Single of the Week: Jimmie’s Chicken Shack and Deep Purple
Posted on December 6, 2007Our first single for the week was inspired by DB, who IMed me a couple of weeks ago about downloading some Jimmie’s Chicken Shack from the excellent Amazon MP3 store. I hadn’t listened to JCS in a long time, so I decided to pull Pushing the Salmanilla Envelope off the CD rack and ripped it into iTunes (figure I’ll do that while it’s still legal). Immediately, songs like “Dropping Anchor” and “Another Day” took me back to the days of high school. Ahh, good stuff. So this week’s single is “High“, which happens to be one of the first songs I figured out on my own to play on guitar. The whole album has a really heavy, funky sound. Definitely check it out.
Secondly, a Deep Purple song that isn’t “Smoke on the Water”. From their debut album, Shades of Deep Purple, “Hush” is an excellent song. Originally a country tune penned by Joe South for Billy Joe Royal, it’s a fast rollicking song, heavy on organ and blistering guitar work, and it stays true to the original version. A fantastic single from 1968.
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Single of the Week: Rod Stewart
Posted on October 21, 2007The other night I was driving home, and I had a problem to solve. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to listen to the Rolling Stones, or should I listen to Rod Stewart and the Faces. What to do what to do. And then a solution presented itself. How about Rod Stewart doing a Rolling Stones song? Brilliant! Courtesy of the two-disc (at least, iTunes says it’s a partial album) Complete Mercury Studios Recordings collection, we have an excellent rendition of “Street Fighting Man”. It’s a slowed down, slick and sliding blues version, with some great resonator guitar action (Hey Paul, maybe you should get a resonator guitar… it’s still hillbilly, like you were looking for, but it’s cool, too.) and after it ends, it reprises with a an approach similar to the original version, but still acoustic. And really, it’s a fantastic track.
Bonus crossover fact: Ronnie Wood played guitar with the Faces with Rod Stewart, before joining up with Mick and Keith and the gang. Neat!
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Single of the Week: Carlos Gardel
Posted on September 13, 2007This week we have a very special single of the week. Special ‘cuz you get this song for free. Carlos Gardel was one of the most prominent figures in the history of Tango. An actor and singer, he wrote hundreds of tangos that are still performed today. He died in a plane crash at the age of 45, during the height of his career, creating the image of a tragic hero. Today’s single, “Madreselva”, is perhaps best known for its prominent use in the Italian film Il Postino, and because it’s a damn good song. I feel confident in posting the mp3 because it was recorded over 75 years ago and in another country, so it’s pretty much RIAA proof. Enjoy.
Carlos Gardel’s Madreselva
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Single of the Week: Project Jenny/Project Jan
Posted on August 27, 2007A lot of marching bands (or marching band teachers) think they’re cool by incorporating rock songs into their pep band repertoires, but really, hearing seven trumpets and a tuba playing “Centerfold” isn’t really all that cool at all. Enter Project Jenny/Project Jan. Instead of incorporating rock and roll into marching band, they introduced a marching band into their rock and roll, with “Fight Song“. Featuring a marching band fight song for a backdrop and Jim Morrison-style shouting, it’s definitely an interesting sound, and if you can track it down, an interesting video.
Check back in a couple of days for a post about freaks from the state fair. Whoop whoop.
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Single of the Week: The Libertines
Posted on August 15, 2007Ahh the Libertines. What’s not to love about them? An early ’00’s post punk garage rock revival band with a singer fueled entirely by crack cocaine and heroin. Drunkenly slurred lyrics over bashed out guitar rhythms and banging drums, the bands career blew up and fell apart almost as quickly as their songs did. So this week, I’ma feature a short song by them, “Arbeit Macht Frei“. This song bangs and crashes. Vocalist Pete Doherty drunkenly shouts out verses about hypocrisy and racism in post-war England. That is, if you can make out the words. And the whole thing is done in a minute and thirteen seconds.
