Reader Jenni Wiltz flags an acoustic rendition of a high-octane pop song:
I just discovered your cover collection today. It saved my workday from total PMS destruction, so thank you! Here’s my nomination: Brian Fallon from Gaslight Anthem covering Kelly Clarkson’s “I Do Not Hook Up” for BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge. The BBC program host is a little overwhelmed at the end—understandably so, once you pass the 2:53 mark.
Thanks for sharing such a wonderful collection of songs!
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Susan Green has a great entry for our cover series:
I’d like to nominate one of my personal favorites, Lambchop’s cover of The Sisters of Mercy’s “This Corrosion.” The goth to alt country changeup certainly qualifies as transformative, and it’s one of the covers I enjoy as much as the original.
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Reader Jamie serves up an inspired cover of Nirvana by R&B singer Charles Bradley:
Bradley adds a funky, soulful layer to the grunge classic while somehow rivaling Cobain’s rage. Chalk it up to a longer life of hard times. Anguish for boogieing.
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When Radiohead set out to disappear completely last weekend, deleting every post from their Twitter and Facebook accounts, they left their YouTube page untouched. Probably smart: “Lotus Flower,” a single from the band’s last album, 2011’s The King of Limbs, has wracked up 36 million views.
The video for “Burn the Witch,” the single that Radiohead dropped on Monday, is already doing numbers. “Daydreaming” may do even better. The video, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and posted today, captures the bleak unease of the song exactly:
The video follows pale king Thom Yorke as he walks through a series of inter-connected hallways, corridors, and tunnels. He appears to be lost but not aimless, the world around him oblivious to his existence—an anxiety particular to Radiohead’s catalog. He passes through one door after another: from kitchen to hospital to prison to library and other magically linked spaces. “Dreamers, they never learn/ They never learn,” Yorke sings.
The psychic distress mounts as the song builds, until in the end Yorke passes through a utility stairwell door to a snowy landscape. He trudges through the drift until he finds what he was looking for (maybe?): a cave carved out of the ice, a fire burning inside the cave. The sounds that finish the song are too strange to describe, but Genius says that it’s York chanting “Evol ym dnouf ev’I”—I’ve found my love, backwards and all chopped and screwed.
This isn’t PTA’s first collaboration with Radiohead: Jonny Greenwood, the group’s mop-headed multi-instrumentalist, has composed the soundtracks for several of the director’s films, including There Will Be Blood and Inherent Vice. Last year, Anderson released Junun, a rockumentary that followed Greenwood to India, where he recorded an album of the same name with Israeli composer Shy Ben Tzur, producer Nigel Godrich, and an ensemble called Rajasthan Express.
More videos may be on the way: Radiohead’s latest and as-yet-untitled album comes out on Sunday.
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Fifty years ago today, five musicians began a long strange trip at Magoo’s Pizza in Menlo Park. The Warlocks were fronted by clean-shaven lead guitarist Jerry Garcia and rounded out with guitarist and singer Bob Weir, bassist Phil Lesh, drummer Bill Kreutzmann, and keyboardist/swingman Ron “Pigpen” McKernan. The group later discovered that another band had already signed a contract as “The Warlocks,” so they dropped the fusty, mid-‘60s period-piece moniker in favor of a new one—something a little more mysterious, a little spookier, a collective name that maybe better captured their collective spirit. Almost exactly seven months later, on December 4, 1965, the Grateful Dead performed for the first time at a Ken Kesey Acid Test.
Though the Dead is famous for the live recordings of shows traded by Deadheads, there are no known recordings of the pizza parlor gig. But here’s an oddball early track from November 1965, a year and a half before the band’s debut record:
It doesn’t really sound anything like the band that would emerge—either the hard-driving, primal psychedelia of the late 1960s, or the agile, jazzy swing of the 1970s. Dead expert David Dodd confesses, “I’m not sure I would even necessarily know that it was a Dead song if I heard it on the radio.” The music was apparently written by the band, with lyrics by Garcia. Musically, it’s a kinda foursquare British invasion knockoff, though Pigpen’s harp and Garcia’s so-so Dylan-knockoff lyrics recall Bringing It All Back Home, which came out six weeks or so before the May 5 gig.
