Acoustic Versions: Post Grunge hits

Dishwalla: Angels or Devils (acoustic)

[purchase]

Live: Lightning Crashes (MTV unplugged)

[purchase]

Pearl Jam: Black (live, acoustic)

[purchase]

Good things come in threes, right? So with this terrific theme of the week, I thought I'd do a little post-grunge triplet featuring three of rock's most melodic male vocalists: J. R. Richards of Dishwalla, Ed Kowalczyk of Live, and Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam. I went through an intense year of oscillating between these three groups and hoovering up all of their music. There's something about all these guy's rich, powerful voices that sends chills up my spine, and I think that these acoustic versions of their 90's hits allows them to really belt 'em out of the park. My favorite, I think, is the Dishwalla number because I'm a real sap for piano.

The Night Sky => Acoustic Versions: Under the Milky Way

The Church: Under the Milky Way

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I have to admit that I never got into the music of The Church. I must have heard the original version of Under the Milky Way in its year, 1988, but I can’t say that I remember it. Listening to the originally released version now, I can hear the tell-tale signs of 80s productions, although they were done about as tastefully as possible. But there is the standard 80s drum beat, and there are the synthesizer fills for emphasis.

This acoustic version comes from a recently reissued version of the album Starfish. I don’t know the background of how this reissue was done, but what had been a single disc of ten songs has swollen to a double-disc set with 22 songs in all. From the sound of this acoustic Milky Way, I’m guessing that it may have been a demo. Instead of that 80s drum part, we have hand percussion. You might mistake the chord fills towards the end for a synthesizer part, but listen more closely and you find that it is actually a melodica. The guitar parts here are looser. But what I like best in this acoustic Milky Way is the way the vocals are recorded. They have a wonderful immediate quality that is missing from the version that was originally released. The differences between the two versions of Milky Way are subtle, almost like finding the hidden pictures in Highlights For Children. But the cumulative effect is remarkable, in favor of the acoustic version.

The Night Sky: Unfunky UFO

Parliament: Unfunky UFO

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“Objects, natural or artificial, real or imagined…” When I posted this week’s theme, I implied that songs about UFOs were fine, but nobody took the bait. Instead, we stuck to natural celestial objects. It made for a great week, but here’s a little taste of what might have been.

When Parliament went out on their 1976 tour for the album Mothership Connection, they created a spectacle. Each show opened with a spaceship landing on stage. A hatch opened, and the band in their outrageous costumes emerge from a cloud of dry ice. I never saw any of these shows, but I heard about them later, and I have seen some pictures. Unfunky UFO could have been their theme song. In the lyric, grooveless aliens from a planet that is dying of unfunkiness come to earth in search of a life-saving groove. Judging from the sound, I would say that they found what they were seeking.

The Night Sky: J-Rock version

Hideto Matsumoto, wearing heat-trapping vinyl

hide: Rocket Dive

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Buck-Tick: Jupiter

[purchase]

Kiyoharu: Venus (Shocking Blue cover)

[purchase]

It's the space-age J-Rock entry you've all been dreading anticipating!

I've posted all these Visual Kei artists before, and I know you remember them all really well, right? The first is by guitarist nonpareil (and romanticized dead rock icon) hide (say it "hee-day"). It's a full-out speed metal tune best enjoyed at full volume while roaring down the highway. The second is a more ethereal song by long-time rockers Buck-Tick. The third is one you'll actually recognize – it's the Shocking Blue song. Like Antony Hegarty, who I posted earlier this week, Kiyoharu has an unusual voice: kinda strangled and with lots of vibrato. His Engrish admittedly doesn't add much to his appeal, either. Nothing anyone can say, though, will dim my love for him.

The Night Sky: Jupiter Rising

Emmylou Harris: Jupiter Rising

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Emmylou Harris is still probably best known as the woman who sang back-up for Graham Parsons, and then went on her own, helping to establish the sound we now call alt-country. But, especially in her later years, Harris has refused to be tied to any single musical genre. Jupiter Rising is a playful and flirty pop song, and its beat almost qualifies it as ska. It’s not the most profound thing Harris has ever done, but it may be the most fun.

