dimanche 29 Oct 2006, 18h28m
I've seen a few people on last.fm talk about their top ten tracks, as shown by the site. It struck me that it might be interesting to look at the less-listened to tracks. Everyone knows the Beach Boys and the National Pep are good, but what about more obscure stuff? So I've looked at the bottom of my overall charts, and picked out the twenty lowest ones I have on my computer (as opposed to stuff I've listened to via streaming radio or off CDs), and playlisted them. I may do this every week, and post it both to my LJ and to my last.fm account. I may not have much to say about some of these, which may explain why they're at the bottom of the list. But at least they're tracks where Holly won't keep complaining I always play them…
18,000 Lira . This song makes almost no impression on me. It sounds like pretty much everything else they do - punky, with an interesting but limited vocalist. To be honest, it sounds like the kind of thing my old band Stealth Munchkin might have done had we had more of a sense of humour. It has the virtue of brevity, at least.
I Touched The Sun. This is a very pleasant ballad, which sounds like it was written by Salisbury's frequent collaborator Curt Boettcher (I don't have the writing credits to hand). Salisbury is someone who's neglected a lot - those who like early Nilsson, or Paul Williams and Roger Nichols, could do a lot worse than checking him out. He had a glorious voice, and made a few great records (his versions of Come Softly and With Me Tonight are extraordinary).
Should I Cry . I downloaded this primarily for the classic Sit Down, I Think I Love You, and for the fact that some of their arrangements were done by Van Dyke Parks. This one is pretty much soft-pop by numbers - overlush strings and unison male-female vocals, not a million miles from The Mamas & The Papas or The Fifth Dimension, but the breakdown to just the bass drum playing the Bo Diddley beat is interesting.
We're Going To Bring It On Home . Not one of the Bonzos' better songs, this Innes ballad is primarily notable for the contrast between the dissonant horns of the chorus and the more mellow tones of the verse. It sounds like it's trying to parody something, but I'm not quite sure what - a fault that happens sometimes in lesser Bonzos work.
Complicated Life. A very pleasant country-tinged ballad, from the point where the band were trying once again to look to America, but still had the music-hall tinge to their songs. The nicest song so far, but we've not yet got to anything life-changing.
Standing In For Joe . I think this may be the last song Colin Moulding wrote for the band, and by this point his stuff wasn't really fitting with Andy Partridge's music. While the idea of the song ( being asked to 'look after' someone's girlfriend while they're away) is interesting, something lacks in the execution. The 'love is like a river' section is great though.
Wonderful (1st vocal overdub). This is the version of this song from Smiley Smile, but with only the sparse instrumental track and Carl Wilson's lead vocal (plus the full 'hey baba reba' section), and is, of course, utterly, heartbreakingly beautiful. For those who don't know this song, it's the record She's Leaving Home would be if the Beatles had been infinitely more talented. The song is one of the two or three best ever written, and while I love Brian Wilson's recent top 30 remake from Smile, this is still the best version of it out there, with a gorgeous, gorgeous vocal.
Brontosaurus. And this is the record that Helter Skelter wants to be. A slow, grungy, loud metal song by the most overlooked of the great 60s bands. Silly as hell, and I think Cheap Trick covered it. Not as good as Roy Wood's powerpop classics, but still a great little track.
Field Of Diamonds . A better production than song, this is mostly worth listening to for Cash's performance (and the wonderful harmonies, some of which sound like his wife June Carter). There seems to be a pattern here - lots of good-but-not-great songs by great people.
She'll Come Back. This is a very forgettable song, in a vaguely sinister, pseudo-exotic style something like Can You Dig It?. Dull.
No Time. This is an attempt to make a record that sounds exactly like the Beatles covering Chuck Berry. It sounds improvised - the words are fun gibberish. Micky Dolenz gives a strong Macca-as-Little-Richard screaming performance, with plenty of 'wow's. A pleasant throwaway.
Then He Kissed Me . You know this one. One of the classic teen-pop records, with wonderful slightly off-key Darlene Love vocals. The one mistake in Jack Nitzsche's superb arrangement is the overlush strings - wisely omitted in the Beach Boys' otherwise note-perfect gender-swap cover, which is the reason that version is slightly better. But still, an absolute classic.
Danny Boy. This is the sort of thing Cash did really well in his later years - a stripped-down version of an old standard, returning to it the emotional impact it always should have had. The accompaniment is almost non-existent, leaving Cash's aged voice sounding very exposed. The weaknesses in the performance (he can't hit the note on 'here') just give it more expression. Gorgeous.
Give My Love To Rose. A far less impressive effort from the same album. An inferior remake of one of his own old songs, this is one of the most cliched country songs ever written - a prisoner (check) is dying (check) and wants to pass a message to his wife (check) and tell his son he's never seen (check)… well, you get the picture. The song worked OK on the Folsom Prison album, but here it doesn't come across so well.
Expecting. A standard White Stripes riff-rocker, album filler, but decent enough for what it is.
Baby Yeah Yeah . Los Shakers, for those who don't know, were Uruguay's answer to the Beatles (whether the Beatles replied in turn is not on record). This is a perfect example of their early stuff - it's a great early-60s British beat song, pitched somewhere between the Beatles ca Beatles For Sale and the first few Kinks albums, but with lyrics in an English that is ever-so-slightly off. Not as good as their classic single Break It All, but still a very nice genre piece.
Skin & Bone . A boogie track about someone who's paying too much attention to eating healthily, and now 'looks like skin and bones'. One of the few songs to have the word 'carbohydrates' in the chorus. I suspect that the lines about meditation are a jab at Dave Davies, who believes in more than his share of newage nonsense (although he was never a healthy liver in any other way). The song eventually turns into Dem Bones, and it was never far from it. A jolly, slightly pointed, Kinks singalong in the vein of Harry Rag, but with a New Orleans horn section.
Watching Rainbows. One of the few unreleased Beatles songs that is actually a song, more or less, this is a John Lennon song from the Get Back era whose lyric is not yet fully worked out, but has a few decent lines ('Standing in the garden waiting for the sun to come and make me brown so I can be someone'). The band are clearly feeling their way around the arrangement (in fact the guitar and keyboard parts, tightened up, would be used in I've Got A Feeling). It never gets past the first two half-written verses, and descends into a jam on the riff from Hey Bulldog, but this had the potential to be better than much of Let It Be had the song ever been properly completed. But then, that's not hard.
Scissor Man . For those of you who still haven't heard XTC, this song is a great example of their early work. A spiky punk-pop song (Franz Ferdinand and the Kaiser Chiefs, among others, have based entire careers around the first couple of XTC albums), with lyrics based on the old Struwwelpeter story about the scissorman who cuts off the thumbs of boys who suck them - 'So be good and never poison people/Just think twice before the deed is done/When you wake up guilty in the morning/You may find important pieces gone'. A marvelous little album track
Dark End Of The Street . At the beginning of this Dan Penn says 'Everybody keeps asking me what's my favourite version of Dark End Of The Street, as if there was any other than James Carr's'. Well, exactly. But Penn still turns in a great performance of his own song, with Oldham providing sensitive, minimal keyboards and harmonies. While James Carr put his stamp on this so firmly that no-one else should even attempt to equal him, it's a song that's hard to mess up, and Penn carries it off well.