From time to time I like to tune in to the telly to see what bands are making the rounds on the late night talk show circuit on programs like Letterman, Conan, Fallon and the like…
So, last night this happened on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon: Not content to simply perform a tune from their great album Bitte Orca, Dirty Projectors debuted a new song instead, “When The World Comes To An End.” It’s just great.
So I’ve heard some of The Beatles’ remasters coming out next Wednesday (9/9/09!!!) and all I can say is that they’re stunning. I’ve heard a handful of tracks from all the albums — standouts from what I’ve heard seem to be “I Am The Walrus,” “I’ve Got A Feeling,” “Daytripper,” “She’s Leaving Home” etc — plus all of Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour in their entirety.
I’ll be sure to write up more once I have the full stereo box set in my possession next week. But in anticipation, here is a bit of Beatles-related ephemera.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVLkRixjHo8[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZqXspiN-lg&NR=1[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjfdfU-uaPQ[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr7v5lLQhHQ[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfNg484cRCQ[/youtube]
Tonight I was watching last night’s Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien and in a joke about NASA accidentally taping over the original tape of the moonlanding, they showed a brief clip of this beauty:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_rBidCkJxo[/youtube]
I don’t know what else I can say about this. It’s amazing. The end.
…Now I kinda like it. This is one of my favorite quotes from the movie High Fidelity, still one of my favorite movies. Obviously, these are the words of record store owner Rob Gordon (played by John Cusack) as he admits to his ultra-hip music snob friends that he might actually be enjoying Peter Frampton’s “Baby I Love Your Way” — a song he used to once loathe.
When I first heard Wilco’s “You And I,” a new tune featuring Feist on the latest record Wilco (The Album), I felt it was easily one of the most blandly treated songs in the band’s repertoire. On paper, this song — in which Jeff Tweedy and Leslie Feist coo a sweet duet to each other — seemed like a no brainer; a surefire win. What’s not to like?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USjuOWLyWIQ[/youtube]
To be honest, my first impressions were no doubt soiled (unfairly perhaps) by high expectations of what I want a Wilco album to sound like. This is now second Wilco album that, while a sturdy and and generally “good” record, seemed to fall a bit flat for me. It could be argued that the band’s stellar live concerts — with the band’s virtuosic musicianship and instrumental prowess and high energy — has become the best way to experience the band. It could also be argued that what I want from Wilco, may not be what Wilco wants from Wilco anymore.
The Album finds the band for the most part still in a relaxed mode, playing good, unfussy songs well. But it’s a far cry from the deconstructionist rock I fell in love with.
“You And I” in particular, at least on first listens, jumped out by not jumping out at all. It’s certainly the most calculated and straight-ahead song on the record: not offensive or even particularly bad, but dull.
But then I caught a couple homemade videos on YouTube of Feist sitting in with Wilco on tour to perform the song. And again, this past week, they took the song on the Late Show, playing the song for David Letterman:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4NPMjmZ-5A&hl[/youtube]
Suddenly, I was noticing fragments of the song’s melodies rattling around in my head and began to wonder if there was more to this song than I had thought. I looked up the song’s chords online, worked up the song on guitar within an hour — still is a really simple and unfussy song structure — and found that I really loved the chord progression.
The best part of the song to me is the bridge (mistakenly labeled as the “chorus” in that chord sheet link), where the song has brief, and subtle key change:
F Fmaj7
Oh, I don’t wanna know
Em
Oh, I don’t wanna know
C Am9
Oh, I don’t need to know everything about you
F Fmaj7
Oh I don’t wanna know and
C Bb Am Dm G6 G7
You don’t need to know that much about me
That C > Bb > Am > Dm > G6 > G7 progression fits just perfectly and truly makes the song for me. My only wish is that they would play that section more than once. Oh well.
Over the last few days, I’ve decided that “You And I” may be one of the best “songs” on the records. Even if the rather glossy production and uninteresting instrumentation might paint the song as a bit tepid sonically, I think there is something to be said about the overall restraint in the melodies, the beauty of Feist and Tweedy’s vocals and the way the chords snugly fit together. Well done Tweedy, well done.
Lately, I seem to have gotten back into the routine of watching late night talk shows again. Not sure if it’s because of Conan taking over the Tonight Show, the Roots serving as house band on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon or just a recent string of good musical guests, but there have been some incredible bookings of late.
Here is a quick rundown of a few from just the last week:
The Dead Weather on Conan O’Brien:
Elvis Costello on Conan:
Wilco on Conan:
Sonic Youth on Jimmy Fallon:
St. Vincent on Letterman:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGG6ukPDgVA[/youtube]
and even The Roots themselves debuted a new song on Fallon:
I have a new post on the All Songs Considered blog about Paul Simon’s recent performance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon alongside The Roots and Antibalas. Read that post here.
Or just watch the video if you want below:
In light of last night’s entirely bland, though harmless Grammy telecast, I think now is as good a time as any to post this helpful guide. I call this “The Santana Model” (although also applies to MANY other formerly great artists):
1) Become exciting young musician or band well ahead of your time and release a promising debut record everyone loves.
