Showing posts with label Sinead O'Connor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sinead O'Connor. Show all posts

Monday, January 2, 2023

IN MEMORIAM: TERRY HALL

The reaper has reaped a grim toll this last year, many across these last few weeks of the year. Including this, which surprised me quite how much it affected me. 

I guess I had always thought of myself as somewhat a casual fan of the Specials, thinking the less than a handful of discs I owned was representative more of a general broad based enthusiasm for a range of styles and genres. Until, that is, I appreciated quite how few they had made, and that I had them all. Living in the English Midlands I could hardly be unaware of them, with Coventry just down the road. Already a fan of reggae, it wasn't all that much of a jump into the actually slightly older musical form, ska, which pre-existed the slower loping rhythm I was more familiar with. This music was faster and spikier, and, as presented by the Two Tone movement, seemed an exciting mix of punk with reggae. The fact that it bridged the racial divide, black and white, at a time when racism was running amok in the UK also appealed, an aggressive eff you to the National Front, the only white lives matter movement of the day. A whole rash of singles exploded out of Coventry, a divided post-industrial city with more than its fair share of deprivation and despair, introducing The Specials, Madness and The Selecter in the first wave. Hell, even Elvis Costello jumped on board, if briefly. The year was 1979.

Gangsters

The Specials looked and sounded if they meant business, with a three man front line of two, frankly, scary black dudes in suits, shades and pork-pie hats, jumping around in a lively fashion about a sardonic looking white guy, Fred Perry shirt and scowl, he looking both out of place and time, blankly chanting his lyrics, often of alienation and angst. Behind them a four piece band, often six, with a core of goons skanking on keyboards, guitar, bass and drums, augmented by a trombone and flugelhorn pairing, each decidedly atypical instrumentation for the charts. The sardonic singer was Terry Hall, who died only weeks ago, of disseminated pancreatic cancer, itself only weeks before the band were scheduled to start their third comeback recording, a selection of reggae standards, and probably others, in their own idiosyncratic style.

A Message to You, Rudy

Gangsters was their starting point, and, boy did they look it, followed swiftly by a reprise of an old reggae hit of the 60's, A Message To You, Rudy, actually a plea for the wild youth of that day, the Kingston Jamaica 'Rude Boys' to calm down and act more responsibly. So far, so good, exciting tunes for exciting times, the first album featuring much of the same, energetic and straightforward. But, evolving into their second album, it was clear there was deeper thought than dancing and the charts. For the single, Stereotype was at a whole different level, a drawling put down of the hand that might have been seeing to feed them, a damning indictment of inner city chaotic lives. It then took the spooky cadence and worryingly prescient Ghost Town to finally place them at the top of the UK chart, the band having to have been content with five of their earlier singles being merely top 10 material. These latter two came from More Specials, an actually quite difficult album to enjoy, the singles apart. 

Ghost Town

With internal frictions within, the three front men, Hall, Lynval Golding and Neville Staple jumped ship, forming the Fun Boy Three, who took the odd disparacy of their appearances further, Hall looking increasingly bizarre alongside the two West Indians. The Lunatics (Have Taken Over The Asylum) was their opening salvo, more post punk than ska, and they too became a chart staple, most memorably a brace of singles with the female band, Bananarama. 

The Lunatics (Have Taken Over the Asylum)

When the Fun Boy Three also imploded, Hall took part in a number of collaborations, starting with The Colourfield, who produced a couple of well received albums, partly collaborating with Liverpool mover and shaker, Ian Broudie, of the Lightning Seeds. Further work included the trio, Terry, Blair & Anouschka and Vegas, a joint effort with the ex-Eurythmic, Dave Stewart, which bombed. A couple of fully solo albums, Home, in 1994, and Laugh, in 1997. I confess he had, by now, since the Colourfield in fact, had fallen off my radar.

Ballad of a Landlord

He came back with a bounce when the Specials decided to reform, in 2008. In fact, the band had never fully folded, and the keyboard player, Jerry Dammers, had kept the b(r)and alive as, initially, the Special AKA. Various members left and re-joined, making no great headway. When Dammers left to form his free form jazz ensemble, The Spatial AKA Orchestra, this led the door open for a number of opportunities, with first a Golding and Staple Specials Mark 2, featuring also some of the backing band, notably Roddy Radiation, guitar, and Horace Panter, bass. Lurching forward, some staying, some going, it was only in 2008 that something more concrete could emerge, when Hall again re-united. With six of the seven originals present, only Dammers was absent, he claiming he had ben pushed out and that 'his' band had been subject to a takeover. 

