Joe writes: It can take a long time to break an artist. ie music, who manage Robbie Williams, have been managing Passenger for 11 years and finally things seem to be coming together for him. I tried to see him play at Great Escape earlier in the year, got the stage time wrong so arrived just after he had come off stage, and was amazed to see hundreds of people filing out. And now his excellent song Let Her Go has gone to no. 1 in both Belgium and The Netherlands.
His music has very pleasant echoes of Cat Stevens so here's The Wind:
Joe writes: A recent discovery for me that is already one of my favourite Christmas songs, not least thanks to the couplet "I dream of her always/Even when I don't dream/Her name's on my tongue/And her blood's in my stream." The original version isn't on YouTube so I've experimented with embedding from Spotify:
Joe writes: As a one-time regular prison visitor and Mary Gauthier fan, I was bound to like this. Be warned though - it will not get your Thanksgiving party started.
Joe writes: There's an identikit cover version of Robert Miles featuring Maria Nayler's One & One floating around which reminded me what a great song it is.
It was written by Billy Steinberg, Rick Nowels and Marie Claire D'Ubaldo. Billy Steinberg is "just" a lyricist - he doesn't write melody - but he's one of the most successful lyricists of the modern era having written Like A Virgin, True Colors, Eternal Flame, and Alone by Heart, all with Tom Kelly. I heard a story, probably apocryphal, that some time after Like A Virgin had been the pivotal smash for Madonna, Billy and Tom went to a party because they'd heard Madonna was going to be there and they'd never met her. They went up to her and said "Hi, we're Billy and Tom, we wrote Like A Virgin and we've always wanted to meet you". Madonna said "Well now you have". End of conversation.
There's more about Like A Virgin here, including the one lyric they didn't use in the end: "Ask my friends and they'll tell you it's true/Nobody's had what I'm giving to you", which I think is a shame.
Rick Nowels' CV is almost as impressive as Billy's, and more current - he co-wrote one of the biggest European hits of recent times, I Follow Rivers by Lykke Li, as well as Heaven Is A Place On Earth, You Get What You Give, and a number of Dido songs including White Flag.
Marie Claire D'Ubaldo is an Argentine musician whose song Falling Into You (also written with Billy and Rick) was a hit for Celine Dion.
Robert Miles was released on Arista in North America and I have a feeling Clive Davis was involved in finding this song for Robert. Children was of course Robert Miles' breakthrough smash in both the UK and the US. Then came Fable, which sounded a lot like Children. Then came One & One, which was a big hit in the UK but doesn't seem to have charted in the US.
Joe writes: I heard an amazing track on Yadi's mixtape, which I guessed from the tracklisting was Mahd Assalhin by Cheb I Sabbah Ft. Hadderetes, but when I bought that track on iTunes, it sounded very different. Then I listened more and thought "the singer sounds like the guy out of Alt-J", checked the tracklisting again, and realised it was Alt-J. What an amazing track - lyrically intelligent (read the YouTube comments to find out what it's about), and musically so far from a parochial British indie band. Unfortunately it can't be embedded on YouTube so click here.
Phil writes: Meant to post this in tribute to Hal David when he died, a great example of his writing. It's a beautiful song memorably and poignantly recorded by Armstrong (in one take). It was his last recording and he was unable to play trumpet due to his health. It didn't matter, even though he was possibly the greatest trumpet player of all time.
Joe writes: Chris Moyles played parts of this several times during his emotional last ever Radio 1 breakfast show. It's my favourite ever classical crossover song and recording, written by Francesco Sartori (music) and Lucio Quarantotto (lyrics). It's so good it's hard to believe it was written during the modern era. It reached no. 2 in the UK charts in 1997.
Joe writes: Last night a musician sent me this link to Loudon Wainwright III's song Pretty Good Day and now I can't stop listening to it (it can't be embedded from YouTube so you have to click the link).
I think everyone in the Western world should listen to it every day as a sort of musical, secular alternative to saying grace. If that doesn't sell it to you, let me also say that I find it very moving.
Joe writes: Excellent choice of theme for the Channel 4 Paralympics coverage, giving Public Enemy their first hit in a while (it's no. 11 on iTunes UK at the time of writing).
If this is the first Public Enemy track you've heard then I recommend you go for Rebel Without A Pause next, but that might prove difficult as the original version isn't on iTunes or YouTube (it is on Spotify though). Fortunately my favourite bootleg of all-time is on YouTube, Rebel Without A Pause (The Whipped Cream Mix) by Evolution Control Committee, which is the Public Enemy a cappella over the top of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass playing Bittersweet Samba. I first heard this when John Peel played it on Radio 1 in 1994, long before such bootlegs became ubiquitous. It was quite a revelation.
