We briefly had another track posted today (available tomorrow at this link), but then Caroline flagged an April Fool’s mixtape that a reader tweeted at her:
For our periodic series of songs themed on presidential candidates, reader Meg nominates a Leonard Cohen classic for Bernie Sanders:
It’s appropriate on so many levels. The two men have a lot in common in generation and origin, but more importantly, in viewpoints on social justice, equality, individual liberty, and peace. Both are complex, but they are brave in their convictions, and this song addresses hope for the restoration of a functional democracy.
Update from a reader with an alternative pick:
Leonard Cohen is great, but for my money you’d be hard pressed to find a song more explicitly socialist in sentiment than Joseph Arthur's “Travel as Equals.” (There’s a studio version too, but this live version from the Letterman show is somehow far superior.) The message aimed straight at the 1%, and the emotion in Arthur’s vocals seem to me a perfect summation of the core of Bernie’s appeal.
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Then in 1985, Coil covered it. Slowed it down. Released it as a benefit for an AIDS Charity. The slow version brought out a new meaning in the lyrics:
Once I ran to you, now I run from you
This tainted love you’ve given
I give you all a boy could give you
Take my heart and that’s not nearly all
It captured something of the despair and panic (the name of the b-side) of those early AIDS days in the gay and alternative world, where something terrifying was happening. I wasn’t aware of the video at the time, but it leaves little room for misinterpretation. Thirty years later and the emotion still comes through.
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On the Grateful Dead’s American Beauty album, “Friend of the Devil” is a merry jig—a winking description of what fun it is to be an outlaw. Like other cover versions, Lyle Lovett’s take [embedded above] slows the song down. Unlike any others, Lovett makes you feel the narrator’s existential fatigue—both in the way the spare instrumentation evokes the vast isolation of his native Texas and in his delivery of lyrics such as, “If I get home before daylight, I just might get some sleep tonight.”
Update from a reader in North Carolina: “If your correspondent were a real Deadhead, he’d have noted that the Dead also often played ‘Friend of the Devil’ at dirge-like speed.”
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A reader recommends a great song for your commute:
Hi from Spain! I’m an American whose spent quite a bit of time in metros in DC and NYC. If you’ve got a long ride, and don’t have a seat, a good playlist is the key. This song by Belako is for those Mondays when I don’t want to get on the metro and don’t want to go to work. “Key” always slowly wakes me up and puts me in a zen mood. It prevents me from thinking too much about how I’m a squished sardine in the metro.
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I’m pretty sure that if you look up the phrase “bedroom music,” a picture of Barry White is shown. I can’t think of another artist whose every hit sounded like seduction. What an ultra smooth voice he had.
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The Rolling Stones asked what they should play at tonight’s free concert at Ciudad Deportiva de la Habana. Naturally, when the Stones ask for requests, one complies. David and I came up with an elaborate set list, but there was a song we left out—probably because it’s by the Ramones:
The lyrics of the song, which was featured on the band’s eponymous debut album in 1976, appear to refer to the multiple, and ultimately unsuccessful, U.S. attempts to oust Fidel Castro from power through force. Here’s the first verse:
PT boat on the way to Havana
I used to make a living, man
Pickin' the banana
Now I'm a guide for the CIA
Hooray! for the USA
Baby baby make me loco
Baby baby make me mambo
Hooray! for the USA indeed. This week, President Obama became the first U.S. president in 90 years to visit Cuba—something that would have been inconceivable when the Ramones wrote “Havana Affair” at the height of the Cold War. The Stones are likely to be the first of many major Western acts to play in Havana. No word yet on whether their concert made Havanans either “loco” or “mambo.”
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A reader, Joe, adds another great song to the cover series—and the second one to appear from the Reservoir Dogs soundtrack:
I nominate “Hooked on a Feeling” by Blue Swede (1974). The original, by B.J. Thomas, was a sappy, unmemorable love song. This cover version is one of the strangest songs ever to hit to the top of the charts. I remember the first time I heard it, when I was a student in middle school. I thought it had to be a joke or a mistake, with its a cappella “ooga chaggas,” and I’m pretty sure it made me laugh. But there’s actually a lot going on here. Once the song gets rolling, the backing horn section is terrific, and when the “ooga chaggas” return, about halfway through, notice how they are shifted so they don’t match up exactly with the vocals. Even after 40+ years, this version still sounds fresh to me.
Update from a reader:
Blue Swede managed to transform a pretty insipid song into something pretty cool. David Hasselhoff took the opposite tact. He doubled down on the cheese factor and turned it into an epic celebration of sap. Long live The Hoff.