The Lunatics (Reprise)

By 2013 they were ready to start recording, but Staple again left, followed swiftly by Radiation. Drummer John Bradbury then died, so it was a somewhat reconstructed band that produced and made Encore, in 2019, the album escalating to the top of the album chart within a week. The songs were still deeply politicised, but there was now a far greater sense of gravity. Prior to Covid the band went on a mammoth tour and experienced sell-outs every step of the way. Then, ground to a halt by the virus, the band miraculously cooked up a further album, a masterful selection of covers, entitled, in no great change of direction, Protest Songs. Here's what I had to say about it over on Covermesongs. To be honest I felt this their strongest work so far, and Hall had never sounded or looked stronger. Or more in control. No small feat for a man who had outed himself to a personal history of sexual abuse, having been abducted by a teacher at his school aged 12. Which sort of explained his odd affect and the air of melancholy that hung over him, of the deep and buried issues within. 

Everybody Knows

The Specials were on a high. Never having caught them live, they were very much on my bucket list of bands to see. (Indeed, I had had even had tickets for the tour expunged by the virus.) I was looking forward to the projected reggae album, hoping for a summer tour, maybe taking in a summer festival or two. And then came the news. This description, by erstwhile bandmate, Panter, spelt it out best, presenting the facts with evident love and shock. I was shocked by how upset I felt. I still am.

R.I.P., Terry. By way of farewell, here is another cover that exemplifies his awkward and quirky charm, featuring Sinead O'Connor, unusually with hair.

All Kinds of Everything



Friday, March 12, 2021

MR/MS: JACKSON

Anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of this site will appreciate that there is likely little hip hop demographic within the reading or the writing. By way neither of apology or excuse, I guess this is a an age and colour thing, old white guys seldom experts outside their narrow zones of comfort. If I were younger, maybe a bit more: my son was a huge fan of the genre twenty odd years ago and certainly gave me limitless opportunity to absorb, wanted or not. And, I admit, largely not. But, as I peruse my i-tunes, I have rather more than I realised, and have no little grudging respect for certain artists, tending to prefer the melodic to the militant, the abstract to the angry. Like this, the contrast between the staccato delivery of the verses and the dreamy chorus grabbing my ears back then, even as I was scrubbing the graffiti off my son's bedroom walls.

Now, I guess I could now make this a hastily regurgitated precis of the life and times of the band, OutKast, or the duo, as they were, but I fear my sources would be obvious. Plus, we can all read wikipedia for ourselves, but I hadn't realise that the song relates to the relationship of Andre 3000, one of the pair, with singer Erykah Badu, or more specifically with her mother, the Ms "Jackson" the lyrics are addressed to. Whilst not necessarily a fan of the individual, she apparently loved the song, a fair bit more, in fact, than her daughter, who found it a little close to the bone. So, nearly avoiding also any clumsy link to the other OutKast song in my collection, lets celebrate a couple or so other Ms Jacksons...

Wanda Jackson isn't either actually quite my demographic, this little ditty hailing from the year of my birth, and comes from days when cultural sensitivities were, shall we say, less well honed. But, as a piece of rough hewn rockabilly, it certainly has some pizazz and she has continued ploughing that field right up until, astonishingly, as recently as 2012, that being when her last record was released. Little had changed.

So which one's Luscious, you ask? And given the Lucious, no s, Jackson was a male basketball player, and after whom this all-girl band named themselves, does this fit the strict criterion I apply to all my nonsense. Hell, no, but it's my post, and I like the band, as much for being there as for the music they produced.

Jade Jackson is/was 'One of 10 New Country Artists You Should Know", according to Rolling Stone in 2017, and has a bit more balls than many of the winsome souls who that sort of category might have you bringing to mind. In fact, she has me thinking more of a modern day Wanda. I know little of her beyond this song, but I like it. In fact, I may go check out some of her other work.

From the present back to the past I tread, desperately trying to bypass the Ms Jackson that is Janet, Mahalia being one I cannot possible exclude, a truly majestic vocal presence that lingers to this day. Whether gospel is or not your thing, I defy you to ignore the power and presence displayed. No wonder that Sinead O'Connor chose to revisit just this song for her latest come-back.

