Music

After Stacey Lester posted his 12 favorite song covers on Facebook, I couldn’t help myself but to compile my own list. In no particular order:

Andrew Bird – Don’t Be Scared
Originally performed by the Handsome Family
Drastic reinterpretation. Don’t miss the reprise at the end. Love the 3 bar loop over 4.

Groove Collective – Martha My Dear
Originally performed by the Beatles
One of the most abstract covers I’ve heard, but still great.

Audrye Sessions – Waltz #2 (XO)
Originally performed by Elliott Smith
There have been lots of albums dedicated to covering Smith, but almost all tracks fall short. I think I got it bad for intimate reinterpretations.

Estradasphere – Super Buck 2
Originally performed by Kōji Kondō
Ah, nostalgia. Also check out this take on the classic song.

Toots & the Maytals – Louie Louie
Originally performed by Richard Berry
Ahh, so much more personality…

Jose González – Heartbeats
Originally performed by the Knife
Taken from an elctropop song, this is further proof that I love a good intimate music.

Jose Feliciano – Golden Lady
Originally performed by Stevie Wonder
Great take on an all-time classic with a samba twist.

Phantom Planet & Mark Ronson – Just
Originally performed by Radiohead
I think I have a tendency to like Radiohead covers more than the originals. I know, blasphemy to some…

Easy Star All Stars w/ Citizen Cope – Karma Police
Originally performed by Radiohead
All the songs on the Radiodread album are surprisingly good; you’d expect a reggae cover album to come out cheesy, but it works.

Wynton Marsalis – Thelonious
Originally performed by Thelonious Monk
One of my favorite tracks by my favorite jazzman covered with a little kick

Derrick Laro & Trinity – Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough
Originally performed by Michael Jackson
The falsetto isn’t as strong as MJ, but for some reason it makes me like it more.

Steve Martin & Bernadette Peters – Tonight You Belong To Me
Originally performed by Gene Austin
Special moment from the greatest comedy of all time.

Here are all the songs for you to download: Covers.zip

Around the age of 10, I started discovering music that I felt that was meant for me for the first time. The first band that I ever latched onto was Faith No More, but that quickly turned into a strong connection to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. My friend Kaley and I were drawn to their high-energy aggressiveness in songs like Stone Cold Bush and Get Up And Jump¹. Being from a little town of 3,000 people limits one’s exposure at that age to what you can get on the MTV; the Chili Peppers was IT for us.

We would slowly branch out to discover music through them. I became a lifelong Fishbone fan and my first concert was Firehose, both bands mentioned in RHCP songs. We knew that George Clinton produced the RHCP album “Freaky Styley” and found out that Kaley’s dad had Funkadelic’s “Standing On The Verge of Getting It On” on vinyl. Kaley would turn the RPM to 45 and yell, “IT SOUNDS JUST LIKE THE PEPPERS!”

One late night around this time, I turned the channel to PBS and caught this:

I was blown away and I called Kaley the next day to tell him about what I saw. At the time, I wasn’t resourceful enough to be able to find out who they even were. That added to their intrigue, but I soon discovered that it was Sly and the Family Stone and I was an instant fan. I wanted to know as much as I could about the man and his group.

Strange thing is, for Sly Stone (who led the group) being such an interesting story – stealing the show at what may be the most legendary concert of all time to hitting rock bottom while being on the run from the FBI – only little bits of info has come out about him in the last 35 years.² In 2007, Vanity Fair did a seven-page article regarding his sabbatical and potential emergence; This last September was the first complete biography³, “I Want To Take You Higher“, of the man and the band was released. The book reveals a little, but upon my reading felt incomplete. UPDATE: I just learned of another bio that came out in Feb. of ’08 that I haven’t yet read.

BUT, what I’ve discovered after reading Higher is that the Dutch are NUTS for the man. I found that in 1992, two Dutch film students set out to document their search for Sly in “Let Me Have It All” (their results are below); Another Dutch documentary about Sly, “Dance To The Music” just finished completion and was aired on Dutch television. AND, another biography written by two Dutch twins that has been in the works since 2002 is set to be released in early 2010.

Back in ’97, when the web was still in its infancy, a Sly and the Fam fan-site webmaster⁴ was flown to LA by Sly specifically to teach him how to browse the web on a computer. During this time, he was allowed to hear Sly’s 15-year backlog of unreleased material. Since hearing this account⁵, I’ve fantasized of Sly coming back and releasing a huge backlog of unheard material.

These days, Sly is slowly making more public appearances; if only a few over the course of the last three years. While I’m sure that it’ll be tough to reach the level of his heyday, I feel that if I just am able to catch a glimpse of the man, however satisfactory, it’ll feel like I’ve completed something; regardless of whether it has any actual merit or not.

