[music, songs] November 19, 2006 at 12:20:00 AM CET

62 covers of Louie, Louie over at Chocoreve. No Joy Division, of course. Who heard their version which they only played live? And who remembers it?

 
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[music, songs] November 8, 2006 at 7:46:00 PM CET

Neil Young - See the Sky about to Rain

Catherine has got this habit of listening to one album over and over. Right now she has Neil Young's On the Beach which I bought in the summer 2004 in Norway, I think it was in Bergen, in her car cd player. And it drives me crazy. I think I have only been in her car three times in the last couple of weeks. The first time I was happy to listen to that album for the twenty minutes or so it takes from Frankfurt city to where we live and it made me feel good, especially the fact that I recognised it immediately. The second and third time I thought, not again, you are killing that album. If not for you then at least for me. Have pity with me. She didn't of course. I need variation in what I listen to. Except when I discover something new.

Anyways See the Sky about to Rain came on the third time I was in her car - it also came on the first time by the way - and it smashed me. Again. We listened to it in the dark and it had that effect that it made the world stand still for the five minutes it lasted. I just listened to a live version of it and it didn't have that effect on me. It was dark again, I was in front of my computer in the cellar but that wasn't the reason. The reason that the live version didn't do it for me was that it didn't have the pedal steel guitar on it. The pedal steel is probably the instrument which is mostly responsible for the sound of American country music. A genre I don't appreciate usually. But when this instrument is used like it is used on See the Sky about to Rain where it perfectly fits with Neil Young's plaintive, subdued voice and where it reaches for something out of this world, I love it. Listen to the last two minutes of this song and you will know what I mean. Transcendence is the word for the way that instrument is played here. Of course this song has more charms. The sad lyrics, the shaking electric piano, the laid-back drums, the vigorous bass and the short mouth harp section which finishes it.

According to Shakey, the comprehensive Neil Young biography by Jimmy McDonough there is an unreleased solo demo of this song. Not too hot on that one. (Un)fortunately I have listened to a version which can't be bettered first. It has engraved itself in my brain too much. Even if the demo was more touching, it wouldn't be virgin for me any more.

 
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[music, songs] October 29, 2006 at 7:29:00 PM CET

Morgen kommt Tom Liwa in den Klub Das Bett in Sachsenhausen. Anbei als Vorgeschmack für Unschlüssige das zehnminütige Lied Das Tal der nackten Männer (zum Probehören, nur 64Kbps). Mein Lieblingssong von ihm, den er so gut wie nie live spielt, wie er mir nach dem 2003er Konzert in der Oetinger Villa sagte. Hier noch die Duisburger Stationen und Straßen, die in der Gitarrenballade abgeklappert werden.

 
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[music, songs] October 22, 2006 at 7:41:00 PM CEST

Covers/remixes that succeed, #1

The ILM thread asking for <a href=ilx.p3r.net">songs in the vein of Depeche Mode's Enjoy the Silence inspired me to listen to some Depeche Mode, one of those bands I have never really been too much into but which I still kind of like. There are only two albums by them in my possession, firstly 1987's Music for the Masses which had an excellent ILM thread started by Ned Raggett and then 1997's Ultra. Ned also wrote for the Allmusic guide about the song I chose for the first installment of a series about covers and/or remixes which work for me, Useless from Ultra.

The original of Useless (mp3) isn't a song I am crazy about. It's a dark, brooding, heavy track, especially considering the quite uplifting slightly experimental open ambiance of Ultra. The strong hook which often dominates DM's great singles can't be found on Useless. It's meandering around ominously. The lyrics accuse someone of being a dreamer:

and not listening to a friend:

Kruder & Dorfmeister remixed this song (mp3) on The K&D Sessions and turned it into a monster dub track. The bass is bubbling like magma or something. The drum programming is using that delayed echo effect which removes the intrinsic physicalness from the drum sound and makes it breezy. Psychedelia ahoy! Their version also surprises as it starts with the line which is supposed to come later. One of the rare cases where the remix smashes the original. Amazing what was buried in that song whithout DM succeeding to express it at all.
 