The Night Sky: Galaxies

Laura Veirs: Galaxies

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I too feel like I have so much more to share now that we've expanded the year range to include up through 2005. This song appears on Laura Veirs 2005 album "Year of Meteors".

Laura Veirs is an American singer-songwriter, but beyond that I have a hard time catagorizing her music. Depending on the song and album she's somewhere between folk, indie rock and even the occasional ambient sound. She's an artist I was never able to get into as much as I thought I would, but like with many artists, their whole catalog might not grab you, but sometimes there's a song or two which wow you. "Galaxies" is one of those songs.

When you sing, when you sing
The stars fill up my eyes
Galaxies pour down my cheeks
Galaxies, they flood the street

The Night Sky: Soft Black Stars

Antony and the Johnsons: Soft Black Stars

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We've ticked up the latest year that we search for songs to bring you to 2005-ish, which makes me very happy because I can share one of my favorite newer vocalists. Let me state straight up that he's pretty much an acquired taste. I think I've mentioned, though, that I love high-pitched male voices. I also have a bit of a thing for androgyny. So we've got a sure-fire Geoviki kink in Antony Hegarty, an award-winning yet little-known British transsexual artist. (I believe that 'he' is his preferred pronoun; if not, I'll modify it).

Antony usually pens his own music but this ballad/lullaby is a cover of a Current 93 song that he released on an EP in 2001. The piano and violin accompaniment melds beautifully with Antony's intense, intimate vocals, and the delicate lyrics sooth us into contemplating the children and the night sky he sings about.

I'd love to know if you like it too.

The Night Sky: The Comet, The Course, The Tail

Peter Hammill: The Comet, The Course, The Tail

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"While the comet spreads its tail across the sky, it nowhere near defines the course it flies, nor does it find its own direction..." In the old days, a comet was usually seen as a bad omen, a phenomenon heralding coming catastrophes. Progrocker and erstwhile Van Der Graaf Generator frontman Peter Hammill was well aware of this of course when he wrote this impressive existentialist song back in '74. "There is a time set in the calendar when all reason seems barely enough to sustain all the shooting stars: times are rough..."

The Night Sky: Black Star

Gillian Welch: Black Star (Radiohead cover)

[live & unavailable]

Blame it on the black star
Blame it on the falling sky
Blame it on the satellite
That beams me home...

In Radiohead's universe, it seems perfectly natural for a couple's growing distance to be projected into the night sky. After all, Thom Yorke is well known for his tendency towards pensive and disconnected first-person narrators struggling with ways to make sense of a topsy-turvy world, their alienation couched in skewed, cryptic lyrics.

But where the sonic build of spit and static crashes through the original recording [purchase], thickening it with angst, bass and drumbash, in Gillian Welch's universe, intimacy brings the sky close. Gentle guitar lines stream out like cosmic rays of acoustic goodness. Voices shimmer and soar as they intertwine. The world is right. The combination is exquisite. It is, without question, one of my top ten favorite covers, ever.

The Night Sky: Southern Cross

Ozark Mountain Daredevils: Southern Cross

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Please join me in welcoming our newest poster here on Star Maker Machine, 1001 Songs.

Last week Aimee Mann tweeted " I think it's time I started really listening to some Ozark Mountain Daredevils." Some of us couldn't agree with her more. The original OMD were a fun loving country pop outfit made up of talented songwriters who wore their hair a bit too long for hometown Springfield, Missouri. That, apparently, was what made them daredevils. They scored a worldwide Top 5 hit in 1975 with "Jackie Blue" but instead of making the expected move to LA, the Daredevils stayed home to record the follow-up, The Car Over The Lake Album. "Southern Cross" is the story of a delirious road/air/sea trip taken by a lost soul who finds "the secret of navigation and the mystery of the Milky Way" on Easter Island. Yes, the Southern Cross is a big deal down under. The stars making up the constellation are represented on the flags of Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and Papua New Guinea.

