"And While You're At It, Why Don't You Have Them Write You Some Talent?"

From the soundtrack to Head (Bob Rafelson, 1968), here's the Pre-Fab Four, i.e. The Monkees, with a version of Mike Nesmith's very cool "Circle Sky."

Recorded absolutely live, with the guys playing all the instruments.

For real.




Obviously, The Monkees were not one of the great live bands, but for at least the duration of this song, they were clearly capable of delivering some convincing garage rock goods. In any case, I bring the whole thing up because the Criterion Collection has just released a fantastic new restored version of the film in question -- in widescreen and with a stunning new 5:1 Surround soundtrack, with the music remixed directly from the original 8-track masters. Suffice it to say that this is the first home video version of Head to do it justice; deliberately Fellini-esque and screamingly funny career suicides don't come any better. Plus, Carole King's "Porpoise Song," the movie's theme music, is the single best Monkees track ever.

I should add that the new Head comes in a box set -- DVD or Blu-ray -- featuring similarly restored versions of (among others) Easy Rider (in stereo! woohoo!), The Last Picture Show and Five Easy Pieces, all seminal works from that now vanished Golden Age of risk-taking American commercial cinema. The whole thing will set you back about 70 bucks over at Amazon, which is pretty reasonable, actually; if you haven't asked for an Xmas present from someone you love yet, I'd go for it.

Johnny We Hardly We Knew Ye

[Weekend Listomania remains on hiatus until the new year. -- Ed.]

So the other night -- i.e., the sad 30th anniversary of the death of John Lennon -- I was chatting via the intertubes with a certain frequent commenter about the relative merits of John's Beatles stuff versus the solo work, a subject we needn't get into here for a number of reasons. In any event, I did allow that "Real Love," the John tune from his Dakota house husband period that the surviving Beatles finished for Anthology in 1995, was one of my favorites among the later stuff, and that the Beatles version is something I genuinely cherish. Seriously -- I think it stands up very nicely against anything that they did as a group back in the day.

Anyway, by chance, later that evening I stumbled across this radically different acoustic guitar version John did of the song -- from the sound of it, quite a bit earlier than the piano demo the Fabs overdubbed. Which I hadn't heard before.




Not epochal by any means -- in fact, pretty ragged, actually -- but by the time John started whistling I must confess to kind of losing it.

And Speaking of Big Star...

....if you're gonna be in the Chicago area next Wednesday, you definitely should check this out.

On 12/15, Schubas Tavern in Chicago presents:

You Get What You Deserve -- A Tribute to Big Star

Featuring:
Steve Frisbie (Frisbie)
John San Juan (The Hushdrops)
Tom Szidon (The Joypoppers)
Mike Zelenko (Material Issue)

It’s been a rough year for Big Star fans. Alex Chilton’s untimely death was a shocking loss felt deeply by many. The subsequent death of Andy Hummel only further drove it home – the band so many of us loved was gone. (Long live Jody Stephens!) United by a sense of loss and a desire to celebrate their beloved Big Star, Steve Frisbie, John San Juan, Tom Szidon and Mike Zelenko will take the stage and pour their hearts into some of the best songs you ever heard.

Energetic poplords Village will perform first. DJ poseur will spin before and between the bands.
$8 adv/$10 door
21 and over

Sounds like a pretty cool tribute, especially if Mike Zelenko's involved; if you stop by, tell 'em PowerPop sent you.

Meanwhile, here's an utterly fab Big Star performance -- from the Leno show in '94, it's Alex and Jody (along with Jon and Ken from The Posies) and "In the Street."



One presumes there will be a version of this to be heard on the 15th as well.

And Speaking of Adorable...

...semi-regular visitor to these pages Tom Littlefield and his partner in crime Jonathan Bright have alerted me to their latest project -- which is, if you can believe it, an all-ukulele tribute album in honor of The Replacements.



As you can hear from the above excerpt from "I'll Be You," this is not a joke or a stunt. Okay, it's sort of a stunt by definition, but it doesn't feel like one. The fact is, using nothing more than a bunch of ukuleles, percussion, pots and pans, and a rubber chicken (I can't verify that last), these guys have come up with a set that totally gets to the essence, to the rock-and-roll heart if you will, of the originals.

You can hear more from Treatment Bound, as the album is called (including an "I Will Dare" to die for) over at their official website; there's a CD Baby link over there as well so you can order the actual CD.

And Speaking of Gorgeous...

...from his 1993 DIY album Swimming Lesson, please enjoy power pop should-be-a-legend Rob Laufer and the original version of his spine-tinglingly beautiful "This is Our Life."




Incidentally, this was recorded on a home eight-track, which still amazes me. Laufer redid it, pretty much note for note, for his bigger-budgeted 1995 major label album Wonderwood (one of the truly great records of its decade, incidentally) but this one just has a certain extra little something the otherwise estimable remake lacks. IMHO.