Joe writes: Last night I saw an excellent Canadian film Take This Waltz starring Michelle Williams and Seth Rogan. Not only is the film named after a Leonard Cohen track, but there's a party scene featuring Feist covering Leonard Cohen's Closing Time. This sounds like a hit to me yet doesn't seem to be available anywhere except YouTube:
Joe writes: Plan B AKA Ben Drew and Ray Winstone spoof The Sweeney for Orange in a film that can be seen here.
The YouTube comments sum up the variety of opinions about ELO from "This what the Beatles wouldve sounded like in the 70s" (sic) to "many of Vivaldi and Bach's concertos expressed the same beauty, tinged with sorrow" to "Jeff Lynn was a twat. He hyjacked and commercialised the talent of Roy Wood, and tried to pass it off as his own" (sic). My view: Telephone Line and Mr Blue Sky are classic singles.
Joe writes: I've recently become a fan of the transatlantic band Ellen & The Escapades after drinking a pint of their branded bitter in my local pub (this is almost true). I really like Ellen's voice and they write proper songs. They also cover proper songs, such as R Kelly's The World's Greatest - their version featured in the BBC's Olympics coverage and no wonder, it's lovely.
Here's one of my favourites from their current album, called Without You:
And what about R Kelly? Bump 'n' Grind in 1994 to Ignition (Remix) in 2003 was one of the best runs of singles that anyone will ever release. So many songs and performances that were just streets ahead of any of his contemporaries. Here's his last great single Happy People, released in 2004. It didn't set the world on fire - perhaps people weren't ready for Robert to do his What's Goin' On thing, which is a shame as he did it so well.
Annie didn't write the song though, Joseph Hughes and David Freeman of The Lover Speaks did, including the brilliant "do do do do do do do ah-ah" hook:
Joe writes: I just found out Mary Gauthier is playing some UK dates in October. I don't know that much about Mary but I Drink tells me everything I need to know. I heard it first on Bob Harris's Radio 2 show - it's perfect late night music.
Naturally I Drink reminded me of Mario Lanza's second greatest hit Drink Drink Drink which is crying out to be revived.
Also coming to the UK later this year is Matraca Berg whose beautiful Back When We Were Beautiful I wrote about here.
Phil writes: Some time ago I saw a clip of Judy Collins singing this song of hers and wondered about posting it then. I knew it was a good song but wasn't quite sure how good. I just caught this Nina Simone version on a film of her last recorded live performance. I find it very moving and deeply felt, in a way that the original doesn't quite match.
Joe writes: I'm a convert to Bat For Lashes thanks to her new single Laura, and the artwork for her forthcoming album The Haunted Man. Both are brave and classic, recalling a bygone era in several different ways, all of them welcome.
Joe writes: Wankelmut is a DJ/producer from the Berlin-Mitte minimal scene. Asaf Avidan is an Israeli singer-songwriter. Wankelmut sampled Asaf's 2008 track Reckoning Song and the resulting track has come through the Berlin clubs to become a phenomenon in Germany. Despite coming from a very cool minimal club scene, it comes off sounding like the midpoint between Rednex and Moby. Fun.
Joe writes: I've taken to posting songs on This Is My Jam regularly, even though I would never use the phrase "This is my jam". At present, my jam (ugh) is The Living Years by Mike & The Mechanics, one of my all-time favourites and an apposite song for people of my generation with parents approaching old age. Make time for them; you never know when it might be too late. The lyric was written by BA Robertson.
Joe writes: This is my favourite track from the final King Blues album, and it features one of The King Blues' heroes, Tim Armstrong of Rancid. Big hooks and a great lyric.
My favourite Tim Armstrong track is probably Diamonds & Guns by The Transplants, and Tim owes a lot to The Clash so here's London Calling:
Joe writes: Loving bad men has been the theme of some of
the biggest and best songs of recent times including Stooshe's current UK hit
Black Heart with its wonderful lyric "Daddy I've fallen for a
monster".
See also the biggest hit of 2010, Love The Way You Lie by Eminem feat. Rihanna.
And one of the biggest albums of recent years, Back to Black by Amy Winehouse.
And if you haven't heard Lying Lips (Words I Should Have Said) by Tanya Stephens
before, you must.