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[music, songs] September 6, 2006 at 11:47:00 PM CEST

The first two songs on Thom Yorke's solo album The Eraser both get mesmerising around the 3'30 to 3'40'' mark. The floating The Eraser speeds up, the tense Analyse slows down. The first becomes a psychedelic electronic dance rave with humming, the second a synth heaven of strings where Thom's voice reaches for the other world and attains it. The waters rise and it is achingly beautiful to listen to. And then someone stops the song suddenly. Like the man on the cover halting the waves.

 
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[music, songs] August 1, 2006 at 11:58:00 PM CEST

I was looking for my fave versions of some Joy Division songs. Here is my pick for She's lost control (out of the 6 7 I have on cd). From the tv programme Something Else. Yes it's probably right. They were supposed to be a big stadium band. But they never played in big stadiums. Ian dropped the s from the title in the course of his life. It must have been autosuggestion.

P.S. The video is even more amazing. Ian does his weird, crazy dance with the arms and shoulders. He moves like a karate robot on acid or something. Ducking away at times and then moving his hands upwards and downwards in a dazzling speed near the end. The sound is bad here, the mp3 linked above is of better quality. It's Barney's loud, distorted guitar I like most in this version. Surely it set off Ian's dance gene...

 
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[music, songs] May 12, 2006 at 10:23:00 PM CEST

Radiohead - Cymbal Rush

One of three new Radiohead songs of which I found good quality live versions here. A simple piano tune with Johnny Greenwood's Ondes Martenot and Thom Yorke singing in falsetto. In the beginning Thom's prerecorded looped "Uh" sounds like an answer to Laurie Anderson on O Superman when she kicks it off by repeating "Ha" many times. There is a staccato feel due to the "Uhs" and the piano play which is resolved when the Ondes Martenot and later the guitar joins in. This song is touching me deep inside. It's very harmonic and tuneful (severa times Thom hums the melody in a way which seems to suggest that this is too beautiful to be sung in words, he is getting lost in it) but emanates a profound sadness and forlornness at the same time. Like all truly great Radiohead songs. It's an instant classic. They seem to continue their trip to slower, sparser, more concentrated music. I wonder when they will arrive at silence.

 
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[music, songs] May 9, 2006 at 10:11:00 PM CEST

Wonderful Woman

I don't remember ever having listened to this song by The Smiths before. Probably my fading memory, who cares. It makes me realise what I like about them. The contrast between Morrissey's self-pitying, lamenting, grave vocals and the airiness of Johnny Marr's guitar. An improbable encounter of total opposites. But together they nail it. I have to think about what it is this it (from the Shoplifters from Manchester bootleg).

 
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[music, songs] May 2, 2006 at 10:06:00 PM CEST

The girl's voice on Little Fluffy Clouds by The Orb is Rickie Lee Jones!? I am stunned. Yeah why not. How I always loved that voice and never knew who it was. And how I always loved Rickie Lee Jones voice but never connected the dots. ILM revisits the orb's adventures beyond the ultraworld.

 
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[music, songs] April 17, 2006 at 8:05:00 PM CEST

Brian Eno & David Byrne - Regiment

This is the song I listened to most in the last couple of days. It's the original version from My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, the longer alternative version from the re-released album with extra tracks can be found at Silence Is A Rhythm Too where there are also two songs from the new Gainsbourg cover album by the way.

What does it for me on this track which was a great club hit in 1980/81 is the juxtaposition of that animalistic ground-shattering bass in the beginning and the pure vocals by Dunya Yusin, a Lebanese mountain singer which come in later. Earth and Heaven. What a spell-binding encounter of rock and Arab music. And there are even some you-you's in the background. The cries of joy women in North African countries emit during marriages.

 
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