Multiple Mondays - Be Thankful For What You Got

In 1974, minor government worker William DeVaughn went into a vanity recording studio in Philadelphia and paid $900 in cash so he could record a song he wrote. As a devout Jehovah's Witness, he was interested in music with a spiritual message (and in fact would preach to live audiences during his shows).

I've collected 23 different versions of this song (many from a wonderful cover blog called Versions Galore), with a message you might want to consider this Thursday. Normally, I keep Multiple Mondays posts to ten or less versions of any given song, but I'm incredibly thankful to all of you out there who are reading, downloading, commenting, and hosting your own blogs. I'm so grateful I zipped up every single version of this song I own, AND I cherry-picked them to upload a few files you can download one at a time.

Artists included here: Bunny Clarke, Bunny Rugs, Cornell Campbell (original + dub remix), Donald McCollum, Donovan Carless (original + dub remix), Fingazz, Fo Clips Eclipse, Kings of the City, Love, Ludacris, Massive Attack, Omar feat. Angie Stone, Pauline Henry, Portrait, Rare Gems, Slammin All Body Band, Big Hands Colvin Band, Walter Beasley, William De Vaughn, Yo La Tengo.

First, the big ol' zip file (130 MB).
Now, some individual files:

William DeVaughn (the original)
Buy from Amazon
Love (1975, the standout track from an otherwise largely unappreciated album)
Massive Attack (1991, from their first album)
Yo La Tengo (1997, from one of their many EPs)
Big Hands Colvin Band (2007, an indie folk-blues band)

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not a particularly spiritual person, but counting your blessings is really underrated, and the best way I know to ensure you don't overlook them. Peace and love to all. (Be sure to be back here December 1, when I'm going to try to post something every day till the 25th.)

The Cougars - I Wish It Would Rain

The Cougars were a Toronto-based reggae band, and here's their take on a Temptations classic. This song, as longtime readers will remember, is one of my favorites, and this version is about a hundred times better than O. B. McClinton's cover. (To be fair to O. B. McClinton, this song is about a hundred times better than the vast majority of Motown covers.)

I just discovered a feature today on Yahoo! Mail which lets you browse all the files you've ever attached to an email. I was scanning through them, and I mailed this to a couple of people back in January 2007. Here's what I wrote:

So, this is my new favorite record today. It's laying eggs in my brain. It's a great soul cover, from an expat reggae band stranded in Toronto during the 70s. The new sound on this song takes some getting used to, but I'm now listening to it for the tenth time in a row.

What I didn't say then, and what deserves saying today, is how this song really starts to soar at the two-minute mark -- there's a nice description of it here.

(In addition to my discovery of that Yahoo! Mail feature, I also discovered something else about the internet today. If you do a Google search for "The Cougars," you mostly get older-women dating sites.)

The Cougars - I Wish It Would Rain
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Repost: Random Tracks, Volume One

Here is a less theme-heavy zip, one consisting of some random single tracks I've posted. Volume One consists of covers; Volume Two will be originals.

Tracklisting, with links to the original posts:

Alison Krauss and Robert Plant - Nothin'
Beck - Which Will
Bill Cosby - Sgt. Pepper
Eddie Izzard - Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite
Ellen Page and Michael Cera - Anyone Else But You
Jack Johnson - We're Going To Be Friends
Lou Reed - Magic and Loss Medley
O. B. McClinton - I Wish It Would Rain
The Kooks - Beast of Burden/Sweet Jane
The Leprechaun Brothers - Danny Boy

Zip file

Cat Power

I've had a crush on Cat Power for a few years now. Last week, when I finally got to see her live (at the mostly-restored Tabernacle), that crush became full-blown love. I know this seems a little weird, and if Chan ever reads this I hope she understands, but her performance style is so open, so emotional and moving, I couldn't help but fall in love.

The show was dominated by songs recorded for her latest album, Jukebox. (By my count, 12 songs were from these sessions, though one, "Fortunate Son," has yet to see release -- I can't wait.) And so is this post:

"Aretha, Sing One For Me" is a cover of George Jackson's 1972 paean to the Queen of Soul, and expresses a lot of the emotion listeners can get out of, and put back into, music. Similarly, "Song to Bobby" (the only Cat Power original in this post, one of two on the album) expresses Chan's love and admiration for Robert Allen Zimmerman, and tells a story about the two. "She's Got You" is a Patsy Cline cover, a song which isn't on the album proper (but the deluxe edition is only $2 more, and the buy link goes there anyway). Finally, my favorite song on the album, "Silver Stallion," is about freedom and horses and hope and the future (a cover of Lee Clayton, though the song might be better known as by The Highwaymen).

Chan roamed the stage all night, and as there was only one row of people between me and her, I got a great view of the show. She sang directly to the audience all night, dancing, grooving on the band (who, incidentally, are great) and working off her nerves. She even sang directly to me for about a minute, and that's when I fell in love. After the concert was over, Chan came out, sans band, and tossed us all flowers, one by one, and made a point of pulling the setlists off the stage and throwing them into the audience too. The crowd was appreciative and loving (even before getting the flowers) and we were paid back tenfold with a great, heartfelt show.