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On the Internet, May the Fourth is “Star Wars Day.” For people of a certain generation, or from Northeast Ohio, the date immediately calls to mind not science fiction but horror: the Kent State Massacre.
Protests had broken out on the campus of the university in spring 1970, after Richard Nixon announced U.S. bombing in Cambodia. Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes called out National Guard troops to quell the demonstrations. A little after noon on May 4, they opened fire on the students. Four students—Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and William Schroeder—were killed. Nine others were injured. A commission convened by Nixon concluded, “Even if the guardsmen faced danger, it was not a danger that called for lethal force. The 61 shots by 28 guardsmen certainly cannot be justified.” No guardsmen were indicted or convicted. For years, it was unclear what prompted the shots, though a more recent tape analysis suggests an order was given to fire.
Amid the violence, Kent State photojournalism student John Filo shot an indelible image of a woman kneeling over Jeffrey Miller’s body. The photograph was widely published and later won a Pulitzer Prize. Neil Young saw the photo in Life magazine and was moved to write a song. Crosby, Still, Nash, and Young recorded “Ohio” on May 21, just 16 days after the shooting.
It’s not a complicated song: just a verse, a chorus, then the same chorus and the same verse again. Sometimes less is more. “Ohio” seems to capture the horror and menace of the moment. It’s a scary and sad thing to listen to, even 46 years later.
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In this sequence from Magnolia, everyone is reaching their tipping point, with their fates in the balance. It’s almost like the director set up the whole movie just to bring all the disparate characters together with this one song.
Aimee Mann dominates the soundtrack as a whole and is inextricable from the film, directed by the genius Paul Thomas Anderson (whose Boogie Nights will definitely see an entry or three for this cinema series).
Update from reader Marc:
Just wanted to say: I love Aimee Mann, love “Wise Up,” love Magnolia, and double-special love that scene from Magnolia with that song.
But.
I am also a horrible person, so I can’t stop re-imagining “Wise Up” as Elmer Fudd leading a protest: “Wise up, evwybody! Wise up and fwow off youah oppwessahs!”
That is all ...
folks.
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Reader Margaret makes a brilliant choice from a brilliant soundtrack (one I listened to on repeat during a summer in Seattle):
I just stumbled upon your series on music in movies. There are so many choices from Wes Anderson’s films, but I think Rushmore’s closing sequence is my favorite. It always hits me in the guts, reminding me that this movie that I've been laughing at for a few hours is ultimately bittersweet. This cuts off, but here is a youtube of it:
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A transcendent pick for our cinematic series comes from reader Jesse Madsen:
So I’m going to step out on an unpopular limb with Cliff Martinez’s sublime composition and arrangement for Traffic. His film work is prolific and selections impeccable. Traffic would be a completely different film without Martinez’s score. Even “Helicopter” as an ambient track takes on an almost lyrical quality. Each of the tracks convey a distinct idea and emotion.
But I think his use of Brian Eno’s “An Ending (Ascent)” at the end of the film is the best of the best [full version above]:
You’d be forgiven at this point in the film if you mistake this for Martinez’s work. But it’s a testament to the rest of the original score and getting melody (almost pop) out of three-minute ambient music. Using Eno here is no coincidence; the score is Eno’s progeny. Martinez’s selection elevates the scene and the brutal and violent cynicism that came before it, but he also pays tribute to Eno’s influence.
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Danny Boyle selected some great tracks for Trainspotting. You mentioned Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” playing when Renton shoots up and survives an overdose. Yet Boyle makes an arguably better pairing when he plays Underworld’s “Born Slippy .NUXX” in the final scene, both for how the song draws you into the scene and how the lyrics reflect the protagonist’s story:
Begbie sleeps, passed out from drinking the night before, hugging the bag containing the profits from a heroin deal. Renton wakes early with “Born Slippy”playing quietly at first. He walks over to the bed, and as he begins to gently move Begbie’s arms off the bag, the drumbeat kicks in. It quickens and syncs with your heartbeat as you watch, building the suspense, as the song and the beat grow louder. Will Begbie wake? Will Spud raise the alarm? Will Renton rip off his friends and escape with the cash?
The song continues as he walks out of the hotel with the money into the open fresh air. Darkness pervades most of the movie, but now we are in the light. Renton speaks his soliloquy promising to grow up and clean up. He promises to achieve a bright, boring, middle-class life. Yet the lyrics do not match Renton’s uplifting statements.
