to do a music post. DCap usually takes on a musical genre and gets all encyclopedic on its bad self, but I'm taking a different tack. I put forward here a list of my ten favorite cover albums of all time.

I define "cover album" to mean when an artist or artists known primarily for recording "their own music" does an album of other people's music. For the most part, this means singer/songwriters decided to skip the songwriting duties for one project, but not always.


#10 Rocknroll, John Lennon. This album's story is the impetus for putting this list together. In an interview, John Lennon admitted that part of the song Come Together was built on a chord progression from the Chuck Berry tune You Can't Catch Me, and Lennon had also lifted one line of lyrics "Here come old flat top." Morris Levy, the lawyer who owned the rights to the Chuck Berry tune, decided to sue Lennon, but instead of asking for residuals from Come Together, Levy wanted Lennon to record three songs from his catalog. Lennon at the time had bigger legal fish to fry, what with the U.S. government trying to deport him. He looked through Levy's catalog and found that a lot of the tunes he loved to play back when he was a kid were there, and he put out this album of rock tunes primarily before the heyday of the Beatles, including the Chuck Berry tune at the center of the controversy.



#9 Perfectly Frank Tony Bennett This is one of two albums on the list where the artist is not known largely as a songwriter, but instead a singer who decides to make a tribute to another singer.

On this album, Tony Bennett records tunes that are most readily associated with Frank Sinatra.

It is a matter of taste, but I like Bennett's voice better than I like Sinatra's.

It is a matter of arithmetic to say that Bennett has had a longer career than the late Sinatra and kept his voice in shape for a much longer time than many singers have been able.

It is a matter of common sense to say that Tony Bennett is a nicer human being than Frank Sinatra.

Thanks for all the music, Mr. Bennett.



#8 Moondog Matinee The Band Sometimes The Band is classified as Southern rock, though the line-up had only one southerner, singer/drummer Levon Helm, and the rest of the group were Canadians. They were originally the back-up band for Ronnie Hawkins, then struck out on their own, then backed up the newly electrified Bob Dylan, which caused no end of concern for Dylan's folk music fans. Though they were very proficient musicians and wrote most of their own songs, except for several covers of Dylan tunes, they did have a love of the raw hillbilly harmonies of true old timey artists like the Stanley Brothers.

I bought every album The Band recorded as soon as it came out, and I loved this one just as much as I loved their original stuff. Side one started with the great hit of Clarence "Frogman" Henry, I Ain't Got No Home, included a ripping version of Elvis Presley's Mystery Train and an instrumental Third Man Theme. The second side ends with a tune I hadn't heard for years when the album came out, but that I still love to this day, Sam Cooke's posthumously released classic A Change Is Gonna Come.


#7 Pin-Ups David Bowie. John Lennon was a little hesitant about putting out a cover album because several other artists of the time had done the same thing recently, including Bryan Ferry and David Bowie.

Bowie recorded mainly music from the British Invasion on this album from 1973, including one Syd Barrett song, two by Pete Townsend and one by Ray Davies. Besides the naked head and shoulders of Bowie and the model Twiggy, the most enduring thing from the album was the single Sorrow. Bowie's version is much better known today than the original done by the McCoys.

Just to re-iterate that what the Beatles had done with the line "Here come old flat-top" is not the definition of musical plagiarism, the Beatles also borrowed the line "with your long blonde hair and your eyes of blue" from Sorrow and incorporated it in It's All Too Much, found on the Yellow Submarine track.

Artists do this all the time.


#6 Deadicated various artists. This album is unique on the list, but comes from a common genre. Someone decides to make a tribute album to a band or songwriter and invites a passel of artists to contribute tunes to the project. Often the proceeds are donated to charity. So it was with Deadicated, a tribute album to the Grateful Dead, with proceeds donated to rainforest protection. The albums starts strong, putting my choice for best rock and roll band still working Los Lobos ripping through Bertha. Other artists include Elvis Costello singing Ship of Fools, The Indigo Girls doing great harmonies on Uncle John's Band, and my two favorite male country singers since the era of Johnny Cash, Lyle Lovett sweetly singing an acoustic version of Friend of the Devil and Dwight Yoakam tearing the fenders and hood off of Truckin'.

Deadicated is out of print, and a much sought after prize by Deadhead vinylheads the world 'round.



#5 Kojak Variety Elvis Costello. One of my students this past semester asked me if I were on a desert island and could listen to only one artist for the rest of my life, who would it be? Her choice was Talking Heads. My choice would be Elvis Costello. Elvis recorded this cover tune album and left it on the shelf for a while, but released it when the market seemed nearly flooded with bootleg recordings of the songs.

The Band put The Third Man Theme on their cover album as kind of a curve ball. Elvis, on the other hand, has an album nearly entirely of curve balls and sliders. The best known tune might be The Very Thought of You, the only song not from the rock era, a throwback to the days when Elvis' dad Ross McManus played in the big bands. The next best known tune is Days, a Ray Davies tune that has also been recorded by the late Kirsty MacColl. Elvis covers Mose Allison, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Willie Dixon and Jesse Winchester, and even when he records songs from Bob Dylan, Bacharach and David, Holland/Dozier/Holland and Randy Newman, he pulls out some of the most obscure songs from their catalogs.

