Songs

You are currently browsing the archive for the Songs category.

TOP FIVE goofiest Lambchop songs

April 25, 2012 in Playlists, Songs | No comments

Eighteen years and eleven albums ago Lambchop’s label billed the group as “Nashville’s most fucked up country band” but that wouldn’t be a description that comes to mind if you heard them for the first time on Mr. M, which came out earlier this spring.  This time around the ever-expanding and contracting Lambchop find itself at it’s most leisurely and confident since How I Quit Smoking, their second album from 1996.

Mr. M is surprisingly unexperimental for a Lambchop record, which usually have at least one track that stands out like a swollen thumb.  When you get down to it the only real Lambchop – the only true Lambchop – is the track that makes you get up and walk across the room just to stop it.

I thought why not put them all together…?

You really have to start any collection – regardless of the ultimate ranking – with “What was he Wearing?” from I Hope You’re Sitting Down – Aka, Jack’s Tulips, the first Lambchop album.  Coming near the end of an album that’s already featured lush, dreamlike reminiscences of a bad trip (“Soaky in the Pooper”) and the guy who collects air fresheners (“Breathe Deep”), a song would have to be pretty strange to stand out.  And it is.

#5 – “What was he Wearing?”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(“What was he Wearing?”)

Most bands would probably put a track like “What was he Wearing?” on the B-side of a single (I loooove B-sides!).  Lambchop didn’t release a lot of 7″ singles, and most of them have pretty straightforward tracks on the flip – their early single for Sunday Driver has two songs (“Loretta Lung” and “My Cliche”) that are so good I can’t even tell what’s supposed to the be the A-side.

#4 – “Two Kittens Don’t Make a Puppy”

Merge Records issued “Soaky in the Pooper” as a single from their first album, already a strange choice.  What was stranger was the other side of the record.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(“Two Kittens Don’t Make A Puppy”)

#3 – “I Sucked My Boss’ Dick”

This next track is from the 10″ EP Hank, which I described yesterday as Lambchop’s most “country” record.  The last song is short and weird.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(“I Sucked My Boss’s Dick”)

#2 – “Thriller”

Of course, we in the Twin Cities are no strangers to audacious album titles (considering the Replacements’ seminal Let It Be and, more recently, the Fuck Knights’ Let It Bleed).  Thriller is a great album title, although it didn’t appear on the cover of the disc (my copy has a sticker that says “Thriller”).  It’s also a great album, taking Lambchop in new directions with their first use of horns and three covers of FM Corndog songs (all originally recorded by East River Pipe, Corndog’s one-man-band).  The title track falls a good deal short of the Michael Jackson epic to which it must invariably be compared.  It’s sort of Lambchop’s Metal Machine Music, but at least it’s mercifully brief.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(“Thriller”)

#1 – “The Decline of Country & Western Civilization”

“The Decline of Country & Western Civilization” is my least favorite song by Lambchop.  I’m not even sure why I’m posting it here.  I think this playlist is entirely an excuse to post “Two Kittens Don’t Make a Puppy”, which I’ve always sort of enjoyed.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(“The Decline of Country and Western Civilization”)

TOP FIVE covers by Lambchop

April 24, 2012 in Playlists, Songs | 2 comments

LAMBCHOP – forever saddled with Merge Records mid-90s hype tag (“Nashville’s most fucked up country band”) – is the most consistently innovative group of the past 20 years.  Many groups reinvent themselves with each new record but most fail – Lambchop, on the other hand, has done so successfully more times than any artist since David Bowie.  It’s just that nobody’s noticed.  Their music expanded beyond Nashville years ago, and has incorporated everything from chamber pop to 70s soul and funk, noise rock to mellow old Opry, and the records have all been a lot of fun.

Lambchop will be performing at the Dakota on Thursday night, making their first appearance in the Twin Cities since they toured on the 2002 album Is A Woman.  No short collection or description could capture the enormous range of this group’s eleven albums, nor their dozens of side projects, tour packages, bizarre singles and early cassette releases.

Today’s post attempts to capture some of the group’s various leanings and influences by featuring the songs they’ve chosen to cover over the years.