Who's your favourite Ms Jackson?

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

WITCH: BEWITCHED,BOTHERED AND BEWILDERED


The Great American songbook is something that has me normally running for the hills, especially when utilised as a vehicle for ageing rockers who have overdrawn on their inspirations. Most such vanity projects have given such a bad name to the originals that one could be fooled too that the originals are cheesy and cheap.  And sometimes they are, but there are a bevy of writers of such reliability that any such fear is misplaced. These would include Cole Porter, the Gershwins  and Richard Rodgers, cited mainly as three who transcend the celluloid vintage of their origin and can hold their heads up against often the most lumpen of current interpreters. My title song, above, as played out by Ella (do I really have to add) Fitzgerald, was written by Richard Rodgers (music) and Lorenz Hart (lyrics). Although Ella was not the first, and, as someone I totally didn't "get" until maybe a decade ago, arguably she provides the definitive  version. Quite how I couldn't see past the elderly and bespectacled, grandmarmy-like woman she had become, now defies me, it taking my Uncle George, a jazz lover who instilled in me the love of music if not, initially or necessarily, his tastes, to get me to see with my ears open, hear with my eyes open. He played me some Aretha Franklin, shocking me with his eclecticism, seamlessly then comparing and contrasting with Ella, getting me to allow both in my appreciation.

It's a great song, though, isn't it? From a 1940 musical, Pal Joey, it was originally sung by a Vivienne Segal on Broadway, reprised in a revival, 14 years later, with an ongoing life of it's own since then, with perhaps the most bizarre appearance coming in the UK royalty biopic, The Crown, as possibly sung by King George V and his daughter, Princess Margaret.
Here are three of the better contemporary versions. (With apologies to those who would say otherwise, Frank doesn't count as sufficiently contemporary.)


Boz Scaggs has one of those voices that hinges on the cusp of being just, and only just, right, fitting no definition of being good in any accepted classical sense. But, on the right material, perfect. Personally I am no lover of peak Boz, his disco years, Lido Shuffle and all that, much preferring his earlier and later more blues based work. But here, the juxtaposition of his strained holler alongside the consummate lounge jazz setting, is a glorious peanut butter/jelly combination. It comes from a 2003 release, But Beautiful: Standards, Volume 1. Strangely, no second volume has yet appeared.


Rufus Wainwright adores this stuff and it adores him. Many say he sings like a corncrake; I have to say I differ, finding his high camp self-belief so intoxicating as to have me forget the sentimentality of (some of) his material and the archness of his presentation. This version shouldn't really do it, as he milks the saccharine and cloys it to near curdle. But I love it. Just don't tell anyone. This comes from the film of Alan Bennett's The History Boys, my imagination that Bennett himself would be not amiss to crooning along with it.


Yes, that Jeff Lynne, Mr E.L.O. Astonishing, as I really cannot abide most of his output, in particular some of his trademark mannerisms, the echolalia backing vocals, for one, which threaten to appear here, retreating, thankfully,  just as swiftly. This avoids the tweeness he often can bring to material, his voice managing to sound warm and genuine. It doesn't even make me think, that much, of the Beatles. Like the Boz Scaggs above, this comes from an oft overlooked record in his canon, Long Wave, in 2012, a album entirely of covers from the 40s and into the 50s.

Of course, there are some other crackers, Linda Ronstadt and Sinead O'Connor, as two women who have the pipes to nail it, each capable of singing the phone book and still sounding sweet. And clunkers aplenty, mentioning no names.

Bewitched? Boz, Rufus, Jeff. Or just Ella.


Wednesday, May 4, 2016

MOM: THIS IS TO MOTHER YOU/Sinead O'Connor


Being a mother may not be the first thought about Sinead O'Connor. Indeed, many may go further and say maybe more a mother-something than a mother, such is her ability to annoy and antagonise so many groups in society, whether the catholic church or the estate of one Prince Rogers Nelson. But she strikes me a someone who deserves some recognition of this aspect of her life, most of her 4 children having songs in overt dedication to them in her discography. Let's also not forget her own turbulent childhood, with her mother taking most of the blame for myriad accusations made of abuse toward her, and possibly thus, I wonder, the catalyst to her maverick talent. Motherhood seems to hold very mixed emotion for her, struggling to avoid her experience of her own mother colouring the experience her children have of her, through all of this gaining some sort of skewed acceptance of what seems to have been a fractured childhood. This piece is not to stare goggle-mouthed at her sideshow, but to accept and to celebrate her songs about this no small part of her life and her muse.