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A reader recommends a song that “I can turn up on repeat”:
I discovered this band, Wild Belle, a few years ago, but their recent release has me pumped for the spring already. “Giving Up on You” takes the opposite approach of “Love to Love You Baby,” in that it compresses everything about a relationship with a bad boy, which was a theme in some earlier songs as well.
Natalie Bergman, one half of the brother-sister psychedelic pop duo Wild Belle, doesn’t shy away from talking about relationships. It’s the constant muse for her songs, the latest of which, “Giving Up On You,” is about a rocky romance she ended shortly after writing the song. “The funny thing is, I was writing about the demise of the relationship before it was even over,” she says. “The song is about overcoming a relationship that was very torturous. I had to destroy it because it was killing me.”
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Fifty-three years ago today—on March 22, 1963—the Beatles released their first album, Please Please Me. The last of the 14 tracks? A rambunctious cover of “Twist and Shout”(the original version was recorded by Top Notes in 1961, followed by a chart-hitting version by The Isley Brothers in 1962):
In the June 2013 issue of The Atlantic, Colin Fleming argued that 1963 was “the year the Beatles found their voice”—in part through a series of covers (how appropriate):
In 1963, the Beatles were exploding in England. Their debut LP, Please Please Me, came out in March, followed by their megahit single “She Loves You” in August. Their second album, With the Beatles, and another hit single, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” followed in the fall. Screaming girls, throngs of fans, bushels of albums being sold—this was when it all started.
But the Beatles were also a veritable human jukebox that year. One of their many commitments was to turn up semi-regularly at the BBC, horse around on air, read requests, make fun of each other, make fun of the presenter, and play live versions of whatever people wanted to hear, whether that was their own material or a vast range of covers: Elvis Presley numbers; obscure rhythm-and-blues songs by lost-to-time bands like the Jodimars; Broadway show tunes; Americana; vamps on Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry; rearrangements of girl-group cuts; torch songs. If you wanted to hear what made the Beatles the Beatles, here is where you would want to start.
My wife and I saw The Who on four of their first seven farewell tours, 1982 to sometime in the 1990s. At least twice, their encore was “Twist and Shout.” Pete Townshend called it “the best song we know,” or words to that effect.
I love the Goldberg Variations [posted Sunday]—especially the Rosalyn Tureck version. She repeats the returns, as written, which makes the recording longer—over 70 minutes, I believe. I know of no better music in which to get lost in contemplation.
Enjoying this series.
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Over the weekend, a reader sent in a raunchy TotD, exploring the idea of songs about sex being songs to have to sex to. But another reader points to a key challenge with understanding the genre this way:
The problem with most songs is that they don’t last long enough. The extended version of Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby” made progress towards solving that problem by running over 16 minutes long, all the while maintaining a steady, uninterrupted rhythm. I suspect that it may have helped many a couple in the 1970s discover the patience necessary to achieve mutual satisfaction (a fairly new concept to some, back in the day).
According to the BBC, the song contained 23 “orgasms”. By that point, the song was renamed “Love to Love You Baby” [the original version didn’t have “Baby”]. It took up the entire first side of the album of the same name, and was also released as a 12" single. Edited versions were also found on 7" vinyl.
(Track of the Day archive here. Access it through Spotify here.)
I know next to nothing about classical music, so I leave it to our regular TOTD contributor to convey the transformative quality of two long compositions to enjoy over the weekend:
Strictly speaking, all classical music is a cover. The originals occurred long before any of us were around.These two tracks are unusual, however, in that it’s the same composition performed by the same musician to very different effects. “The Goldberg Variations” was the first recording Glenn Gould made, done in 1955. Showcasing astounding technical brilliance, the piece rushes head forth over in a scant 38 minutes, bursting with energy.
Gould recorded the Variations again in 1981 [embedded above]. It turned out to be the last piece he ever recorded before his untimely death at 50. This time the pace is considerably slowed (it clocks in at 51 minutes). There is a stately grace to the piece, a maturity found. It’s always seemed to me the two versions are the perfect expression of how we start out and how we end up—different temperaments, but no less impressive on either end.
A couple of words about Gould: A true eccentric, he was a hypochondriac and likely somewhere on the autism spectrum. He hummed while he played (listen closely, you can hear him), often had his nose almost touching the keys and stopped playing concerts in 1964. He had a profound impact on how classical music was recorded and had an equal impact on how Bach and his music was regarded.
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