Karl Hyde, who wrote the song, told The Guardian he was recreating how “a drunk sees the world in fragments” and described it as a cry for help when he “was still deep into alcoholism.” Although written about alcohol, the manic lyrics stand in for heroin abuse in Trainspotting. And the song’s refrain of “boy” echoes Renton’s nickname “Rent Boy,” making it sound as if the song is speaking to Renton about his struggles with heroin. It leaves you wondering whether Renton will make a clean break or whether the addiction, like the lyrics, will continue to follow him.
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On this day in 1899, Edward Kennedy Ellington was born in Washington, D.C. Unlike most children born in the nation’s capital, Ellington would rise to the rank of royalty. As “Duke,” he became one of jazz’s greatest stars, swing’s greatest bandleader, and perhaps America’s finest composer.
In our August 1984 issue, Francis Davis described Duke’s approach: “For Ellington, the big band was a blank page, upon which he wrote the most enduring body of orchestral literature in jazz history.” A decade earlier, in an Atlantic essay titled “Ellington in Private,” Irving Townsend detailed the bearing that earned Ellington his regal nickname:
And it did not take long to understand his pride. He did not underestimate himself and realized, of course, that nobody else did either. He could relish the turning of understatement into Ellingtonian exaggeration when he referred to himself as "the piano player." He alternated between the royal "we," the modest "we," and the plural "we" with ease, and often in the same sentence. He was fond of cliche, but only his own, and even the dialects of his conversation were polished.
Musicians like Ellington are too often praised but not listened to—many people can tell you that he is a jazz icon, some can name a hit (“Take the ‘A’ Train,” “Satin Doll,” “Mood Indigo,” etc.), but few truly delve into the work. This isn’t just to chastise listeners—I’m guilty of this as well. Hearing scratchy old transfers from 78-rpm discs, it’s hard to tell what’s really happening, or why fans and fellow musicians were so bowled over at the time. Some instruments don’t cut through, nuance is lost, harmonies are clouded.
Recently, however, a rare recording of “Hot and Bothered” has surfaced, along with a pair of Louis Armstrong tracks. The recording (embedded above) is from October 1, 1928, but it sounds beautifully clear—certainly better than the commonly available versions. (See the bottom of this note for a comparison.)
The provenance of these new versions is a little foggy. A man named Jonathan Holmes posted them on YouTube, saying they were digitized by his friend Nick Dellow, an audio engineer, who got them from metal “mother records,” which haven’t degraded or been scratched or worn down like the shellac originals. It’s unclear how exactly Dellow got the mother records, how many of them of survive, or whether listeners might be in for a long string of similar delights. Apparently these mother records were sent by Okeh Records, a once-leading (and recently relaunched) jazz label, to Germany for Odeon Records to press versions.
Here’s a delightful explanation of how mother records work, taken from the November 1918 issue of The Tonearm, a internal monthly magazine published by the Columbia Gramophone Company. (The issue also lauds the war effort and warns against the Spanish Influenza.)
This master record as already noted is a negative. The record which we play on our machine is a positive, the exact reproduction of the original wax disc, and, of course, must be pressed from a negative. There is no reason why records could not be made from the master record, except that it is much too valuable and would soon be worn out in the press. So from the copper master record there is cast still another, a positive, known as the mother record. Several of these are made from each master record, the material being an alloy of copper and nickel, harder than the master record itself. And from these mother records—positives—are cast the stampers, from which the actual records of commerce are pressed. The stampers, of a still harder metal than the mother records, are negatives. The final record which dispenses sweet music for you at home is, it will be noted, the fifth stage in the process...
I’m particularly struck by the guitar solo here. The guitar didn’t take much of a starring role in big-band jazz until the 1930s and the rise of the electric guitar; an acoustic instrument just couldn’t cut through the noise of a large swing group. But the guitar solo on “Hot and Bothered,” by the great Lonnie Johnson, comes through crisp and clear.
Here, for reference, is a recording taken from a standard record:
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In response to yesterday’s TotD on Beethoven’s “Für Elise,” reader Andrew deValpine points to an outstanding cover from the Peruvian chicha band Los Destellos:
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