Universal mother was her 4th album, it's title playing on a matriarchal deity and her own motherhood, several of the songs being near lullabys to her eldest child, John, including this one, below, 'John, I Love You,'


and 'My Darling Child.' (Here let me advocate breaking a rule of mine and actually reading the Youtube comments made under the clips, being nearly all words of praise and amazement for these simple hymns, with seldom a troll in sight.)


In 1997, 3 years after 'Universal Mother' came the EP, 'Gospel Oak', from which the title song of this piece comes. Here the lyric is more ambiguous, uncertain whether addressed to a child or a lover. Or even to her own  mother, killed in a car crash some 10 years earlier? It sounds a song of a bitter forgiveness to me.

Flash forward several years, to 2012, and there comes this further confessional, 'I Had a Baby', the lyric marveling the outcome of the relationship that led to that child, now appreciating a greater insight as to how the child has to deal with the manner of their procreation, and creators. I can't think of any other artist laying open their life so honestly in song.


I have no way of knowing how "good" a mother is Sinead, or even, frankly, quite what that means. It isn't my concern, either. What I do know, however, is that, as a parent, most of us muddle through and do our best, and I am sure she is no different. But, should her 4 ever doubt their mothers love, these songs surely give a greater power and demonstration than many of us get to ever keep. Keep well, Sinead, keep strong.

Buy I Want to Mother You, noting, with irony, that the hard copy starts at a cent and runs to near $90. So how do you define the worth of motherhood?

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

JOHN: WARDLE





John Wardle. You've never heard of him, have you? However you may well be forgiven for that, as I suspect there are few, apart from his mother and various aunties, who still call him that, as he has spent most of the last 30 plus years with the somewhat more grandiose name of Jah Wobble. I appreciate that, stateside, that may still be a name less well known, but he oughtn't to be, as he is that rarity, a true enthusiast who has steadfastly ploughed his own furrow, exploring the wider frontiers of dubby bass motifs across any number of genres, and been allowed to. The only remotely similar reference would be Bill Laswell, who has been doing the same with his bass guitar across a similar time period. (Perhaps unsurprisingly they have worked together, of which more later.)

A schoolboy contemporary of both Johns, Lydon (nee Rotten) and Ritchie (aka Sid Vicious), he was an early consideration for replacing Glen Matlock in the Sex Pistols, before that particular job went to Ritchie, but he did hook up with Lydon eventually, in the first incarnation of Public Image Limited. Having been bowled over by the playing of Aston "Family Man" Barrett of Bob Marley's Wailers, reggae, and in particular, dub, was always a hefty part of his style. Indeed, he was one of the audience, apparently, at Marley's legendary Live at the Lyceum recording of 1975, along with the other hundreds of thousands who claim to have been in this small dance hall, capacity 2,100, that night.

After a clash of the usual musical differences, fuelled by substantive substance abuse issues, Wobble left P.I.L. in 1980 to start his body of solo material, coming into contact with various ex-members of Can along the way, collaborating therewith, picking up much of their freestyle experimental vibe. His first successful venture was as the bandleader of the Invaders of the Heart, which plunged the evanescent world music genre into a melting pot with dub and mystical overtones. With a central core of Wobble, Can metronome Jaki Liebeszeit on drums and current Robert Plant sidesman Justin Adams on guitar, live and studio performances were augmented by whomsoever had a broad enough palette to be involved, from pedal steel maestro B.J. Cole to the singers Sinead O'Connor, Natacha Atlas and Dolores O'Riordan. Further scuffles with drink and drugs necessitated a period away from and disillusionment with music, spending some years as a station announcer for the London Underground, where his deadpan vocal fitted the part perfectly.

1986 saw sobriety beckon and a return to music, now with a dedication encroaching on obsession, bringing his basso profundo into all and any genre previously untouched, from folk to free jazz, Chinese Chamber Music to dance/electronica. Collaborations with Bill Laswell were, unsurprisingly very, very heavy on the lower registers.