Guest post by 1001 Songs

The Night Sky: Planet Claire

The B-52s: Planet Claire

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From 1967, we now jump ahead 11 years to 1978. But, in a sense, we also jump back to the 1950s, at the drive-in. Planet Claire opens the B-52s debut album, and the sound is all fifties science fiction movie organ, played on top of the Peter Gunn Theme. Half way through the song, Fred Schneider enters with a profoundly silly lyric about a visitor from another planet. And somehow, this was all cool. The B-52s wanted you to know that you should not take their songs very seriously, and that reminded the listener to lighten up. Maybe there were other things they were taking too seriously as well. So much of the more portentous music from the 80s sounds dated today, but Planet Claire sounds as good to me now as it did then.

1967: White Rabbit

Jefferson Airplane: White Rabbit

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As FiL reminded us, 1967 was the year that psychedelic music arrived, led by Magical Mystery Tour, but with many artists ready and able to follow. Alice in Wonderland was a natural reference point for a generation whose motto was, “tune in, turn on, drop out”. And no one expressed the Alice connection better than the Jefferson Airplane and lead singer Grace Slick, with White Rabbit. But of course, this is also a 1967 song that has endured, and that means that it has been played to death. So I switched it up a bit. White Rabbit as usually heard has a running time of 2:30, and indeed, this version goes silent at that point. But then the band comes back in without the vocals, and does an extended jam on the tune that extends the playing time by almost three more minutes. This is not the aimless noodling that jam bands are so often accused of these days; rather , this is a tightly imagined instrumental variation on a theme, with almost jazz-like flourishes. Amazon calls this the “mono single version”, which explains the sound quality. I don’t know how this version came to be. If any reader has that information, please share it in the comments. Thanks.

1967: Psychedelic Bandwagon Edition

Chad and Jeremy: Rest in Peace

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The Hollies: The Maker

[purchase]

The Pretty Things: Defecting Grey

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The Beau Brummels: Magic Hollow

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1967 is a year that resonates strongly with me, even though I wasn't born until the following year. As others have mentioned a lot of great music was released that year.

It was the year psychedelic rock went mainstream, and there was no shortage of groups jumping on the bandwagon. Here are four groups who donned kaftans, dug up sitars, and went all day-glo on us for a year.

1967: Sock It To Me, Baby!

Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels: Sock It To Me, Baby!

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I'm not actually around; I'm in Detroit and posting this through time slip.

In honor of this, I'm sharing a 1967 hit by Detroit homeboys, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels. In my fuzzy memories of the 60s, I remember that it was much easier for local groups to get airplay on the radio. Mitch was pretty popular there. Here. You know what I mean.

I never quite caught some of the lyrics to this song, and the ones my sister confided to me that he was singing were 1) not included in any version Mitch actually recorded, and 2) pretty obscene.

1967: In the Dark

Nina Simone: In the Dark

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So far, our survey of 1967 has focused on male rock and pop singers. I’m using the terms “rock” and “pop” as broadly as possible, and we could stay in that vein and still present an amazing week, because there is plenty of material. Partly, that’s because the music business was very different in those days. Where a major artist now might make an album every three years, in 1967 The Beatles made two classic albums, and that put them behind the pace. Nina Simone made three albums that year, and that was the norm.

In presenting Nina Simone, one might think that I am turning my attention to the year in jazz. That was indeed what I originally had in mind, and Simone is rightly considered one of the greats of jazz. But Simone’s second album of 1967 caught my eye. It’s called Nina Simone Sings the Blues. One of the amazing things about Simone was her ability to sing masterfully in so many different styles, and here she showed herself to be a fine blues singer. To me, In the Dark is much more a blues song than jazz, and Simone approaches it that way. The darkness in this song focuses senses other than sight, particularly hearing and touch. Simone took that idea, and created one of the most sensual pieces of music I have ever heard.

1967: Omaha

Moby Grape: Omaha

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1967 was indeed one of the better rock years. My esteemed collegue Geoviki already mentioned several groundbreaking albums below, and I could add at least twenty more. But I'll lift out just one that has always been especially dear to me: Moby Grape's eponymous debut. A remarkably consistent psychedelic masterpiece with countryrock and folk influences, it should have been a huge succes. But as their record company overhyped the band, releasing five singles at once, and their manager meant trouble, too, this was sadly not to be. Moby Grape only reached #24 on the Billboard album charts. As a consolation prize, it is now widely regarded as an influential classic. "Listen, my friends..."