Joe writes: I know this sounds very Nathan Barley-esque but I first
heard Sixto Rodriguez when the DJ at the Old Blue Last in Shoreditch played
Sugar Man and I Shazamed it. It's a magical record and it turns out it has a
magical story behind it which is the theme of the new documentary Sugar Man.
Read this for more.
Joe writes: I have been an Edwina Hayes fan ever since the demo of The Road appeared on a National Band Register CD in the late nineties. There's an all-too unusual purity to her voice and her songwriting. If she had more ambition and nous perhaps she would be huge, or then again, perhaps that would be incompatible with purity.
She made an album called Out On My Own for Warner which featured most of her best songs, but it was overproduced (not enough focus on the purity).
Her cover of Randy Newman's Feels Like Home featured on the soundtrack to the Cameron Diaz film My Sister's Keeper and I guess the film was just shown on UK TV because Edwina appeared in the lower reaches of the chart.
Here's the original demo version of The Road, a little rough around the edges and very long but who cares when the voice and song are this good:
And here's Bonnie Raitt singing Feels Like Home (Edwina's version is here):
Joe writes: This is so good. Theo Altieri is a singer songwriter in his early teens. Daine Angel is a rapper with hearthrob good looks whose father is the techno DJ and producer Dave Angel. Both Theo and Daine are from Swindon and on Txt Me Back they get together and perform alchemy. Emotion, hooks, songcraft, it's all there. Who does it sound like? Maybe G Love & Special Sauce. Whoever it is, it's a sound no-one else has done recently and it feels like the right time.
Joe writes: Julio Bashmore is the producer behind one of my favourite tracks of the year so far, 110% by Jessie Ware. Superficially what he's doing isn't that different to the last two decades of house music, but he has somehow succeeded where so many others have failed - he makes accessible tracks that also sound modern. He has also started DJing on Radio 1 and he's pretty good at that too. Here's his solo track Troglodytes, in the fine tradition of dance tracks featuring spoken word samples.
Joe writes: I went to see Ridley Scott's film Prometheus tonight which was better than I'd feared, and features my favourite piano piece as its theme, Chopin's Prelude in D Flat Major, also known as the Raindrops prelude.
The same prelude also inspired the theme to the '80s soap opera Howard's Way (sorry, couldn't resist):
Here's a scan of an autographed page from the Paderewski edition of the sheet music:
Joe writes: Here are my other two favourite discoveries of songs covered by Rumer on her Boys Don't Cry album.
It Could Be The First Day by Richie Havens is simple, concise and beautiful. Rumer has said she was introduced to the song by the producer Steve Brown.
The Same Old Tears On A New Background by Stephen Bishop can't be found on YouTube so here it is on a long-forgotten corner of the internet called MySpace: The Same Old Tears On A New Background
Art Garfunkel actually released the first version of Same Old Tears... on his album Breakaway, but Stephen wrote the song and released his own version on his album Careless.
Joe writes: I get excited when artists with great taste make covers albums - it means I can download all the original versions and reasonably expect to discover some great tracks in doing so. Rumer was already planning the release of Boys Don't Cry before she'd signed a record deal. It features lesser known songs of heartbreak by well respected but not necessarily well known male singer songwriters of the early '70s. In other words, music to my ears. A lot of the song suggestions came from Steve Brown who produced Rumer's first album but didn't produce this one after falling out with Rumer.
I have three favourite discoveries from the album. Two of them aren't on YouTube yet which I may remedy shortly. The one that is is Be Nice To Me by Todd Rundgren. I liked the YouTube comment "Ben Folds should give Todd 30 cents of every dollar he makes".
Phil writes: Not really being very clued-up about the music of today, apart from things that Joe tells me about/posts here, I must confess that 'The Voice' has been a bit of an ear-opener - Tom Jones was the only judge whose music I was at all familiar with.
Just happened to catch the video of this on a music channel. Pretty impressive even on first hearing:
Joe writes: Every summer, London's Choice FM used to playlist reggae and that was where I first heard Sorry If I Hurt Your Feelings by Tenor Fly tune in I think 1996. Great lyric, great melody, an amusingly Benny Hill-esque backing track... it should have been huge.
Which reminds me of the time the Benny Hill theme became the dancehall beat du jour. My favourite take on it was of course Lady Saw's excellent Jealous.