I first saw the Invaders of the Heart at Glastonbury in, I think, 1994, astonished at the prescient pulse of the band, a good decade ahead of the now routine meshing and melding of almost counter-intuitive musical paradoxities. Since then I have picked up a number of his recordings, and his discography is immense, never being disappointed if sometimes a little bemused. Somehow he has also managed to study and attain a degree in Humanities, at Birkbeck College in London, as well as write book reviews, poetry and a volume of autobiography.

Bringing him right up to date, he has recently revisited his P.I.L era work, as a duo with his erstwhile colleague therein, guitarist Keith Levene, not necessarily to Mr Lydons pleasure, he also out on the road with a similar project. And only this month he has brought out "Jah Wobble presents PJ Higgins", a vehicle to promote the eponymous Dub Colossus vocalist. I bought it last week and it is typically marvellous.

Friday, April 11, 2014

Anniversary-Go Deeper: My First---Ship of Fools


World Party: Ship of Fools
[purchase]

The second Star Maker Machine theme was perversely, “My First,” and it was designed to have people post about the first 45, LP, cassette, CD and digital download they ever bought with their own money. After all these years, I can’t remember which was the first 45 or LP I used my own money for, and I have no recollection what my first download was, but for some reason, I do remember my first CD, World Party’s Private Revolution, which was released in 1987. I’m pretty sure that I didn’t even own a CD player at that point, but I knew that I was going to be getting one shortly. I saw it on sale, used, in a small record store on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and figured, why not—I knew it was good.

It was a big step for me. I had many, many records—more than is probably healthy, but I also saw that the music world was moving toward the digital, and I knew that I would be following. I’ve never been an audiophile, so I won’t weigh in on the “vinyl through a good system sounds better than CDs” debate, but I did appreciate that CDs didn’t scratch (as easily) as records.

World Party was really just a solo project from Karl Wallinger, who played most of the instruments (although a pre-fame Sinead O’Connor and Waterboy Anthony Thistlewaite contributed a little), and this album, his debut, had a nice pop feel to it, with clear Beatles/ELO and Prince influences. There also was a message of world improvement, and what can be bad about that? “Ship of Fools” was a minor hit in the U.S. and U.K. and a slightly bigger one in Australia. It took Wallinger a few years to release the more successful Goodbye Jumbo, and he spaced out 3 more albums, the last of which was released in 2000. Since then he has recovered from a brain aneurysm (!), worked on films and other musical projects, and toured.

After buying Private Revolution, and an actual CD player, my CD buying ramped up and my LP buying decreased. At some point, I started to replace LPs with CD’s often used from eBay. At a certain point, I stopped replacing the needle on my turntable, and following a renovation of our house, which eliminated the shelves where I had stored my albums, they have remained in boxes in my basement waiting, for, I don’t know what. Getting rid of them seems complicated, because I suspect that most of the collection is worthless for various reasons, and I know that I have a certain sentimental hesitancy to part with a collection that I spent time, money and effort amassing through my youth.

I now find myself buying more digital downloads than CDs, so that collection, which supplanted the vinyl, and is currently bursting out of its shelf space is growing much more slowly. (And the digital collection is pushing the limits of my iPod Classic).

Although as I mentioned, I cannot recall the first song I ever downloaded digitally, because I admittedly partook of the early smorgasbord of Napster and similar questionable services, I do know that the first song I downloaded from eMusic was a song called “AYSO” by #Poundsign#, a tune about the soccer organization to which I have devoted an incredible amount of time over the past nearly two decades, and which I continue to serve, even though my kids have long since stopped playing.

Sunday, August 4, 2013

UNUSUAL COLLABORATIONS: Willie Nelson and Sinead O'Connor



Don't Give Up
Purchase! Now!!

Well, it had to be Willie, didn't it? I'm uncertain whether it is his  work ethic or his tax-bill that keeps him going, seemingly effortlessly pumping out album after album after album, whether in his comfort zone of country, or all over the shop, with Toots Hibbert, Wynton Marsalis and Snoop Dogg all coming into his radar of potential partners. I was struggling to wonder what the grizzled old crooner might have in common with, allegedly, many of these collaborators from genres afar from his own. Then I remembered.
This is perhaps slightly more orthodox, yet still an inspired duet, not least as the song's author adds to a trirumvirate you would somehow feel surprised to see shooting the breeze together, in your local Starbucks or similar.

