Friday, July 05, 2019

Return of the Son of Covers Week (Part V): Special "The Band That Wouldn't Die" Edition

Well, they said it would never happen, but The Floor Models -- featuring some bass player whose name rhymes with Sleeve Nimels -- have a new album out.

And from it, please enjoy their live take on The Byrds version of Goffin-King's classic "Wasn't Born to Follow."



That was recorded during the the soundcheck for a radio broadcast we did for WDST-FM in Woodstock, which is why you don't hear an audience (they hadn't arrived yet). The year, I'm pretty sure, was 1995, but we had been doing the song since our earliest days in the Village, i.e. the early '80s. In any case, it was always one of my favorite things to play live, so I'm especially glad the recording survived.

As for the album itself, it's got four newly recorded tracks (including a song by our late great 12-string ace Andy Pasternack that's so beautiful it hurts) plus six more previously unreleased tunes from the vault that aren't too shabby either. The whole thing is now available for streaming and purchase at CD Baby, Amazon and iTunes; other digital platforms -- Pandora, etc -- will be up in a day or two. Physical CDs will be available in a couple of weeks, but why deprive yourself until then?

Also, we just got added to Spotify, where the album sounds especially glorious. Apparently, they have some kind of technological fix over there that makes our music sound better than it is.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

3 comments:

Mark said...

A great song done with great feeling. For me, the song is forever associated with the Easy Rider Soundtrack, even though it first appeared on the Notorious Byrd Brothers more than a year earlier.

By the way, I recall seeing Easy Rider sometime in late 1969 and thinking that the movie was the corniest thing I'd seen directed to people like me since Wild In The Streets in 1968. But the one image from Easy Rider to this day I still can't get out of my mind is the shotgun ending. On the other hand, the tripping-in-the-graveyard-0scenes are just as unintentionally funny today as they were fifty years ago.

But the song, Wasn't Born To Follow, still conjures up a hazy belief that individualism - even when it lacks direction - is somehow noble. A few years after Easy Rider, when I noticed that songs writers of Wasn't Born To Follow were Goffin and King did i realize that the song said less about Walt Whitman's ideas than it did about Brill Building sentiments.

You live, you learn.

pete said...

well said. And big props behind the new album!

Jai Guru Dave said...

Sounds great! Who is playing the cool pedal steel type licks? Not the 12 string player, right? Sounds like more than a 4 piece band. Big props to be able to do that live!!