2) Beat the hype: The next string of 2-3 albums should be better than the first; Critics and fans alike will deem classic, but your artistic success is largely ignored by mainstream.
3) Release a succession of albums to diminishing returns that lower the bar each time out. This music will always be compared to your early work.
4) Bottom out with an ill-conceived stinker intended to grab the mainstream’s attention; have everyone write you off as a has-been, sell out or out of touch.
5) After a few years of exile, make a safe and mostly enjoyable album that hardly captures the spirit of original artistic peak, but sturdy enough to not be terrible. These usually include duets or collaborations with newer artists or a top line producer to ensure relevancy to younger generation. People will consider this a genuine comeback and award your return with the Grammy award you deserved the first time around when the voters snubbed you.
RINSE, REPEAT…
Last night I was watching the indie comedy Eagle Vs. Shark, starring Loren Horsley and Jemaine Clement, who of course is most known for playing “Jemaine” on Flight of the Conchords. The film itself was very okay; weird and awkward characters in the Wes Anderson or Napoleon Dynamite vein, but a bit too quirky for its own good. So while it was a middling to sort of bad movie, it did have a couple songs that, like a Wes Anderson movie, really stood out.
Both are from albums I have, but don’t listen to very often for some reason or another: “The Body Breaks” by Devendra Banhart from Rejoicing in the Hands…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqvlfveHTQ8[/youtube]
and “This Is The One” by The Stone Roses from their self-titled album.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXfnZ7HYD_k[/youtube]
Both of these songs are pretty great and have made me want to go back to these records again for another listen, in particular, the fantastic athemic Britpop of The Stone Roses. If there’s one good thing about so many quirk-fest films coming out ever year, its that you know the soundtracks are going to be pretty great and you might find a new artist or rediscover an old one in a new light.
A couple weeks back the trailer for the upcoming Watchmen film went live on the internet and later was attached to prints of the Batman sequel The Dark Knight. For those who don’t know, Watchmen is thought to be one of the most influential graphic novels of modern comics, written by Alan Moore in 1986. The story was grim and dark, and for many, a deconstructionist approach to the superhero genre that redefined the scope of how the medium could be used to tell stories that film and television could not.
The trailer — which for many is the first glimpses of not only the film, but for some the first they’ve ever heard of the story — at least visually looks to match the tone and look of artist Dave Gibbons’ work. Amidst vague and dark imagery of gritty super-powered characters and post-apocalyptic visuals, a song creeps in: with distorted electronic beats and ominous strings it sets the tone for the action on screen.
[youtube]R3orQKBxiEg[/youtube]
At the time, Aryn, Greg and I noted that the vocals sounded like Billy Corgan, singer of Smashing Pumpkins, but I didn’t recognize the song at all and figured it was a new track written for the film.
Turns out, according to LA Times’ blog Soundboard, the song, originally titled “The End is the Beginning is the End,” first appeared on the soundtrack to Batman and Robin (the film known to have killed the Batman franchise until it was revived with 2005’s Christopher Nolan Batman Begins) and won a Grammy in 1998 for Best Hard Rock Performance. (Watch the horrible video below:)
[youtube]GV_XMQ7uXHA[/youtube]
The song was a lesser known track for Pumpkins and sorta faded from view, no doubt because of its association with the worst Batman movie ever. The version from the trailer though, called “The Beginning is the End is the Beginning,” is an alternate take found on a Rarities and B-Sides collection.
Somehow over the years, I had never heard either version of this song. But according to that LA Times blog entry, most had not, since sales for that track have exploded on iTunes and Amazon. While not originally intended to appear in the actual film, director Zack Snyder chose the song for its mood and Corgan himself has asked to have it be included as a music video. It seems they would be foolish not to at this point, since the song has found new life and might be forever associated with the film. Anyway, great song…
Listen to the full track here:
[youtube]xSPFNq2KsFE[/youtube]
In my never ending love for The Beatles, I’m always scouring for new little clips and such I’ve never seen… such as these from the old Beatles cartoon series. I’ve only seen snippets of this series but thanks to the endless treasure trove that is YouTube, I found most of them.
The voices are comically bad compared to The Beatles’ actual voices (sort of bad mix of British cockney accent and Boo Boo from Yogi the Bear cartoons… if not the Beatles-esque vultures from Disney’s The Jungle Book), and the plots make no sense except to set up a song, but otherwise pretty funny. Yay.
I’ll Follow the Sun:
[youtube]Prn1hhkYjoE[/youtube]
Good Day Sunshine:
[youtube]nxYdFY94Jek[/youtube]
And Your Bird Can Sing:
[youtube]h3rQ3lOEm9M[/youtube]
*UPDATE: So according to wikipedia, a voice actor named Paul Frees did the voice work for the John and George in the animated series.
Among other things, Frees lent his talents to Disney films such as the Shaggy Dog, The Absent-Minded Professor, Boris from Rocky & Bullwinkle, Ape from George of the Jungle and SO much more.