Wednesday

The first time I heard this song, I was sure that it was Robert Plant doing a duet with someone.

I was googling and trying to figure out “who is this?” and because it wasn’t Robert Plant, I stumbled across this:

So… what are you listening to?

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The whole “cover songs that are better than the original songs” argument is one that I could probably have every other week and never get sick of it… mostly because, let’s face it, it’s a matter of taste argument and, on top of that, the songs that get covered are the songs that the covering band finds *SOMETHING* in. Any given cover song is one of the few opportunities we have to hear a song the way someone else hears it.

And that’s just awesome.

The one that has been going through my head is Springsteen’s Atlantic City off of his Nebraska album (which is one of those albums that deserves to be brought up in the “perfect album” argument that shows up from time to time).

What’s notable (for me anyway) about this particular cover (by The Band) is that I think that the first half of the song (the song up to the beginning of the bridge) is better than Springsteen’s… but fails completely when it hits the bridge and never recovers. Springsteen’s song, on the other hand, once it hits the bridge, becomes one of the best songs, like, *EVER*.

Anyway, here’s both of them.

So… what are you listening to?

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A few weeks back, Stillwater asked me if I was familiar with the Airborne Toxic Event’s new album.

I’ve tried to listen to it multiple times and I keep getting hung up. It’s not because I don’t like sad songs (for the most part, I like sad songs a lot) but I think I prefer sad songs that are happy about being sad to songs that are sad about being sad, if you know what I mean. There’s kind of a rawness with these guys that make me wish I were listening to the Jayhawks or Leonard Cohen. They also did a trick that, for some reason, really bugs me.

Here. Compare. This is the version that gets played on the radio here:

*THIS* is the video that was only available until recently:

Compare the lyrics of the two songs. The first one is a sad song (with, granted, a jarringly optimistic video) and the second one is a somewhat hopeful song (with a video that, for some reason, always has Anna Bulbrook’s eyes either in shadow, out of focus, or closed… which strikes me as something that must have been a directorial decision because it seems such an odd thing to do…).

It feels like cheating, for some reason, to have two versions of the same song, one happy and one sad. Dunno why that bugs me, but it does.

All that to say, Stillwater: I’ve tried to listen to them but they leave me feeling raw.

So… what are you listening to?

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Some variations on a theme this week, I think.

So… what are you listening to?

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So… what are you listening to?

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One of the things that I touched on last week was listening past the surface to hear the song underneath it. I mean, the person I was in 1988 would never, ever, have been able to handle, say, My Bloody Valentine. While I wouldn’t want to have to fight to hear… I dunno how to phrase it… “the dream of the song” underneath everything maybe… while I wouldn’t want to have to fight to hear the dream of the song every time I listened to music, there are times when doing so is exceptionally rewarding and, surprise surprise, it’s punk rock (of all things) that taught me how to listen for that.

And so I’m sad to say that the first time I heard “Kiss the Bottle” was not from Jawbreaker but from Lucero.

That’s the song I knew first. It feels backwards and upside-down to say that I wouldn’t have been able to listen to this sort of thing without being taught to listen to this sort of thing by this sort of thing… but there it is.

So… what are you listening to?

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I’ve mentioned the notepad file that I keep my “for Wednesday” songs on before. There usually is a handful of songs on it that will eventually get culled without ever seeing the blog and, usually, the reason is something to the effect of “not the mood I’m going for” or “I don’t know that this is exactly accessible right now” or “what the hell was I thinking?” and there’s a song in there right now that I absolutely love but it’s really, really, really sad. I keep it on there because I really like it but, I mean, why in the world would I want to impose a sad song on anybody? It’s not even a “feel good about how bad you feel” sad song (a genre for which I have much affinity) but just a sad song.

I didn’t want to cull it, though. ‘Cause it’s really good. It’s been on the list for about six months, actually.

Well, the band that made the song released a new album recently and, tah-dah, the first song off the album is actually pretty upbeat! Which means that I can open with the sad song, close with the happy song, and feel like I’ve done my job.

The sad song is “Don’t Save Us From The Flames” by M83.

The upbeat one is “Midnight City” by M83.

The new album is Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming.

So… what are you listening to?

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We called up the doctor and the doctor said “no more monkeys jumping on the bed!”

Wait, no, that was last time. *THIS* time the doctor said “your cough is a perfectly healthy response to the sinus infection you have”. Then she prescribed me all kinds of drugs. So, with luck, I will be 100% better in three weeks.

However, while I hadn’t exactly stopped thinking about songs about being sick and started thinking about songs about the afterlife (no religion), I did start thinking about what that post might look like and got some goofy themes going where I linked to Iron Maiden’s Purgatory or Bryan Ferry’s Limbo (holy cow, that video is much, much racier than I remembered) or James Brown’s Hell and then have links to Bryan Adams and Warrant for Heaven culminating, of course, in the Talking Heads.

But then I started thinking about the Talking Heads and, my goodness, the Heaven song is just so very good in its own right. These last few months have been crazy at work as well, and crazy with the holidays, and the last month has been crazy just from being sick and… my goodness, this song is a tonic.

So… what are you listening to?

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Being sick, I have had 1994 on the brain. Why 1994?

I have no idea. I’m sick.

The two songs that have been stuck are pretty much on opposite ends of the same radio station’s playlist (I mean, seriously, they’re both rock songs, right? It’s not like Phillip Glass vs. Slayer or something like that) but, between coughs, I’ve been thinking about them both a lot. I like to think that if you’re intimitely familiar with the one, the other will be a pleasant surprise but they’re not *THAT* obscure (well, the Rusted Root song might be). I’m not willing to go back to 1994, but it was a very, very good year and the music was *AWESOME*.

The first song is “Love Spreads” by The Stone Roses. Those first 20 seconds are some of the sexiest strutting slide moves I’ve heard. The rest of the song is almost a letdown (almost) from the perfection of those first 20 seconds.

(If you don’t want to be distracted by the singer, you should check this out. Dang, he slows it down just a hair and perfectly captures the walk.)

As I mentioned, the second song is by Rusted Root (you probably remember their song “Send me on my way” from a half dozen movie trailers/commercials). Their song Beautiful People never got much airplay and, as such, is one of those songs that you hear when you buy the album and wonder “why did they release *THAT* song when they could have released *THIS* one???”

Alas. Anyway, here it is. Hope you like it.

So… what are you listening to?

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