TOP FIVE covers by Lambchop

#5  “Give Me Your Love (Love Song)” by Curtis Mayfield

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Lambchop’s fourth album, What Another Man Spills, was released in 1980.  It opens with a rich flamenco-styled guitar solo, an over the course of three quarters of an hour incorporates nearly everything the group would do in the coming years in some primordial way or another.  It’s not the best Lambchop album but it is the seminal Lambchop album.  This was the year Merge should have dropped the original “fucked up country” moniker and started calling the group chamber pop.  Or borrowed from the Twin Cities own Dillinger Four, who released a collection around the same time titled This Shit is Genius.

Their take on Curtis Mayfield’s slow jam from Superfly is all energy and groove.  It was the subject of the first of many bizarre Lambchop remixes, it was a dancefloor classic in my living room until people made fun of my roomate and I, and it was better than the original (oh no, he di’int!).

#4  “I’m A Stranger Here” by Hank Williams

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Everybody should have a Hank Williams song in their repertoire.  Lambchop’s 10″ EP Hank opens with theirs, a lazy, pedal steel-drenched version of “I’m a Stranger Here”.  Hank is by its very nature their most “country” record, and far more accessible than the group’s quiet second album, How I Quit Smoking.  The record has been out of print for years but if you buy the disc you get an extra song.  I think “I’m a Stranger Here” is the first cover to appear on one of their records.

#3  “I’ve Been Lonely for So Long” by Frederick Knight

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

You can hear this Stax classic anytime by dropping a quarter into the Hymie’s jukebox (or you can click to this post and get high).  Lambchop take on Frederick Knight’s sole hit is pretty faithful, suggesting the influence the other Nashville had on the group around mid-career and beyond.  Kurt Wagner’s falsetto, making it’s first prominent appearance with this track on What Another Man Spills, would be a highlight of the band’s next album, the epic masterpiece Nixon.

#2  “Love TKO” by Teddy Pendergrass

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Lambchop has recorded with an ever-evolving lineup, ranging from six to as many as eighteen members, and their live sets vary as a result (they seem amazingly flexible as a result – I guess you could say Lambchop is Nashville’s Liminal Phase).  They finally issued a live disc when they released their set from the 20th Anniversary celebration for Merge Records, the amazing little label that could (and did).  Previously the only live tracks fans could find were passed over the internet, except for this lush, soulful take of Teddy Pendergrass’ 1980 make-out maker “Love TKO”, which was included in their B-sides & rarities collection Tools in the Dryer.

#1  “I Believe in You” by Don Williams

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I found a copy of Don Williams Greatest Hits Volume III in the deck in my brother’s truck a few days after he died.  I imagine that was what he was listening to when he left my house the last time I saw him, and I guess it’s caused me to have a strange affinity for the gentle giant of country music.  “Lord I Hope This Day Is Good” was one of my brother’s favorite songs, and “I Believe in You” proved to be surprisingly timeless when Lambchop re-recorded it.

It’s interesting that a band known for it’s superfluous arrangements would strip down a song by Don Williams, an artists whose records around the era of “I Believe in You” (1980) could fairly be described as over-produced.  Lambchop’s “I Believe in You” is surprisingly subdued, even a little resigned.  It’s an old man’s love song, in a way the very opposite of “Give me your Love (Love Song)” – It’s also a comforting end to their most recent album before this year’s Mr. M, which happens to be my favorite.  OH (Ohio) captures a lot of the anxious uncertainty I was experiencing the spring that my brother passed away, and to this day a few tracks on the disc make me well up.  “A Hold of You” make me blubber.

Very few bands who made their debut in the mid 90s have endured (fun fact: the Spin Doctors just released a 20th Anniversary edition of Pocketful of Kryptonite).  Lambchop hasn’t only endured – they’ve created several of the best albums released in recent years.  Mr. M is an excellent example of their potential range and I’m excited to hear the new songs along with a few classics (really, really hopin’ against all odds to hear “Let’s Go Bowling”) on Thursday.