PS: The only site that I’ve found that publishes Sly & the Fam news is this one, but they don’t have an RSS feed. I used Feed43 to scrape the news off of this page into this feed: Sly & the Fam News Feed

Let Me Have It All (1994, 48 min)

Preview for the just released Dance To The Music (2008, 2 min)

Jimi and Sly: The Skin I’m In (2000, 60 min)

A feature documentary about the music of Jimi Hendrix and Sly and the Family Stone featuring Rose and Freddie Stone, Sly Stone’s mother, and band members Cynthia, Jerry, Larry, Gregg and David Kapralik, Manager of Sly Stone and his partner. You can watch it with a library card on Kanopy for free.

1. Because jumping is okay in a jumping kind of way (hey-hey). ↩︎
2. Quite possibly by Sly’s own design. He apparently gets excited about the idea of being the Howard Hughes of the music world. ↩︎
3. In ’98, there was a book by Joel Selvin called “Sly & the Family Stone: An Oral History”; in 2000, there was a documentary called “The Skin I’m In” that aired on Showtime. But these were relatively incomplete accounts compared to “I Want To Take You Higher.” For some reason, Jeff Kaliss, author of the latter book, decided to talk shit about these former projects; commenting on their negative tone about the subject matter, which seemed to give the impression to the reader that his book wouldn’t stoop to such lows. I’ve taken in all three, and I’d say that all of them regard the subject matter with much the same tone. ↩︎
4. Remember when web developers were webmasters? ↩︎
5. Jon Dakss, the aforementioned webmaster’s account seems to have disappeared from the web. Anyone have any leads to an archived version? ↩︎

I love discovering overlooked music from back in the day; particularly those that have been used in samples. Below is a mix of all sorts of stuff form the 60′s and 70′s: soul, jazz, mood, Orleans, ska; some of which as been sampled more than just a couple times. I have no real reason to share outside of the hope that someone might share back. If you’ve got an interesting song, please let me know in the comments. I’d love to hear it…

Trinkas – Remember Me:

The intro to this song was used in Jurassic 5′s “Quality Control” in an interlude, but the rest of the song is even better.

Serge Gainsbourg – La Horse:

Harpsichord detective funk, with a touch of banjo. He’s more than just a father of a hot girl who can’t write her own material.

Bob James – Take Me To The Mardi Gras:

Sampled over 40 times, most notably in Run DMC’s “Peter Piper“. Miles Davis even sampled it in the song “Work It”.

Soul Brothers – Free Soul:

Recently caught this one through Lily Allen’s “Smile“. Her producers have good taste…

Toots & the Maytals – Pressure Drop:

I can’t believe these guys are still playing. Their version of Radiohead’s “Let Down” is every bit as good as the original.

Hugh Masekela – Grazin’ in the Grass:

Just played last Sunday in Seattle. Sold 4 million in ’68 as a jazz instrumental.

Gunther Kallmann Choir – Daydream:

This song is showing up a lot these days with Lupe Fiasco and Jill Scott.

Professor Longhair – Big Chief:

Another Lily Allen sample from the song “Knock ‘Em Out“. Their use of this one is more blatant than some of their others.

Jean Jacques Perrey – E.V.A.:

Mostly this guy does quirky show-tunes with crazy bing-bong noises, but this was his hit. Grabbed by Tribe, Dr. Octagon, Gang Starr, etc.

Chosen Few – Collie Stuff:

Covered a few years later by Kool & the Gang and re-branded as “Funky Stuff“.

Vincent Geminiani – Ophis Le Serpentaire:

Heavy French soundtrack mood music.

Bobby Hebb – Sunny:

One of my favorite songs. Not necessarily obscure, as BMI calls it the 25th best song of the last century, but I rarely run into someone who knows it.

Here is the entire set in a .zip file.

Holy Smokes! I’ve been a fan of Andrew Bird for a few years now and have become a bigger fan with each release he’s come out with. His last full album just came out about 2 months ago and I think it’s his best yet; and now he’s on tour to promote it.  I’ve never been able to make it to a show when he’s come, but I caught him last night at the Tractor Tavern and was blown away. He’ll start a song off with a little picking on his violin. Loop it on his Line 6 petal. Layer a little padding and melody over it. Then grab the guitar and sing n’ play over that. Maybe whistle a little line while playing a melody in unison on his glockenspiel. His drummer might be playing one handed while controlling a sample on the laptop or playing something on his MIDI controller.  What really stood out was his whistling. You can’t tell through his records just how good he is at it. But see for yourself (Real Player). That performance gives you an idea…