I don't know the story of how this came about, but I like to think good old avuncular Willie took to the beleaguered and distressed Sinead at the Dylan tribute concert. Yeah, yeah, I know Kris Kristofferson has taken most of the acclaim for the public consoling of her, on the "unexpected" reaction she received to her papal dissing, but I can imagine all the older guys feeling a little for her gamine weepiness. (Was Willie even there? I forget.) Anyhow, this, the standout track from the standout Peter Gabriel LP, So,  takes on the same mantle for his LP of, largely, covers, 1993's Across the Borderline. This was my first exposure to Willie Nelson, since when I have been avid in my admiration for his ability to transcend any concept of ageing, and to keep on delivering, by and large, competent goods.The fact I am a huge acolyte of Sinead helps here, another individual unafraid to explore similar dalliances into reggae, folk and "standards", undaunted of the response. (And, BTW, her folk and reggae albums are the best of her work, in my humble.)

An interesting interview with Peter Gabriel in Mojo this month told me something I didn't know,that being that PGs original choice for the Kate Bush part in his version was Dolly Parton. Somehow making Willie Nelson's choice of it as a song worthy of covering somehow all the more appropriate.

Friday, August 27, 2010

Torch Songs: Nothing Compares 2 U



Sinead O'Connor: Nothing Compares 2 U

[Purchase]

These days torch songs don't often make the charts, or at least the ones that sound as melancholy as the subject matter within them don't. But one of the saddest and most beautiful torch songs to have made it to #1 in the last few decades was Sinead O'Connor's fantastic cover of the Prince-written "Nothing Compares 2 U".

Back in 1990 when this song came out people were blown away by not only the beauty of the song, but by the simplistic and emotional video that went with it. A video mostly of O'Connor staring at the camera and singing, and at one point a single tear rolls down her cheek as you know she's feeling the words she's singing. If you ask me, Nothing Compares 2 this song.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Advice: Scorn Not His Simplicity



Sinead O'Connor: Scorn Not His Simplicity

[purchase]

Universal Mother is the last Sinead O'Connor record that I liked at all, and I didn't even like it all that much. It is a bit of a spotty album containing, on the one hand, a couple of the best songs she has ever written (e.g., John I Love You) and on the other some real throw-away tracks (e.g., Fire In Babylon, Red Football).


The featured track is a sweet little song about a child with mental disabilities of some kind who is rejected by other children and cried over by his mother. Sinead's advice is to "scorn not his simplicity but rather try to love him all the more". This is respectable advice coming from Sinead O'Connor, who, even though her earnestness often overshadows her messages, really has been a tireless advocate of children's rights for the last 20 years.


Monday, June 9, 2008

Advice: 10 more don'ts from Divinyl




We had a power cut round my way, it lasted most of the evening and night. I get back and there are about a trillion posts! In an effort to catch up, and to cut down my list of things I want to post a little, I give you ten great songs which give advice on what not to do. There's a fine line between advice and plea or command, but I reckon these fall on the side of guidance.


Leonard Cohen: Don't Go Home With Your Hard-On

[purchase]

Mr Cohen in unusually upbeat, lighthearted mode,

"Don't go home with your hard-on, it will only drive you insane"!

The Byrds: Don't Doubt Yourself, Babe

[purchase]

"Let your feet stand up for your beliefs, babe...let what's inside be your guide".

Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Don't Take Everybody To Be Your Friend

[purchase]

Worthy advice from the singing Sister.

Doris Duke: Don't Let the Green Grass Fool You

[purchase]

From the truly excellent I'm A Loser: The Swamp Dog Sessions.

Peggy Lee: Don't Smoke In Bed

[purchase]

A wistful song - advice to her lover as she leaves him.

Willie Nelson and Sinead O'Connor: Don't Give Up

[purchase]

A great cover of the Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush song.

Guns n Roses: Don't Cry (Alt. Lyrics)

[purchase]

What can I say? This is my teenage rock kid roots at the fore. And features vocals by the late Shannon Hoon of Blind Melon.

Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson: Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys

[purchase]

I shouldn't think that this one needs any introduction...a classic.

The Cramps: Don't Eat Stuff Off the Sidewalk

[purchase]

"Let me give you some advice..."

"You don't need it, so don't eat it"

Michael Jackson: Don't Stop Til You Get Enough

[purchase]

Mr Jackson, back when he was still good!
.