They also covered the theme from The Barney Miller Show and Dallas, and three songs by FM Corndog on their album Thriller.  They also issued covers of the Stones’ “Backstreet Girl” (an overlooked track from Flowers) and “This Corrosion” by the Sisters of Mercy on a bonus disc with early copies of Is A Woman.  The latter would be #1 on this playlist but some jackass borrowed the disc from me and never returned it.

 Tomorrow:  Top five weirdest songs by Lambchop.  Don’t miss it!

Levon Helm

April 19, 2012 in Songs | 4 comments

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Levon Helm, the drummer and sometime lead singer for the Band, passed away yesterday at the age of 71.

Much has been written about his short-lived contemporaries like Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin – a little too much, I think. Helm was, for me, the voice of a generation. A generation, not my generation (pretty sure we’re stuck with Darryl Hall). Everyone has a favorite band that played at Woodstock, and mine happens to be the Band.

I can’t imagine the first time I heard “The Weight” any more than I can imagine I’ll ever understand what it’s about. It remains, for me, the most rewarding rewind of the era – unlike, say, “Volunteers” or “The Feel I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag” it never dissolved into an awkward irrelevance. “The Weight” is still a soundtrack staple, ever since appearing in Easy Rider, which was the first film to feature a soundtrack of contemporary music (the reason “The Weight” is not on the soundtrack is because Capitol Records wouldn’t allow its inclusion – Smith was commissioned to record one of the first of many covers of the song).

The Band never released a single that reached the top 20 (“Up On Cripple Creak” was their peak, at #25). In fact, several songs on the 1976 Best of the Band compilation so important to my childhood, could only be generously described as “hits”. The highest chart position they reached was, ironically, for the album Stage Fright. The unease and anxiety expressed in the title song captured the band’s mood – they were never fit to become pop stars, at least not in the way the band had been conceived in West Saugerties, New York (at 2188 Stoll Road, the house now so well known as “Big Pink”). Success becoming a curse is sort of an old story, and the Band’s version is hardly the most hearbreaking, but it’s a shame that five people who could make such great music together went through so many periods of inactivity and disagreement with each other.

I have always been especially saddened by the way success crushed the spirit of Richard Manuel, who is my favorite singer in the group. His leads never had the confidence of Levon Helm’s, nor the pitch-perfect full sound of Rick Danko’s voice, and it almost seemed as if the simplest breeze could knock him over. “Maybe the greatness we heard in his voice, that catch in it, came from all the pain,” wrote Helm in his autobiography written with Stephen Davis (This Wheel’s on Fire).v  “To this day, we don’t really know.”

The Band’s eventual implosion has been the subject of several books. I’d recommend to fans This Wheel’s on Fire, but I have always taken Levon’s side in the conflict over the Band’s legacy, so I guess that’s a biased opinion.  I feel like his book had more about Manuel and multi-instrumentalist Garth Hudson than did other books that seemed to focus on Robbie Robertson.

I guess the thing that give me a lot of hope, in general, is that new reports of Levon’s illness and passing have said that Robbie Robertson paid a visit to his former bandmate in the past week and they spend several hours together. If these two can set aside disagreements over three decades old, couldn’t I do the same?

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(“Acadian Driftwood”)

They needed one another, something that’s obvious in the post-Robertson Band albums and in Robertson’s increasingly languid solo work. The Band was a group of top tier musicians, and Levon kept that sound together. He will be most remembered as a singer but his work on Big Pink and The Band is exceptional – it’s his work at the kit that keeps the Band’s disparate influences and leanings in check, and rooted deep into old time and blues. He was never a flashy Bonham/Moon type of drummer, but he kept it together.

The Band’s sound – irrepressibly describable as “rootsy” – captured an enormous cornucopia of Americana. Helm could comfortably serve everything from old time string band jams to cajun and zydeco and good old fashioned swamp rock. His genuine, approachable performances as a singer were reflected in his playing.

He never stood out because his peers – Richard Manuel, Rick Danko, Robbie Robertson and Garth Hudson – were themselves so extraordinary. Helm actually sang lead on relatively few of the songs on the three classic albums by the Band (Music from Big Pink, The Band, Stage Fright). It’s just that his performances were so memorable. This was a hallmark of his career – from his performance in the film Coal Miner’s Daughter to his parts in the 1980 Paul Kennerley concept album The Legend of Jesse James.

