Tuesday, September 07, 2021

Great Minds Think Alike (An Occasional Series)

And speaking, as we were last Friday, of Bob McFadden's classic 1959 novelty single The Mummy -- featuring Rod McKuen -- please enjoy its less celebrated B-side "The Beat Generation."

And then, from 1977, please compare and contrast it with ex-Television bass player and punk rock pioneer Richard Hell and his signature anthem "Blank Generation."

Nah, they're not the same song. And you'd be a fool or a Communist to suggest otherwise.

Seriously, it's really true -- there's nothing new under the lucky old sun.

[h/t Joe Lee Henderson]

3 comments:

Cousin Allan said...

I'm a communist and they are the same damn song!

Cheers, comrades.

mistah charley, ph.d. said...

speaking of songs with some sort of similarity, this weekend i was thinking about 'long and winding road'/'in my life' - paul and john's songs about memory lane - i watched the film 'yesterday' which i enjoyed and found thought provoking even if not 'great' exactly -i thought the outstanding cover was 'help' which conveyed a sense of desperation missing in the original

my 'i am not a robot' reCAPTCHA just now was crosswalks - really

jackd said...

In those mysterious days of yore - meaning 1977 - I recall reading about Richard Hell & the Voidoids and similar outfits, doubtless in the pages of the magazine then known as Stereo Review. There's no where else I'd likely have heard of them, sitting as I was deep in the rural South. Despite the undeniable evidence here, it's very, very strange to think of an unabashed punk pulling his song directly out of a box of (what seemed then) ancient 45's.