Zip file
Buy from record label

Okkervil River -- A Brief Introduction

This poster here is not for the show I saw last night, but it's pretty, and it represents a few things about the band -- their darkness and their mystery and their roughness.

I was all psyched to come here today and write an impassioned love note to Okkervil River for the show they put on, but I don't have to. It's already been done by others.

So let me say a few personal things instead. I'm a sucker for bands that have a trumpet in them. If you're a rock band, and you include a trumpet, I'll listen to any album you put out at least twice. Okkervil River has a trumpet, and it plays the trumpet figures that haunt my mind whenever I hear a sad song, any sad song at all, on the radio.

Will Sheff's vocals consistently affect me emotionally, no matter the lyrical content of the song. (Scroll down or click to listen to what he does, even with a silly song like "Simon Smith and The Amazing Dancing Bear.")

So here are my three favorite songs that the band played last night. "Plus Ones" is a good summation of everything Okkervil River can do, lyrically and musically. "John Allyn Smith Sails" turns into a surprise cover, which seems inevitable as soon as you hear the first strains. And "Westfall" is incredible -- a driving rock song that feels like the band's audition for the next volume of Murder Ballads. (The song was inspired by a real-life murder, kind of, and the way that Will Sheff's coworkers kept trying to see the evil in the banal murderer.)

(Okkervil River opened for The New Pornographers. Direct your browser this way tomorrow for a post on that half of the show.)

Okkervil River - Plus Ones
Okkervil River - John Allyn Smith Sails
Okkervil River - Westfall

Buy CDs from the record label -- The Stage Names, source of "Plus Ones" and "John Allyn Smith."
Don't Fall In Love With Everyone You See, source of "Westfall."

Whoot! Bill Cosby - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

So here's my first blogpost inspired by a news story. That story being that Bill Cosby is finally releasing another musical album. (This new one will be his fifth by my count, and the first in over twenty years.)

Let's get something straight. I love Bill Cosby, as a standup. When I was a child, our family owned two of his albums, and my brother and I practically memorized them. (That's nutrition!)

And from what I can tell, the man has excellent musical taste, with an eclectic love for funk and soul and jazz and blues. But he can't sing worth a damn.

Exhibit number one: this travesty of a Beatles cover. (By no means even among the ten or twenty worst Beatles covers, either. But one of the funniest, certainly.)

Bill Cosby - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Buy from GEMM -- Buy from eBay

Beck - Which Will

I was reorganizing my MP3s today, and ran across this, which I downloaded who knows when from who knows where.

I've listened to it about twenty times since. All I know about it is that Beck released it on his website in 2005, along with two other Nick Drake covers, which I sadly don't have copies of. I'm supposed to be asleep, so you don't get any other fun links now.

Beck - Which Will

Lou Reed - Magic and Loss Medley live 9-12-04

Speaking of medleys which surprise you with Supremes songs, there's this. Lou has a long tradition of doing this -- playing his songs, and then quoting the rock and roll he grew up on during them. I have, somewhere, a bootleg tape of him singing 4 -- count 'em, four -- Hank Ballard songs ("Work With Me Annie", etc) in the middle of one of his songs from the late 70s.

I have to admit this: I don't care for Magic and Loss. It's my second-least-favorite Lou Reed album. (Mistrial is EVERYONE'S least favorite; I defy you to find an exception to this.) The songs aren't bad (I love the cooler, darker style), but they're all about the same thing, and the album takes itself too seriously. I can take any one of the songs by itself, in a concert setting or whatever. But I've never made it all the way through the album in one sitting ("like a novel"). Plus, this is thirteen minutes long (and 30 MB -- download with care!).

This medley has other surprise quotes in it too, which would be spoiled by cataloging them here. Suffice to say, I miss my oldies radio.

Lou Reed - Magic and Loss Medley (9-12-04 Genoa, Italy)

The Kooks - Beast of Burden / Sweet Jane medley

I like to provide people with information about the songs I post, but I have next to none about this. This is a medley that The Kooks like to perform live. I have no idea when or where this recording is from, but it's nice and clear, a good quality soundboard recording. (I got it here, where there's also a version of Bob's "Tangled Up In Blue.") The Kooks have opened for The Stones before, but I don't know if this was recorded before or after that. (They got their name from a David Bowie song.)

Still, for all the information I don't have about this live medley, it's still wonderful. It sounds so organic, like the two songs were specifically written to be together like this. (Until I heard this, my favorite live Velvets cover medley was Bishop Allen's traditional soundcheck of "Sister Ray/Roadrunner" which was indeed more organic, since Jonathan Richman deliberately wrote "Roadrunner" around the organ part of "Ray." Sadly, I have no MP3s of this soundcheck.)

The Kooks - Beast of Burden / Sweet Jane

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss - Nothin'

I know how late I am to this party. Really, I do. But just because this album was all the rage months ago does not mean I suck for just having bought it myownself this week.

