Mike Skinner disappointment

worldsgreatestmusicdad writes:

How could he appear live - with a gospel choir, for God's sake - and not do Never Went to Church? Otherwise the BBC Electric Proms show with choir and orchestra was impressive and he did play two of his best but Church is great music and a lot of his stuff isn't quite. It's often smart, funny, original - It Was Supposed To Be So Easy is one of my favourites - but not truly memorable.

The Streets - Never Went To Church (iTunes)

The Streets - It Was Supposed To Be So Easy (iTunes)

Day 'n' Nite by Kid Cudi

World's Greatest Music writes...

This has been going round my head. Big hit I think. I borrowed the link from the Cream Team blog.

Kid Cudi - Day 'n' Nite (there's only a remix available on iTunes so far)

Can't get this out of my head

worldsgreatestmusicdad writes:

Most readers of this blog probably watch Jools, though anyone can miss a week - I sometimes do. So you may not have caught Nicole Atkins a few weeks back. I'd never heard her before. I bought 'Maybe Tonight' the next day and I've played it over and over. It's one of those songs that gets straight to you and you can't believe it's not already a massive hit with its Bowiesque lyrics and strong tune. The performance is excellent as well. I love the way the opening ethereal strings are followed by the basic but effective beat. The song builds inexorably to the climactic chorus which doesn't disappoint. Apparently, Nicole Atkins has been compared to Orbison and you can see why. I'm surprised that she hasn't yet made it big. She surely will.

Nicole Atkins - Maybe Tonight (iTunes)

Sara Schiralli

Joe writes: Not sure where I heard about Sara but she is on MySpace (yes, really), and her music is lovely.

Sara Schiralli - Bang Bang (iTunes)

Another 'Blind Willie McTell'

worldsgreatestmusicdad writes:

When the The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 appeared in 1991 fans were amazed that one of Dylan's greatest songs, an outake from Infidels, had been left on the shelf for 8 years. Now the eighth 'official bootleg' album Tell Tale Signs has appeared and we find a track left off Time Out of Mind 11 years ago which will almost certainly be acclaimed as another lost classic. As with some of the best Dylan songs, it sounds like some other song you can't quite identify and yet it's really unlike any other song you've ever heard. If you're quick, you can follow this link to hear the whole album which is released on 7th October.

Bob Dylan - Red River Shore (Amazon)

Bob Dylan - Blind Willie McTell (iTunes)

the original demo of Without You, the song made famous by Harry Nilsson and Mariah Carey

Joe writes: The person who sent this to me wrote "Think you might be interested in hearing this. The original demo (different middle eight and no chorus!) of 'Without You'. This is Peter Ham at his Fender Rhodes in 1969 knocking out a song that would earn the industry millions and that he would never see a single penny from and that would ultimately drive both him and his best friend and co-writer to commit suicide. This is the most tragic tale in the annals of pop."

For more on this, read Peter Ham's Wikipedia entry, or this piece from his official website, written by the mother of his child.

Peter Ham - Without You (demo) (not on iTunes, but here's a link to buy the album from whence it came, on Amazon.com)

A favourite Dylan cover

worldsgreatestmusicdad writes:

Caught Alan Price on a TOTP2 re-run and it prompted me to post this, which is a memorable interpretation of a great, and relatively accessible, song.

Alan Price - ToRamona (not on iTunes so here's an Amazon link to an anthology that includes it)

One of my favourite 'Motown' tracks

worldgreatestmusicdad writes:



If Grapevine is the greatest Motown track, Your Love Keeps Lifting Me is not far behind - though it may not strictly qualify as a Motown track even though the backing band were the Funk Brothers, Motown's house band. I first heard Jackie Wilson's unique vocals emanating from a jukebox in a transport cafe in the late fifties. I'm not certain now which tracks I first heard, but Lonely Teardrops would certainly have been one of them. Levi Stubbs is not the only distinctive artist to have inspired a song by another.

Jackie Wilson - Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher (iTunes)

Jackie Wilson - Lonely Teardrops (iTunes)

Van Morrison - Jackie Wilson Said (I'm In Heaven When You Smile) (iTunes)

new-ish bands I've been meaning to post for a while

World's Greatest Music writes...