One of the coolest things about Levon Helm was that most of the music he created was truly collaborative – with the Band, with his first solo project (the RSO All Stars), and with his “comeback” album Dirt Farmer, on which he worked with his daughter Amy.  This was followed by Electric Dirt and a really fun live album called Ramble at the Ryman, which had Helm and his band bringing a variety of guests to the famous Grand Ole Opry theater.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(“Blind Willie McTell”)

Dirt Farmer earned him a deserved revival, and he even continued to sing after his recovery from throat surgery.  His daughter’s contributions suggest he had passed along a tradition. I hope so – as much as the Band has been influential over the years, it’s never seemed like a “mainstream” sound. Perhaps the next generation will get it there.

The Goondas

April 19, 2012 in Songs, Videos | No comments

Gus is really disappointed I won’t take him to see the Goondas (he’s four). They’re his new favorite band.

On the radio

April 17, 2012 in Links to where Laura was on the radio, Songs | No comments

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(“Havin’ a Party” by Sam Cooke)

I had a lot of fun listening to Laura on KFAI yesterday – she was Cyn Collins’ guest on “Spin with Cyn” and brought records by the fourteen awesome groups playing here this weekend for Record Store Day (you can hear it on the KFAI archives here…you can support KFAI community radio, by the way, by clicking on the link at the top of the page linked here).  I was in the shop with Nova, and while we were listening to the show one of our Record Store Day guests came in to join us.

So I was there when he heard a song he wrote on the radio.  It was the first time one of his songs had been played on the airwaves.  And being there for that moment was the most rewarding experience I’ve had since I was fortunate enough to be the one to care for this record store.  Wow!

There’s a scene in that movie That Thing You Do that sort of captures it.  They all go wild and celebrate the first time they hear their single on the radio.  Yeah, this was KFAI and not mass media, and yeah it was only the once, but you gotta start somewhere.  I’m really proud that we did what we oughtta to help them get to that starting point.

And up comes Record Store Day.  Hundreds of special releases are on their way to record stores all over the country this week, and on Saturday we will participate in the frenzy.  We’ll also have all kinds of other great records that aren’t limited editions, and all kinds awesome bands playing free sets in a fun setting.  Each of the fourteen has an album or cd or single you can buy, and we hope each will sell fourteen copies.  We’d like you to have a chance to hear their music, which we hope won’t ever be limited in any way.

Hymie’s special Record Store Day guest is…

April 13, 2012 in Events, Photos, Songs | No comments

…Night Moves!  You’ve probably heard a bit about this twangy local “trio” since they signed a contract with Domino Records around the beginning of the year.  You may have been at their 7″ release show last night, where they played with Food Pyramid, Moonstone and Buffalo Moon – it was a bill for people who like to “ooh” more than “aah” (Buffalo Moon, by the way, is also on the Hymie’s Record Store Day block party bill, and Food Pyramid will be playing a set the same day at nearby Yeti Records).

You may also recognize 2/3 of Night Moves from the Flying Dorito Brothers, the all-too-short-lived Gram Parsons tribute band that played here at Hymie’s during last fall’s Schlitz Kickin’ Country series, and again at our Winter Record Sale at the Triple Rock Social Club (it’s really a small town, isn’t it?).

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(“Headlights”)

Domino will be giving their first album, Colored Emotions, it’s long-overdue official release later this year.  The long, languishing un-release of a labor of love like Colored Emotions might have broken the spirits of the more sensitive, but John, Mark and Mickey have shuffled along with an easy-going stride you gotta admire.  Big label, small label?  Either way they’ve been reg’ler fellers, awesome guys makin’ great music.  You can get a sense of that from this great interview with the City Pages‘ Jeff Gage from earlier this week.

Say, why not spill all the beans?  Here’s a peek at the FREE SURPRISES we have in store for Record Store Day…

New Hymie's 45 stickers! This time modeled after the legendary Soma label, a Minneapolis treasure!

Temporary tattoos! Yes, show your support for a local record shop and flirt with the idea of permanent body modification at the same time!

