...and speaking of new music
Another great musical discovery from the weekend: We Can Work It Out: Covers & Cookies of Lennon, McCartney and The Beatles.
There's not much particularly interesting about your average Beatles covers album-hell, who hasn't covered The Beatles? Even if you're not a musician, you've still probably recorded and released a Beatles cover or two. But this is not your average Beatles covers album. It's a collection of mostly-obscure funk, soul and reggae takes on the fabs' music, released by the formidable Harmless Recordings. Harmless is based in England, where they really take their obscure funk seriously, and pretty much every Harmless compilation CD is guaranteed to be awesome. Their albums are imported and therefore expensive if purchased new, so I have a standing policy that I will buy any Harmless disc that I stumble across in a used record shop. They rarely disappoint.
Anyway, there are at least three good reasons to track down a copy of this record and give it a listen. They are:
1) Al Green's cover of "I Want To Hold Your Hand."
It's not cool to slam The Beatles, but let's be honest: this song kind of sucks. Or at least it did until The Reverend Green got a hold of it and turned it from a naive bit of Merseyside pop fluff into a searing, smoking explosion of repressed libido.
2) Stevie Wonder's cover of "We Can Work It Out."
I put this tune on the hi-fi a few years ago while my brother was napping. When the chorus hit, he sprung up, stared at me in disbelief, and then declared, "This is how you cover a song. They should teach this shit in school." No exaggeration: best cover version ever. Of any song.
3) An obscure reggae version of "Norwegian Wood."
Admit it: you're dying to hear what that would sound like.
There's not much particularly interesting about your average Beatles covers album-hell, who hasn't covered The Beatles? Even if you're not a musician, you've still probably recorded and released a Beatles cover or two. But this is not your average Beatles covers album. It's a collection of mostly-obscure funk, soul and reggae takes on the fabs' music, released by the formidable Harmless Recordings. Harmless is based in England, where they really take their obscure funk seriously, and pretty much every Harmless compilation CD is guaranteed to be awesome. Their albums are imported and therefore expensive if purchased new, so I have a standing policy that I will buy any Harmless disc that I stumble across in a used record shop. They rarely disappoint.
Anyway, there are at least three good reasons to track down a copy of this record and give it a listen. They are:
1) Al Green's cover of "I Want To Hold Your Hand."
It's not cool to slam The Beatles, but let's be honest: this song kind of sucks. Or at least it did until The Reverend Green got a hold of it and turned it from a naive bit of Merseyside pop fluff into a searing, smoking explosion of repressed libido.
2) Stevie Wonder's cover of "We Can Work It Out."
I put this tune on the hi-fi a few years ago while my brother was napping. When the chorus hit, he sprung up, stared at me in disbelief, and then declared, "This is how you cover a song. They should teach this shit in school." No exaggeration: best cover version ever. Of any song.
3) An obscure reggae version of "Norwegian Wood."
Admit it: you're dying to hear what that would sound like.