It's not my favorite Elvis album, but I can still put the CD in the player and enjoy it.


#4 Labour of Love UB40. This year, lead singer and founder Ali Campbell retired from UB40 after thirty years. Until this retirement, the band had the same eight man lineup since 1978. That is nearly unprecedented in rock history. The Four Tops had the same four guys until Levi Stubbs died, but keeping four guys together is a little easier than keeping eight guys together. Good on ya, UB40!

This album, for all practical purposes, redefined the band. UB40 started as a mixed race, reggae influenced and politically motivated band from Birmingham, with political songs including Food For Thought, Sardonicus, I'm Not Fooled So Easily and King. But all their previous successes were completely overshadowed commercially by their cover of the Neil Diamond tune Red Red Wine. Like with Bowie's version of Sorrow, the cover is so much more popular than the original that many don't know the original version at all. Since then, every number one hit UB40 has had has been a cover, like I Got You Babe, with guest vocalist Chrissie Hynde, the Elvis Presley ballad I Can't Help Falling In Love and the Motown hit The Way You Do The Things You Do.


#3 Mystery Lady Etta James. Etta James was famous as a belter of songs in her heyday. In the new movie Cadillac Records, Beyonce Knowles plays Etta James and re-records some of her tunes. Just like with Diana Ross playing Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues, the celluloid copy only makes you long for the original.

Etta recorded her own tribute to Billie Holiday in 1994, Mystery Lady, with much more satisfying results. Etta met Billie when she was young and Miss Holiday was near the end of her career, and she never forgot it. On this record, Etta is backed by a septet lead by Cedar Walton on piano, and they lead off with Don't Explain, a heartbreaking ballad of co-dependency with lyrics by Billie herself. The album is all ballads, and some of the strongest are also some of the saddest, including You've Changed, (I'm Afraid) The Masquerade Is Over and I'll Be Seeing You.


#2 Pop Pop Rickie Lee Jones. Rickie Lee Jones got her start in the music business known as Tom Waits' girlfriend, and there was an attempt to label her as the female Tom Waits early on, but both of these artists are much too fiercely independent to be labeled as anything but their own unique selves.

Jones recorded Pop Pop in 1991, with production help from David Was of Was (Not Was). Several musicians back her up, most notably guitar hero Robben Ford playing an acoustic nylon stringed guitar, the incomparable Charlie Haden on bass and Dino Saluzzi on bandoneon. (Side 'splainin': Yes, a bandoneon is a honkin' big accordion. And yes, only cool people play it.) This line-up can be heard on the first song, the priceless standard from the American songbook My One and Only Love. Most of this album, like Mystery Lady, is filled with songs from the jazz/pop era, though it does also include Jimi Hendrix's Up From the Skies and the Marty Balin ballad first recorded by Jefferson Airplane, Comin' Back to Me. Both Pop Pop and Mystery Lady could be classified as nice rainy day music.


#1 Acid Eaters Ramones! Earlier, I wrote that Los Lobos are the best rock and roll band still working. This is because the Ramones are not still working, with several members now deceased. Matty Boy is of the opinion that the Ramones were and are the greatest rock and roll band in history.

You may disagree. This is America. You have the right to be wrong.

Acid Eaters is not rainy day music. It's TURN IT UP LOUD music. The first song is Journey to the Center of the Mind by the Amboy Dukes, written by Ted Nugent. Clearly, the song is chosen out of respect for the artists that recorded the original.

There's also a little Long Island glue sniffing smack talk going on. Like Ted... this is what it sounds like if you PLAY IT FAST AND LOUD.

YOU KNOW... LIKE ROCK AND ROLL!

For me, there are several songs on Acid Eaters that I can no longer listen to the original versions of anymore. They're just too damn slow. John Fogerty's Have You Ever Seen The Rain never sounded like this when Creedence played it. Likewise Jefferson Airplane's Somebody to Love.

On the other hand, I can still listen to the Who's version of Substitute just as easily as the Ramones' version, maybe because Pete Townsend is on both of them. Also, there are some songs, like the Rolling Stones' Out of Time, that the Ramones decided not to play at RamonesSpeed™ and RamonesVolume™. Long Island's Finest still tear those songs up.

I did not agonize over the exact positions of these albums listed on the top ten. You may find there are cover albums you love that didn't make the list. The only position I would not change on this list is the Ramones are Number One!

You may disagree. This is America. You have the right to be wrong.

Okay, who's picking the music at the convention?

President Clinton did a great job at the podium tonight, but what song do they play after he leaves?

Addicted to Love.

What? They couldn't get the rights to Baby Got Back?

Was Me and Mrs. Jones just a little too obvious?

Dude, that's cold blooded. A Rhinoceros Hornbill wouldn't be that mean. And I know this from bitter experience.

After that quick clinker, Joe Biden hit all the right notes. Great wife, great mom, great son, freaking adorable grandkids. Also, Joe can be the pitbull and Barack can do what he does best, being so fresh and so clean. McCain better start wearing stainless steel Depends or he is going to find teeth marks in his behind on a regular basis.