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Single of the Week: Morning Theft
Posted on July 30, 2007Hey it’s a single of the week. Neat! Our single this week is “30 Helens Agree” by Morning Theft. (The title is from an old Kids in the Hall series of sketches that were pretty good.) The guitar work is great, the bass drives the song, and the drum beat is this crazy almost 5/4-ish pattern. This track is off their “The News Says It’s Raining in New York” EP, which is altogether a great collection of songs. And one of the guys in the band added me on Last.fm. So I guess that’s cool too. They even have some free mp3s up for the downloadin’ over at their website.
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Single of the Week: ELO and Uriah Heap
Posted on July 3, 2007Definitely going old school with the singles this time around, so hang on. This post is inspired by an excellent tv show I’ve been watching courtesy of the BBC, Life on Mars, about a Manchester detective who gets hit by a car, and wakes up a detective in 1973. Is he in a coma dream, did he travel back in time, or is he just crazy? It is a mystery. The show has a kickin’ soundtrack from the early ’70s British rock scene though, so it’s definitely a worth checking out. Our first single of the week is Electric Light Orchestra’s “10538 Overture“. This cut has that great descending guitar riff, and with the horn in there, it bears a resemblance to Rod Stewart’s “Hand Bags and Glad Rags” or the Faces’ “Flying”. There’s a nutty cello running all through the track that plays well off of the acoustic guitar. It’s a neat song, even during the bizarre breakdown towards the end.
The second single for the week is Uriah Heep, with “Gypsy“. For some reason, I never imagined myself listening to Uriah Heap, but here we are. This track has a great pulsing beat that just hammers away. The electric organ in this song thrashes all over the place. It’s a great song that sets a certain tone for a scene.
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Single of the Week: Beck and White Town
Posted on May 18, 2007The first single this week is from my favorite scientologist (why oh why did he have to be a scientologist…), Beck. “Sexx Laws” is off of the Midnite Vultures album, and while it came with a sort of ridiculous video, it’s a fast and funky track, mashing up dirty horns with bluegrassy banjos and twangy pedal steel guitars. Very interesting indeed.
The other, or “second”, single of this week is Jyoti Mishra, a.k.a. White Town, with “Your Woman“. Recorded almost entirely in Mishra’s bedroom on a Mac, the song is considered a one-hit wonder of the ’90s. The song is mostly driven by an electric piano and a sample of the trumpet from a 1932 jazz tune, “My Women” (my sources are unclear on whether it was Al Bowlly or Lew Stone that recorded the song). It’s a catchy little gender-bending ditty that makes me nostalgic for the days of middle school, sipping lemonade, chasing girls, and listening to The Edge, the no-longer existing local alternative rock station.
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Single of the Week: Collective Soul
Posted on May 10, 2007Taking you way back to songs I listened to back when I was in middle school, today’s SotW is “Shine“, off of Collective Soul’s Hints, Allegations, and Things Left Unsaid album. The verse guitar, a heavily syncopated riff reminiscent of the grunge style that was popular at the time. Really, Ross Childress’s guitar work all over this song is great. The only bad part is the mastering of the track. It’s a little muddier than it should be and I think with a better mixing job this song could really “shine”. Heh heh. I’m great.
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Single of the Week: Daft Punk and Matthew Sweet
Posted on April 28, 2007First single this week, the heavily filtered, hard-samplin’ “Around the World” by Daft Punk, off of their Homework album. This song is meant to be danced to, and this fact is well demonstrated in the video by Michel Gondry, complete with dancing girls, skeletons, guys in track suits, and just weird dudes. Daft Punk definitely know their way around a synthesizer and a sampler. For a list of their excellent use of samples, check out this post at Palms Out Sounds.
Our second awesome track is a Matthew Sweet classic, “Girlfriend“. The rhythm guitar on this song is straight out of the Bob Seger bluesy guitar book, and the lead guitar is almost psychedelically blasted all over, but they both play so well together. This is just a great rock song. Fun fact! Matthew Sweet grew up in Lincoln, NE. In high school, my mom dated him, “before he got all weird-looking.” I was in the sixth grade with his niece; she was a hot redhead, though I haven’t seen her since then. Good times.
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