Phil writes: A contestant on 'The Voice' was told by Tom Jones that she reminded him of Janis Joplin. She later admitted that she hadn't heard of Janis. But she's only 17 so has some excuse. For anyone else who hasn't heard of her - and there will be such people out there - here she is. First, the amazing song she really made her own:
She could perform lesser material equally successfully, making it memorable:
Janis herself was compared, undertandably, with the legendary Bessie Smith. So here's Bessie:
Joe writes: There was a lot wrong with Lovatux, not least their name. They signed a record deal and got nowhere in about 1997. But First Kiss, the demo that got them signed, was pretty near perfect.
Phil writes: This blew me away when I first heard it many years ago. Somewhere out there there'll be people who've never heard it. They're in for a treat:
Joe writes: I don't know much about this, but from what I can work out it's the debut release by a new French artist. It's a proper song that manages to avoid sounding old-fashioned or schmaltzy. Very classy.
Phil writes: Another member of the legendary band follows Richard Manuel and Rick Danko offstage. One of the extraordinary things about the Band was the sheer excellence of every member. None of them was really ever the same after the surely premature decision to dis-Band, though the reformed band (minus Robbie Robertson) of the nineties was very good by any standard and I reckon they made better albums than RR.
Here's Levon Helm at Woodstock singing possibly the best Band song (and in his view, and the view of other members of the Band, like much of their material, this was a co-operative writing effort - like the vocals - though, as so often, Robertson managed to get the credit).
Joe writes: Abba's final studio album The Visitors is reissued on Monday. Conceptually this is my favourite Abba album, being released in the year that Anni-Fred and Benny divorced (Björn had already split two years earlier). I must say, listening again, it's not the most consistent album but it does contain two classic songs of heartbreak, One Of Us and The Day Before You Came.
The Day Before You Came:
Listening again now, I'm sure this must have been the inspiration for one of my favourite Pulp songs, Something Changed:
Joe writes: The new Jessie Ware tune is even better than the last one. A few people have tried to fill this niche recently but Jessie seems to be doing it right.
Phil writes: Mike Scott of the Waterboys has tweeted a link to a review of his latest concert where he apparently dedicated this song to the original Lindsay mentioned in the song who was present at the concert. Great opportunity to post this rollicking song.
Phil writes: Our House by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young is on some advert at the moment. Happy to say I can't remember what it's advertising - apart from this great song from an almost great band.
Joe writes: I guess this barnstorming single takes Plan B into the territory once occupied by The King Blues:
Ill Manors borrows its backing track from this German hip hop track Alles Neu by Peter Fox, which in turn samples Dimitri Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony.
Joe writes: I worked with them on the album Save The World, Get The Girl which is full of great tunes and lyrics*. Here's one of its lesser known songs, The Schemers, the Scroungers and the Rats:
And here's the poem Zane Lowe played last night to mark their departure, What If Punk Never Happened:
I will always remember the first time I heard an entire crowd shout along with the words "Viva la punk, just one life, anarchy", and the last time, when they were headlining the Roundhouse in their spiritual home of Camden a few months back.
Zane played their demo a couple of times, but didn't play them again until the guy behind the counter in his local organic greengrocer said to him "Why don't you play The King Blues instead of all that rubbish you do play?". They were a people's band.
* Footnote - after George Galloway won a by-election last week I wrote on Twitter that one of my favourite King Blues lyrics is "A peace movement needs fire in its belly, but Galloway's lapping up milk on the telly" (which he did as a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother). Someone then tweeted me asking what song this is from - good question. I think it was from an early version of Save The World, Get The Girl, and they changed it before the album came out because it was no longer topical. They may have done this at my suggestion and I wonder now if it was a mistake.
Phil writes: Watching 'The Last Waltz' again I was reminded again how magnificent The Band were, never mind all the guests. I think this is my favourite Band song and one of my all-time favourite songs period. The Staples Singers are the icing on the cake here.
Phil writes: I've just seen 'The Last Waltz' on a big screen for only the second time. I've got it on DVD of course, but watching that, even on a decent TV, is not quite the same thing. This must be the best ever film of a live gig, if only because of the astonishing and extraordinarily varied line-up. Neil Diamond would not seem to be an obvious choice as a guest with The Band but this is a storming performance clearly enjoyed by all concerned.
Joe writes: I heard this Phil Ochs song Changes when Digits covered it for a Gordon Lightfoot tribute album. Phil's version sounds ponderous once you've heard Gordon sing it.
Joe writes: This is the other current Afrobeat tune I like apart from Oliver Twist by D'Banj (I've researched this thoroughly by listening to the whole of DJ Abrantee's Afrobeats mixtape volume 1). It's by Ice Prince from Nigeria.
Joe writes: Fun are no. 1 in America with their song We
Are Young featuring Janelle Monae (I'm not sure where Janelle features on it
but still).