Your Twenties are a kind of English art rock take on early Hall & Oates or Steely Dan, with surprisingly melodic songs. I stole the link from the excellent Pinglewood blog.

Barefoot Confessor's Camden Road is somewhere in the middle ground between The Libertines and McFly, and I think either band would be proud of it.

Music Go Music sing out of tune, but what good songs. They're very LA as someone pointed out to me. And they have some amazing illustrations on their MySpace site.


I saw Billy The Kid at Latitude Festival and they were really good, if tired and hungover. If I Was is neat.

Music Week's Playlist is a good place to discover new music including Middle Class Rut, who really remind me of Harvey Danger. Flobots have a hit sounding like Cake, so maybe MC Rut can have one sounding like another second division nineties US rock band.

Your Twenties - Caught Wheel (Amazon)

Barefoot Confessor - Camden Road (not on iTunes yet)

Music Go Music - I Walk Alone (iTunes)

Billy The Kid & The Brothers Barbaylios - If I Was (not on iTunes yet)

Middle Class Rut - New Low (iTunes)

Bad Boy Productions (BBP) - Candy Floss

Joe writes: Bad Boy Productions are the team behind Put A Donk On It

They don't take themselves too seriously but maybe they should with this track Candy Floss and its wonderful chords

Norman Whitfield is no longer here to make everything right that's wrong

World's Greatest Music writes...

Amongst many other hits, Norman wrote (with Barrett Strong) and produced probably the greatest ever Motown single, I Heard It Through The Grapevine by Marvin Gaye.

Marvin Gaye - I Heard It Through The Grapevine (iTunes)
Billy Bragg - Levi Stubbs' Tears (iTunes)

I'm happy that Elbow won the Mercury Music Prize

World's Greatest Music writes...

Guy Garvey is a nice guy and a good songwriter. Here's one of my favourite Elbow tracks from their catalogue. I always thought Coldplay took inspiration from this for Fix You.

Elbow - Grace Under Pressure (iTunes)

Joan Baez covers English songwriter

worldsgreatestmusicdad writes...

I notice that Joan Baez has included a song by Thea Gilmore on her upcoming album. Haven't heard it yet but it's not such a surprise as Baez guests on Gilmore's latest album 'Liejacker'. I don't know a lot of her stuff but I heard her guesting with Martha Wainwright when they sang her excellent song 'This Girl Is Taking Bets' with its Dylanesque succession of striking images.




Thea Gilmore - This Girl Is Taking Bets (not on iTunes so here's an Amazon link for the album Rules for Jokers)

Thea Gilmore has also done some fine covers herself, including this which is somehow unexpected:

Thea Gilmore - Warm And Tender Love (iTunes)

inspiration for the two biggest hits of recent times

The World's Greatest Music writes...

Most people recognise the references to Sweet Home Alabama in the current Kid Rock hit, but not everyone spots the musically more significant sample from Warren Zevon's Werewolves Of London. Sweet Home Alabama is great but I think Werewolves Of London is even better.

Katy Perry's hit shares a title and a concept with I Kissed A Girl by Jill Sobule. Jill's song is rather more subtle and personal. Indeed it's curious that it took three of the world's most successful pop songwriters and the artist (Cathy Dennis, Dr Luke, Max Martin and Katy) to come up with I Kissed A Girl, considering the groundwork that had already been laid by Jill.

Warren Zevon - Werewolves Of London (iTunes)

Jill Sobule - I Kissed A Girl (iTunes)

Interesting how one thing leads to another

when you start trying to identify songs. I've been watching coverage of the Democratic convention and noticed how much Springsteen featured on the soundtrack - that's literally what it is, every speech, video and bit of business accompanied or followed by a snatch of music. I think they should publish the playlist for nerds everywhere.

