...please enjoy friend of PowerPop Gwil Owen and his absolutely fricking beautiful "Mississippi Moonrise."
Gwil was nice enough to send me a copy of Gravy and its 2009 follow-up Ahab's Birthday -- both of which you can obtain over at CD Baby HERE -- and I've been listening to them obsessively for the last week. As I told their auteur, theoretically they're a little too Not Rock for my taste (Ahab's Birthday is actually kind of a blues and bluegrass record) but the songwriting and the performances are just so strong that I don't remotely mind.
I should add that he sent me a link to another song of his that recalls nothing so much as guitar-driven Revolver-era Beatles, and which I'm gonna put up next week. Just because.
Had a long, highly productive but completely exhausting evening in the studio last night adding a 12-string guitar part to a new (old) Floor Models song.
Kudos to the great J.D. Goldberg [below] for his stellar work on the session.
Regular and totally relaxed postings resume on the morrow.
The greatest orchestral arranger in rock history -- hands down -- has passed.
Buckmaster is best known for his collaborations with Elton John, and with David Bowie on "Space Oddity," but he also worked with just about anybody who was anybody in pop music, from Taylor Swift to country (Dwight Yoakam) and jazz greats (Miles Davis).
Here's what I think is his masterpiece, however. The transcendently beautiful string arrangement at the end of The Rolling Stones' "Moonlight Mile."
I get chills just thinking about that, to this day. For me, anyway, it's always suggested what Ralph Vaughan Williams might have come up with if he'd ever collaborated with a British rock band.
From 1979, and the just released collection -- on Omnivore, where it belongs -- of the complete Sire recordings by The Searchers...
...please enjoy this exquisite cover of Tom Petty's "Lost in Her Eyes."
The two original LPs anthologized on this new set are among the very best pop-rock artifacts of their era; they've been collected before, on an Australian label if memory serves, but this new one has superior remastered sound and some interesting bonus tracks.
Highly recommended, and if you haven't heard the cover (on disc two) of "September Gurls" your life is the poorer for it.
From 1969, here's the original classic lineup of Procol Harum...
...and their utterly gorgeous "Pilgrim's Progress."
Pilgrim -- get it? It's not rocket science, kids.
As long-time readers may recall, this song is something of a Thanksgiving tradition around here by now. Although I'll grant you that given we're now in the era of President Engelbert Trumperdinck it's not quite the same anymore.
In any case, enjoy the cranberry sauce and stuffing, everybody.
Attentive and/or long term readers of this here blog may recognize the name Ronnie D'Addario for two reasons.
First, because out of the great goodness of his heart, he sang the angelic McCartney-esque background vocals on Letter From Liverpool, a song featuring a band with a bass player whose name rhymes with Sleeve Nimels.
And, secondly, because he's the proud dad of the hippest young band on the planet The Lemon Twigs.
But even coooler than that, Ronnie's also been producing exquisite Beatles-influenced pop/rock -- both as a one-man band (a la Emitt Rhodes, who is probably the figure he most closely brings to mind) or in various group contexts going back for decades.
And this evening, Ronnie -- backed by the aforementioned Lemon Twigs -- will be performing some of that stuff at my favorite NYC club.
Specifically, I assume, material from his fabulous new CD career retrospective.
Here are two songs from the collection (the second is one of my favorite indie singles of the New Wave era) that should give you an idea of just how terrific he is.
You can -- and definitely should -- order First Songs over at Amazon HERE or at You Are the Cosmos HERE.
And, of course, if you're in the Big Apple tonight, hie thee over to Bowery Electric to hear Ronnie and family. It's just down the street from where CBGBs used to be.
And tell 'em PowerPop sent you.
PROGRAMMING NOTE POSTSCRIPT:
I'm gonna be on friend of PowerPop Captain Al's intertube radio show Lost at Sea today, starting at 11:00 am EST. Or maybe 11:15 or 11:30. Depending on traffic.
You can listen to the show over at Area 24 Radio HERE>. We'll be taking requests and death threats -- I'll announce the e-mail address on the air.
It's a theme show -- I won't give it away till later -- and a splendid time is guaranteed for all.
So as you may recall, we ended last week with a Listomania whose theme was THE GREATEST COVERS THAT NEVER WERE!!!
I.e., some really fabulous song(s) you'd really like to hear some favorite artiste -- solo or group -- perform or record, but so far they haven't gotten around to it (the bastards!!!).
And commenter J. Lewellen came up with this brilliant idea (amongst some others -- check the Friday post for the rest of them).
To wit:
Jerry Lee Lewis's "High School Confidential"...
...should be assaulted by The New York Dolls.
You know, the guys who did this affront to musical dignity.
I should add that I actually saw Jerry Lee -- before his big country comeback, after being disgraced as the Roy Moore of his generation -- live in 1965, at Waukegan (Illinois) High School.
There were maybe fifty or sixty of my fellow college hippies in the audience, as well as maybe another 100 angry greasers. It was the most exciting rock show I had ever seen up till that point in my young life, and very few I've seen since then have even came close.
[I first posted a version of this in 2007, back when this blog and the world were young. I've rewritten parts of it, and made some substitutions, just to prove I'm not a complete slacker; please enjoy. -- S.S.]
Okay, fellow kids -- here's a fun project to contemplate:
THE GREATEST COVERS THAT NEVER WERE!!!!!!
You know -- some really fabulous song you'd really like to hear some favorite artiste -- solo or group -- perform or record, but so far they haven't gotten around to it (the bastards!!!).
And my totally off the top of my head Top Nine is/are:
9. The Hold Steady -- The Boys Are Back in Town[Thin Lizzy]
They've probably jammed on it a thousand times -- it's about time they go public for gosh sakes.
8. The Posies -- Carrie Anne [The Hollies]
They already proved they were genetically bred to do Hollies songs with their version of "King Midas in Reverse" -- just think what they would bring to the sunniest of the Clarke-Hicks-Nash classics.
7. The Pretenders -- Every Little Bit Hurts [Brenda Holloway]
My fave 60s soul ballad/torch song would be a natural for Chrissie Hynde, I suspect. Fun fact: This was written by the same guy who wrote "Dirty Water."
6. Neko Case == The First Cut is the Deepest[Cat Stevens]
Because she'd do it better than Sheryl Crow, duh.
5. Steve Earle -- Street Fighting Man [The Rolling Stones]
C'mon -- this is the job he was born for.
4. Bob Mould -- Calvary Cross [Richard and Linda Thompson]
On the 1994 Thompson tribute album Beat the Retreat, Mould turned the rockabilly tinged "Turning of the Tide" into a killer piece of buzz-saw punk. I swoon to imagine what he could do with Thompson's most intensely doom-haunted song.
3. Emmylou Harris -- Withered and Died [Richard and Linda Thompson]
Actually, now that I think of it, this song is so intensely heartbreaking, if Emmy sang it we might not survive the hearing.
2. The MonaLisa Twins -- Excuses, Excuses [The Floor Models/Gerry Devine and the Hi-Beams]
Because I've always wanted to hear gals covering this one. And my new favorite group seems like just the ones to do it.
And the number one cover I'd love to hear is....
1. Wilco -- Get Out of My Way [Paul McCartney]
This is one of my favorite sort of obscure McCartney tracks. And if you've ever heard Wilco blowtorching its way through "Monday" you'll understand why I think they're the right band band for the job.
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