I've LISTENED to it all, a while ago (thanks, Jen!). But I didn't fall in love with this song till yesterday. This is a Townes Van Zandt song, and I love Townes. (But his version doesn't stand out from his other songs, not for me.) This version stands out from everything, because it has that fiddle. Ms. Krauss plays fiddle like a 60-year old blind blues singer plays the harmonica, with all the weight of the world coming out through the bow. I have a serious crush on her now, just because of this (much the same way I crushed on Scarlet Rivera because of her fiddle on, say, "Isis".)

The CD was produced by T-Bone Burnett, Coen musical supervisor (that is to say, responsible for the O Brother and Ladykillers and Lebowski soundtracks) and artist in his own right. He's my second favorite producer-artist working right now, right behind Daniel Lanois.

This track is so good it makes me weak in the knees.

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss - Nothin'
Buy from Plant and Krauss -- Buy from Deep Discount

PS -- Alzheimer's research needs funding. You can give as little as a dollar through this link. Do it for Terry Pratchett.

Ellen Page and Michael Cera - Anyone Else But You

So here's my second post about Juno. I first heard of this movie through my daily surfing. Neil Gaiman linked to his free audio stories on last.fm, and also his own playlists there, which I clicked through to see who else was playing The Velvet Underground, and the most-played song that week was "I'm Sticking With You" as a result of it being on this album. (For the record, "...Sticking..." is used well in the movie, but not over a particularly memorable scene.)

And then I heard that Jason Bateman and Michael Cera were both in the movie, and I was convinced. Let me get this out of the way: Michael Cera is just adorable. I'm seriously, in my heart of hearts, considering watching Superbad because he's in it.

The film is wonderful, and it ends with this song. (We've previously heard about a minute of the original version of this song played during the movie.) We see Ellen Page and Michael Cera sitting in front of his character's house, just strumming and singing this, themselves, in their own quiet voices, in a nice slow pullout shot. It sums up their characters and their search for love, and the happy ending they've been hoping for during the last two hours. It's so damn sweet.

Did I mention yet how much I loved this movie? Jason Reitman, keep making films, and I'll keep watching them. If you're still in, I'm still in.

Ellen Page and Michael Cera - Anyone Else But You
Buy from Amazon -- Buy from Deep Discount

Cat Power -- Sea Of Love

Anyone who knows my musical taste at all will tell you how unlikely this is: There's an album that contains a Velvet Underground song, but that's not my favorite song on the album. Today and tomorrow, we're looking at two albums that's true of.

I love Cat Power. I first heard her cover of "I Found A Reason" (which you've all heard during V for Vendetta) back in about 2000, but I'd heard "Sea of Love" a year or so earlier. And they're both great, great covers that can -- if I'm in the right mood -- make me mist up.

But I just saw Juno last night, and Cat Power's "Sea of Love" pushed me past my tipping point on the mist-up meter during that film. Granted, it was already a highly emotional point of the movie, and I was already loving the film and the characters, but if a filmmaker brings in one of my 500 favorite songs during the emotional climax of a film (see also: "The Only Living Boy In New York" during Garden State) I turn into jelly.

Tomorrow, you'll all read about an original song from the soundtrack, and how I prefer it (in the context of the film) to "I'm Sticking With You" by Lou Reed and Maureen Tucker.

This file now included in the zip file here.
Buy from Matador Records

O. B. McClinton - I Wish It Would Rain

"I Wish It Would Rain" has always, always, been one of my favorite hurtin' songs. (Turns out there's a good reason it's so genuinely mournful, as you'll find out if you click that link to Wikipedia there.) The Temptations recorded the original version, along with another favorite hurtin' song of mine, "Just My Imagination." And their recording is so good, a real classic. But until today, I'd never heard this version, or even heard of the singer.

O. B. McClinton was an African-American country singer, one of about two in the whole country at the time (Charley Pride is the much better known one). He grew up in Mississippi, listening to Hank Williams records and longing to be a singer. He wrote songs that were recorded by Otis Redding and Clarence Carter, and those songs got him an audition at Stax Records, where he became their first country musician. Much later, he was one of the pioneers of marketing albums exclusively on TV.

I got this track on a collection of Stax recording artists covering Motown songs, which is mostly good but ranges from the sublime (Isaac Hayes's "Never Can Say Goodbye") to the execrable (Billy Eckstine's demolition of "My Cherie Amour"). If you buy that collection, stay away from Billy Eckstine.

O. B. McClinton - I Wish It Would Rain
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Jack Johnson - We're Going To Be Friends

I've heard quite a few White Stripes covers in my day, but this is my current favorite (sorry, The Dynamics -- your time will come once again soon, I'm sure). Jack Johnson really brings out the sweetness in Jack White's adorable lyrics. Makes me wanna see if I can find Danette Fisher online, the girl I used to walk to school with as a young man, and reclaim that early friendship. Of course, I know next to nothing about her as a person now, except that she reads a lot and I'll bet any of you ten bucks she owns a horse.

If I find her, I'll come back and comment on this post.

Jack Johnson - We're Going To Be Friends
Buy from Amazon -- Buy from Deep Discount