As well as Springsteen, I heard amongst other vaguely familiar tracks 'American Girl' and had to check who it was by - Tom Petty, of course. Great track, but I'm not sure that they would have used it if they'd read the lyrics right through. Then I noticed on YouTube that Everclear had covered it - quite a decent version. In the YouTube comments someone remarked that they do an acoustic version of it. That I would love to hear as their version of 'Brown Eyed Girl' as the Beach Boys might have done it is absolute class, and very surprising given their usual style. I had been wondering what the Republicans should use on their soundtrack and came across 'Volvo Driving Soccer Mom'. Read the lyrics.

Tom Petty - American Girl (iTunes)
Everclear - Brown Eyed Girl (iTunes)

Lisa Hannigan and MIA

The World's Greatest Music writes...

Two updates on things I've written about before.

Lisa Hannigan's debut solo album is out soon in Ireland. My favourite track on it is Lille which can now be downloaded for free from www.lisahannigan.ie (in theory at least - in practice the site wanted my credit card details even though the file is free, then rejected them).

And my favourite MIA track Paper Planes is finally receiving the attention it deserves, going top ten in the US and soon to be re-released in the UK.

A favourite Bowie track and an early single

worldsgreatestmusicdad writes:

Considering that Bowie is one of the patron saints of this blog, he hasn't featured too much so far, although perhaps he has because you can hear his influence everywhere, in Mike Scott, Tom Baxter, Damien Rice, Belle and Sebastian, Rufus etc. It's hard if not impossible to have one favourite track for an artist like him who has produced so many great tracks in such a range of diverse styles but 'Rock 'n' Roll With Me' is certainly one of my favourites, a gorgeous and instantly memorable sound with his voice as good as it gets (pretty damn good) even if the lyrics are somewhat impenetrable and almost irrelevant - apart from the chorus - and there's not too much rock 'n' roll about it.

In 1966 I owned 'Can't Help Thinking About Me'. It didn't chart but I really rated it. Sadly I took it to one too many student parties and never saw it again. As well as having one of the great rock themes - leaving home - it surely prefigures much of his later work.




David Bowie - Rock 'N' Roll With Me - iTunes
David Bowie and the Lower Third - Can't Help Thinking About Me (iTunes)

Ragtime

worldsgreatestmusicdad writes:

Well, this blog has already promoted trad jazz, so why not? Like country music, ragtime has often been neglected or reviled because of people's false perception that it all sounds the same. There's a limit to the amount of jingly-jangly, out-of-tune piano at breakneck speed that I want to listen to (depending on my mood, anywhere between five seconds and five minutes) but there are all kinds of rags and many ways of playing them. Amongst the best is this beautiful Scott Joplin composition, played here anonymously (probably on a piano roll) and not by the man himself who did make some piano rolls but not of 'Solace', it seems. A classically trained pianist, Joshua Rifkin, helped, along with the soundtrack of 'The Sting', to popularise ragtime back in the early seventies with a great album, and you may have heard 'Solace' played either by him or (truncated) on the film soundtrack (with strings!).

Anon - Solace
Joshua Rifkin - Scott Joplin: Piano Rags (Amazon)

Isaac Hayes has died

Joe writes: You might want to download something with his voice on right now, but instead here's something with Ghostface Killah's voice on, rapping over a sample from Isaac's version of Walk On By - I Can't Go To Sleep by the Wu-Tang Clan

more HYPNTZ

Orchestra is my favourite track by Dan Black's previous band The Servant. I wasn't sure about his nasal vocal back then but it works rather better on HYPNTZ, which reminds me of Dynamite Hack's cover of Boyz N The Hood. How did they get away with the Beatles steal at the end I wonder?

And all of this is an excuse to post my favourite Notorious BIG track Juicy. What a lyric. Morally it's deeply flawed but aesthetically it's outstanding. It also includes the line "blow up like the World Trade" which is not the only pre-9/11 occurrence of this motif in rap music. Biggie's lyrics were of course weirdly prophetic, but listeners should note that drinking champagne to quench one's thirst will only result in further dehydration and quite likely a headache.

The Servant - Orchestra (iTunes)

Dynamite Hack - Boyz-N-The-Hood (on iTunes US but not UK)

Notorious BIG - Juicy (iTunes)