Fabulous singer/songwriter Jenn Bostic, out of the great goodness of her heart, does a killer cover of The Floor Models' "Excuses Excuses."
I had no idea this was in the works, and when I first heard it last week I will confess I was reduced to a puddle of tears. I only wish my late great bandmate Andy Pasternack (who wrote it) had lived to hear Jenn's version, but I think he's smiling about it in heaven. And thank you for doing it, Jenn, from the bottom of my rapidly aging rock-and-roll heart.
BTW, there's a backstory to all this, involving longtime reader/friend of PowerPop Phil Cheese and my abject failure to write about Jenn's CD Faithful...
...after he kindly sent an autographed copy of it to me a while back. But let's not get into my myriad moral failings.
In any case, here's a track from said CD, and if it doesn't make you grin from ear to ear, consult your physician.
You can (and should) buy Faithful over at Amazon HERE. Jenn's new album, which comes out in May, can (and should) be pre-ordered, also from Amazon, OVER HERE.
From 2009, please enjoy Top Loader's totally infectious modernization of the venerable "Dancing in the Moonlight."
I gotta say, I've always liked this song, but neither of the more familiar versions -- the 1972 Top 40 hit by King Harvest...
...or the 1969 original FM staple by Boffalongo...
...completely did it for me.
The Top Loader remake, however (which I hadn't heard till yesterday, courtesy of a Pandora channel at my local watering hole), kinda knocks my socks off. Despite the fact that they're pasty-faced Brits who used to open for Coldplay.
Cardi B Is a New Rap Celebrity Loyal to Rap’s Old Rules on ‘Invasion of Privacy’
Cardi B? Seriously? Hey, I saw her the other week on SNL...
...and she's got, as Peter Blegvad famously said of Madonna, at best a teaspoon of talent. And her music is about as interesting as watching paint dry.
If you want to read the piece, here's the link. If you do, however, and if we meet in the future, I will be loathe to shake your hand.
Okay, here's the greatest archaeological excavation since Heinrich Schlieman unearthed the city of Troy.
From approximately 1988, at Kenny's Castaways in fabled Greenwich Village, please enjoy The Souvenirs -- aka Gerry Devine and the Hi-Beams aka The Floor Models 2.0 -- covering The Left Banke's great "She May Call You Up Tonight."
That's from a previously presumed lost VHS tape featuring our entire opening set, and at some point I'm gonna post some more from it, including a blistering cover of Paul Revere and the Raiders' "Him or Me (What's It Gonna Be?)."
And yes, that's some asshole whose name rhymes with Sleeve Nimels on keyboards.
Okay, ladies and germs, please enjoy a terrific song -- "Two in Love" -- by fabulous Miami power pop band The Tomboys.
And why do I bring this up?
Well, if you're not remembering who these guys are, here's what I wrote about them last year:
The story so far: Last week I got an e-mail from a band -- called, as you may have now guessed, The Tomboys -- that I was unfamiliar with (which is far from an unusual occurrence around here, obviously).
And the message of which was -- hey, we're pretty cool, we think we're up your alley, and if you agree, will you write about us?
So having (as usual) far too much time on hands, I gave 'em a listen, and what do you know -- they really WERE terrific. Great early 80s retro guitar driven power pop sound, and very very accomplished; comparisons to Elvis Costello or Any Trouble would not have been inappropriate.
I got back to them immediately and asked who they were and how long had they been doing this?
Drummer Joe Alonso promptly filled me in:
We’re from South Florida – Miami, specifically. The band formed in 1979 and had a nice run thru 1986. We were literally freshmen in high school - very young teens - when we started performing and songwriting. We finally hit the studio in 1982. We had our “moments”, locally and regionally. Several showcases and “label-auditions” later, we were right back in Miami. Power-pop, from Miami, by teenagers… it was a mix they just couldn’t wrap their heads around. Perhaps if we were from the mid-west, already in our mid-twenties, and lived out of a van – then maybe. LOL.
Well, that explained the retro sound, and given that (despite being older than those guys) I had a similar sort of story in my own musical past, I decided to sing their praises.
Anyway, while getting the piece together I noticed they'd included a considerably longer bio and while reading it I was almost knocked out of my Barcalounger to learn that their bass player was none other than the incredibly great Raul Malo, who'd gone on to be the singer for the also incredibly great (and considerably more commercially successful) The Mavericks. A band, coincidentally, which I'd written about a few weeks earlier after chancing upon this fabulous video.
(I should add that Tomboys guitarist/vocalist Tommy Anthony also has a resume that's not too shabby; in fact, he's been a member of Santana since 2005. But enough about me.)
You can find out more about these guys, and download their new EP...
...for free, at their website HERE. As well you should, since the whole thing is every bit as good as the single
Have I mentioned that it's things like this that really make me dig my phony baloney job?
Seriously -- these guys are obviously great, so go over to their fan page and give them some love. And tell 'em PowerPop sent you.
From 2003, please enjoy latter day folk-rock/power-pop icons The Shins and their fabulous cover of a song -- "We Will Become Silhouettes" -- by a band -- The Postal Service -- I had never heard of until the other day.
The Shins are one of those acts that, on paper at least, are designed with my mind in mind, and that I should theoretically like a lot. But in reality have always left me cold.
That track is great, however, and I'll have more to say about both bands tomorrow.
So long time readers may recall that back in 2007(!) -- shortly after NYMary gave me the metaphorical keys to the car around here -- I chanced across a highly primitive live clip on YouTube of Brit cult figure Terry Reid doing The Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset" (which I have been known to refer to as the most beautiful song written in the English language in the second half of the 20th Century).
And that as a result I was moved to write a long and passionate essay about why I found the clip so astoundingly and deeply moving. (It was a piece I was as proud of as anything I had ever written and, to my vast relief, the comments on it at the time were nothing but favorable. But I digress.)
I've reposted it on a couple of instances subsequently, but you can find it in its initial appearance over here, including a still working link to the video in question. I think both the video and my essay hold up, but obviously I'm prejudiced.
In any case, as I said, the video itself -- which was shot on an obsolete format called MiniDVD, in live-from-the-audience mono sound -- was technically primitive, but as I argued in the essay, it was emotionally devastating despite all that, or perhaps partly because of all that. Nonetheless, I was later able to get in touch with various people who had been there when it was shot, including the band's drummer, and I have subsequently lived in hope that a better quality version of the performance might surface someday.
Long story short, that's not gonna happen, for a variety of reasons.
But now there's this -- a fabulous (albeit not quite as unexpected and surprising) performance of the song by the same folks at the same LA club in vastly superior quality. Although still shot by somebody in the audience, this time with (I presume) a cell phone camera (it's actually stereo, though).
Bottom line: It's fucking great and I can now die happy. Enjoy.
Have I mentioned that when Reid goes into doo-wop falsetto as the song rides out that I swoon?
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