And a copy of the first-ever issue of Hymie's Times – a four page newspaper with the whole scoop on all the bands playing!

All this and more – we’ll have copies of American Buffalo, the compilation LP produced by Noiseland to showcase some of the records they’ve manufactured since introducing vinyl to the services they offer (If you love local music you probably own an album made by Noiseland).  When we run out of those we’ll have free copies of the Hymie’s Record Store Day 2012 sampler CD, which features tracks by all fourteen bands performing, including three tracks never before released.

Several East Lake businesses will have additional give-aways for Hymie’s customers, including a discount coupon for admission to Harriet Brewing‘s Sol Bock Revival, a grand opening for their tap room and a release celebration for their Harriet-style Maibock.

And El le Faunt and his Traveling Circus will be allowing us to sell their album a week before it’s release, but only for the one day.  This record is so much fun it must have come out of an owl – It’s a hoot!  Seriously, how excited are we about Ten in One?  We are co-sponsoring it’s release show at the Amsterdam Bar on April 28th!

I think there’s more.  There’s so much going on, in fact, I think I lost track of it all.  Everyone involved is working to make it a fun day for everyone, whether or not you’re a record collector.  We’ll have big selection of Record Store Day releases, but we’ll be more excited about the live music.

Hi-Fi from days gone by

April 10, 2012 in Photos, Songs | 1 comment

So many recent posts have been about our plans for the Record Store Day block party, or about shows that we are sponsoring, that it seems like ages since we shared a fun record.  Here’s an interesting one to make up for it:

This album featuring Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra was produced by Bell Laboratories in 1979 as a promotional give-away, using recordings from their very own archives.  The superfluous liner notes credit Bell Labs with the development of electronically recorded music and the orthophonic phonograph (both earlier developed by Western Electric and first introduced to the mass market by Victor in 1925) and overstate their role in the development of magnetic tape decades later, but the recordings on the album “speak” for themselves.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(“Roman Carnival Overture” by Hector Berlioz)

In 1931 and 1932 Bell Labs experimented with recording technology in a variety of ways, including a “wall of sound” approach entire unique from the recording technique made famous by Phil Spector in the 1960s.  The “wall of sound” developed by engineer Harvey Fletcher in the 1920a.  Fletcher’s system used a literal wall which was covered with microphones, each connected to a loudspeaker on a corresponding wall in a listening room.

They also explored, most famously, stereophonic recording.  The term stereophonic was first used by Western Electric in 1927, combining the Greek stereo (στερεός meaning “solid, firm”), with phone (φωνή, “sound”).  EMI cut a stereo disc a few years earlier, but this recording did not survive.  The oldest existing stereophonic recording – Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra performing an excerpt from Scriabin’s Prometheus: The Poem of Fire - is on this promotional album.

Even the monophonic tracks on this album are remarkable.  The 1931 recording of Berlioz’s “Roman Carnival Overture” up above is a good example.  They sound surprisingly vivid for recordings from the early 30s.  It’s a really exciting document of the confluence of technological innovation and artistry.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(“Ballet of the Chicks in their Shells” from Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky – this one is in stereo)

 

“Crazy, but that’s how it goes”

April 9, 2012 in Photos, Songs | 1 comment

This album by the 9th Ward Marching Band has been one of my favorite records to play in the record shop ever since our friend Micah loaned it to us.  He gave me permission to keep it until after my DJ set at the Triple Rock Social Club tonight.  I’ll be spinning some songs as part of the Fuck Knights monthlong residency.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(“Crazy Train / Drum Cadence #2″ by the 9th Ward Marching Band)

Hymie’s is closed for Easter – see you tomorrow!

April 8, 2012 in Events, Photos, Songs | No comments

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(“Easter Parade” by Bing Crosby)

Five local songs Bono wishes he wrote

April 6, 2012 in Playlists, Songs | No comments

but he didn’t, the big turd.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(“Veteran Beginner” by National Bird)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(“Plus One” by Jake Manders)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(“Anything with Words” by Ben Weaver)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(“Nashville by Nightfall” by Martin Devaney)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(“Shake” by the Ericksons)

 

« Older entries § Newer entries »