Death Where Is Thy Ring-a-Ding Ding

From 1958, please enjoy The Playmates (of "Beep Beep" fame) and the suurealist greaseball deathrock that is "(I Dreamed the Jukebox Played) The Day I Died."




I'd neither heard this record nor even suspected its existence until last Friday, if truth be told. But it's an amazing piece of work, I think; when people talk about the poetry of rock --

There was a-stompin' and a-strollin'
There was a-goin' on
All the cats were wailing
"The Gonest is gone!"

-- that's gotta be what they're referring to.

I should add that I discovered its wonders after a query from my old bandmate and high school chum Allan Weissman, for whom it has apparently been an obsession looming large in his legend for lo these many years. Thanks, Al!!!

Attention Southern Denizens!

Just saw this ad for what looks like an intriguing show next week: Big Star's Third, (a/k/a "Sister Lovers")done live with an orchestra, and Who's Who of Southern Pop Royalty. Check this out:

We (at this rehearsal, “we” includes Mitch Easter, Jeff Crawford, Charles Cleaver, and Matt McMichaels) are listening to and learning “Big Black Car.” On the second prechorus, the acoustic guitar (presumably played by Alex) gets ahead of the progression by a bar, and lands on the D minor while the rest of the instruments are on the D major–then the acoustic seemingly rectifies this “mistake” by glancing off the side of an F# note and joining everyone on the next bar on the D minor. Now, this was before cut-and-paste computer flub-fixing, but Ardent, a top-notch facility, had ways and means to correct things like this, yet it stayed that way. Now, a “major/minor” (aug. 9) chord wasn’t unheard of in the jazz vocabulary of Alex’s childhood home. And the vocal melody also adapts to this major-minor mishmash.

Yet the first prechorus stays on track: A, A7, D maj, D min. And the demo (from the boxed set) has two matched prechoruses.

But the flavor of this “nothing can hurt me” moment has always seemed right, somehow; I’d never questioned it before.

So I think we are going to play the “mistake” (acoustic on Dm and piano and electric guitar on D major). Or maybe we’ll mix it up, alternating nights. Not sure yet. Better yet, maybe we’ll make our own mistakes, in just the right–or wrong–places.

Only the first blog post is credited, to Chris Stamey of The dB's, but I think he's writing all of them, and it's fascinating (if you are, umm, a geek like me) to get a look at this coming together.

We're looking here at Mike Mills, Mitch Easter, Jody Stephens, Stamey (natch), and a slew of other rock and orchestral musicians working to bring this thing to light. I think it looks amazing, but impossible for me. Someone want to go & report?

Bemusing? Brilliant? You Make the Call!

Gylne Tider (Golden Times), a kitschy Norwegian show which chases faded celebrities, recently released a video--a promo for their fourth series--which has gone kind of viral, according to the Paper of Record:

And what better way to bring to life the concept of such a show than by bringing together dozens of these celebrities to sing and/or lip-sync “Let It Be”?

You’ll surely recognize some of the faces that turn up in the course of this video (including, sadly, Leslie Nielsen – R.I.P.) and even if you don’t read a lick of Norwegian, you should have no trouble discerning the meaning of identifying captions...

I honestly have no idea what I think of this whole thing: what do you think?

(Tonya Harding next to Glenn Close? Really? And they said postmodernism was dead!)

Compare and Contrast: That High Lonesome Sound

As noted yesterday, Weekend Listomania is on hiatus for December.

So...in its stead, from the should-be-way-better-known 1966 album Two Yanks in London here's The Everly Brothers and the proto-powerpop "Don't Run and Hide."




And from the same year, and the B-side to their immortal "Bus Stop," here's the song's composers The Hollies and a sort of Who-ish version, featuring spectacular drumming by their great Bobby Elliott.




The Hollies' Clark-Hicks-Nash songwriting team contributed eight tunes to the Everlys album, including the gorgeous "Signs That Will Never Change," their version of which eventually surfaced a year later as the B-side to "Carrie-Anne." Supposedly, the Hollies provide the most of the instrumental backing for the album as well, although to my ears that's dubious -- this sounds like the usual bunch of Brit session pros (including Jimmy Page, who's supposed to be in there somewhere) to me, especially compared to the kick-ass Hollies track above.

Don and Phil, of course, acquit themselves as if they'd been genetically bred to cover Hollies tunes. Or maybe the Hollies sound as if they'd been genetically bred to sing like the Everly Brothers. Whatever. In either case, this is a criminally underrated album.

Thursday We Haven't Got a Clue

That's right, no early clue to the new direction today. The reason: Weekend Listomania is on hiatus until the new year.


Sorry to be such a slacker about this, but my mom is under the weather, and she needs kind of full time attention from me for a couple of weeks. And one of the easiest ways to free myself up is to not deal with Friday's de rigueur big project.

Not to worry -- business around here will otherwise be as per usual and, as noted, I expect the List to make its return in January, all tanned rested and ready, as they used to say of Richard Nixon.

Just thought you ought to know.