Their new track Some Nights is even more exciting to me,
kinda taking what The Feeling were doing to the next level, with a debt to
Queen, 10cc, Journey and many others. So American and so good.
Phil writes: Don't think we've posted this previously. Heard it on the radio this morning and thought, as I did when I first heard it, that it could stand aside any of his dad's best songs. If you didn't know, you'd think it was written and sung by Paul S:
Phil writes: Christy Moore performed this beautiful Ewan MacColl song on the AM programme this morning and this is a fine version with Sinead on backing vocals:
Joe writes: It's called I Will Follow You Into The Dark. Lovely lyric and tune. I've never really been into Death Cab before - do they have more like this I wonder?
Joe writes: The Music Alliance Pact is a monthly collaboration where blogs from around 35 numerous countries each pick one track to represent their country. I wish someone would launch a pop version of this where the biggest local track from each country is represented, but in the meantime, there are usually one or two interesting tracks amongst the Music Alliance Pact zip file.
This month the interesting track comes from Indonesia's Belkastrelka, "an eccentric electronic duo who sample sounds from various sources – windows, the library, television, nature and everything else. Combined with the tiny but wild vocals of Asa Rahmana, they create feral dance music." Am I mad or is Pujian Ekspatriat, which features Fraya and is tipped by the Indonesian webzine Deathrockstar.info, a bit of a jam? Someone should sample it. Here's the mp3.
Phil writes: It would be very hard to write a Valentine's song as great as Steve Earle's sublime 'Valentine's Day' but this effort of Paul's shows he can still turn out a very good song:
There's a decent version of 'I'm going to sit right down and write myself a letter' on McCartney's new album 'Kisses on the bottom' which takes its title from the Fats Waller song. I think, though, that the original has even more to offer:
Joe writes: The BBC make such great trailers advertising themselves, especially when they draw on the songwriting of Lou Reed. The current trailer for BBC Radio features a man moved to tears firstly by The Velvet Underground's Pale Blue Eyes, and then by a football commentary as Blackpool gain promotion to the Premier League.
For the original underground band, The Velvet Underground sure had some great tunes.
Joe writes: It's a choice of Lana Del Rey who is being interviewed. It sounds amazing on Radio 1 (as it does everywhere else one might hear it). Bob Dylan is so great he even inspires other artists' finest work.
Also here is Lana Del Rey's second best track National Anthem:
Joe writes: I listened to all the Etta James tracks that Richard Williams wrote about in The Guardian, but I have to say I don't think any of them are as good what her two biggest hits until Avicii sampled her.
At Last is a top 40 hit in the UK for the first time this week:
I Just Wanna Make Love To You (originally the B side to At Last) was a hit in the nineties of the back off a Diet Coke advert:
Joe writes: Just heard Laura J Martin for the first time. This is an instrumental flute track but very infectious and quite unlike anything else I've heard recently.
Different instrument, different vibe but I was reminded of Devil In The Kitchen by nineties Canadian fiddler Ashley MacIsaac:
And this hypnotic track The Diamond Mountain by Sharon Shannon & Friends:
Joe writes: Legendary American record label boss Steve Greenberg has once
again published his best of the year list, containing many of my favourite
tracks of 2011 plus quite a few I'd never heard before.
It also contains one track I've been meaning to blog, the
new Chiddy Bang single Ray Charles which has a chorus (written by Sam Hollander) that lights up the radio
every time it's played.
I could understand someone feeling this is over-sentimental, particularly with the dodgy video, but I think it's a real gem. There's no doubt that he's written a number of truly memorable songs.
Phil writes: As this is currently being celebrated, it seems appropriate to pay tribute to an innovative and very influential artist. Not so long ago, Joe and I were saying what a great album 'Ziggy Stardust' is. I believe it has a higher proportion of great songs than almost any album you can think of. I'll just concentrate on three. The opening track, 'Five Years' is, like so many Bowie songs, quite unlike any other song you can think of and some of the lines and images live on in your brain for many years (believe me!). And then there's 'Rock 'n' Roll Suicide' with its brilliantly pithy portrayal of someone right on the edge who by the end of the song may well have been saved from suicide. I never tire of 'Ziggy Stardust' which might almost be said to be a new kind of rock music.
Joe writes: Thanks to MrBedosey for drawing my attention to this track via a comment on my YouTube channel. Like Nongqongqo (To Those We Love), it's from the album An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba, but this version was is from a 1966 Swedish TV show and is followed by a moving interview and another track.