1967: One-Hit Wonder Version

The Music Explosion: Little Bit O' Soul

[purchase]

The Soul Survivors: Expressway To Your Heart

[purchase]

The Five Americans: Western Union

[purchase]

The Chambers Brothers: Time Has Come Today

[purchase]

I agree with Darius: the music from 1967 made a huge impact on me. I was old enough to really start to "get" it, I think, and spent a lot of hours listening to the radio, mostly.

Dozens of hugely influential albums were released in 1967, and this post would be pages long if I even tried to touch on half of them. The Beatles released both Sgt. Pepper's and Magical Mystery Tour, The Doors had a double header, too, with The Doors and Strange Days, as did Jimi Hendrix with Are You Experienced? and Axis: Bold As Love. Cream, Jefferson Airplane, Pink Floyd, The Who, Velvet Underground, Big Brother and the Holding Company…

I can't pick even a single song from these terrific albums without feeling overwhelmed. Instead, I'm going for one hit wonders, but ones that I particularly am fond of. It makes me want to dig out my Nehru dress and granny glasses! Groovy, man.

1967: Ha! Ha! Said The Clown

Manfred Mann: Ha! Ha! Said The Clown

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This was one of my mother’s records (I still have it, with the sleeve pictured above). She had a few singles I loved when I was a little lad of four, five, six. Gilbert Bécaud’s “Natalie” was another. The Peels “Juanita Banana”. Jane Birkin’s orgasm feast (my mom either didn’t know or didn’t care that I was playing it; not that I would have known why the lady was making these funny noises). Al Martino’s “Spanish Eyes”. Chris Andrews’ “Pretty Belinda”. And, of course, all manner of German stuff, what with us being Germans. But “Ha! Ha! Said The Clown” was my favourite.

Of course a small kid will be attracted by the idea of a song about clowns, especially laughing ones (the kid need not be aware that the protagonist wanted to bang the wife of the clown). But two other things attracted me to the record: the cover, with a rather cute little girl, and the Fontana label, with the record company’s rather excellent logo. I had an interest in record labels as soon as my love affair with vinyl began. And the Fontana one appealed to me greatly. I loved all black labels, it seems (though on the UK release, the label is blue). The song itself is brilliant; it features the flute, whistling and a bass drum!

1967: White Summer

The Yardbirds (Jimmy Page): White Summer

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The British blues-rock group The Yardbirds launched the careers of three terrific guitarists: Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, and Jimmy Page. For the longest time, I had mistaken this instrumental tune for a Jeff Beck song, and couldn't ever find it again as a result. But after decades, I learned the truth and now can share it properly.

Based on the Celtic melody of "She Moved Thro' The Fair", Page blended his arrangement with an Indian raga, which was a popular genre in 1967 (The Beatles were doing the same; for example, Baby, You're a Rich Man; Eric Burden, too, with When I Was Young). It first appears as a Yardbirds tune on their final LP, Little Games, but Page often played it live with Black Mountain Side during his Led Zeppelin days.

1967: The Supernatural

John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers: The Supernatural

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I grew up in a small town. The only merchant in town was a general store that did not sell records. The nearest town of any size was five miles away. And, in 1967, I was seven years old. Yet, I heard many of the newest rock albums the day they were released. How? My oldest brother was twelve, and that nearby town had a Woolworth’s that sold records. They were very inexpensive by today’s standards, even adjusting for inflation. And my brother had a talent for begging my mother to take him into town the day the new albums came out. So I was naturally steeped in the blues-rock of the day, especially what was coming out of England. But not John Mayall. The music of John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers was something I had to go back for years later.

As 1967 dawned, Eric Clapton had left the Bluesbreakers for Cream. His replacement was Peter Green. In addition to Mayall, the other long term member of the band was bass player John McVie. Drummer Mick Fleetwood did not play on Mayall’s new album, A Hard Road, but Fleetwood did play on some of the sessions that were discarded, and he also played some live dates with the group. The Supernatural was one song that Peter Green wrote for the Bluesbreakers, and it may sound familiar. By 1969, Green and McVie would leave the Bluesbreakers to form Fleetwood Mac with Mick Fleetwood and Jeremy Spencer. Green would rework The Supernatural, adding lyrics and vocals, and tweaking the instrumental part. The result was Black Magic Woman.