Otis Redding and Carla Thomas - New Year's Resolution

Hey, all. I don't have a lot of time to write up this post today, but I just wanna say this: Happy New Year! Another decade's come and gone; here's hoping we progress as a species a little more this decade than we did during the most recent one!

Otis Redding and Carla Thomas - New Year's Resolution
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The Bonzo Dog (Doo Dah) Band - Monster Mash LIVE!

Here we go, kids, a special Halloween treat. This is an audio rip from the first episode of legendary British children's show Do Not Adjust Your Set. The show helped cement the TV careers of 2/3 of Monty Python, not to mention today's musical contributors, The Bonzo Dog (Doo Dah) Band (official wiki AMG).

The Bonzos included Vivian Stanshall (right) on guitar and lead vocals (he was known to do a killer Elvis impression, featured during the band's performance in Magical Mystery Tour) and Neil Innes on piano and vocals. The Frankenstein Monster in the middle of the picture is Sam Spoons, who plays a nice solo on the spoons in this song.

I have several other performances by the Bonzos of this song, but I'm fond of Viv's spoken interlude in this, and the chaos the song descends into at the end. More spooky stuff to come -- stay tuned!

The Bonzo Dog (Doo Dah) Band - Monster Mash
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Multiple Mondays: Season of the Witch Volume Two

Here's a second helping of Donovan's atmospheric classic (click here to see Volume One).

In chronological order, here are ten versions. As always, I recommend the zip, but you can cherry pick. (I have many more versions, but they are mostly either terrible, or jambands, which -- sorry! -- tend to run together to me. If you wanna hear more, comment down below.)

Zipfile

Julie Driscoll and Brian Auger (1967) 1 2
Vanilla Fudge (1968) 1 2
Terry Reid (1968) 1 2
Pesky Gee! (1969) 1 2
Suck (1970) 1 2
Coupla Prog (1970) 1 2
Richard Thompson (2003) 1 2
David Gans and Bob Weir (live 2004) 1 2
The Strangelings (2007) 1 2
Blue Matter (2007) 1 2

Multiple Mondays: Season of the Witch

It's October, so here's another ten spooky recordings for ya. Donovan Leitch (official myspace wiki AMG) wrote and recorded "Season of the Witch" in 1966. It's a perfect, almost obligatory garage jam -- only two chords, with incredible atmosphere and a perfect skeleton to hang your own improvisations and musical ideas on. (I spent some time at archive.org this week, and downloaded 21 live versions from 21 different artists, which should give you an idea of the popularity among jam bands.)

The covers of this song started right away -- here we have The Little Boy Blues' take from 1967, and Sam Gopal's magnificently fuzzy, amped-up version from 1968 (via). The Dedikation (via) were a New Zealand group, and their 1969 cover has the tastiest organ licks this side of Al Kooper. Speaking of Mr. Kooper, we're also hearing his version with Steven Stills and Mike Bloomfield, from their 1968 Super Session album (featuring Donovan's drummer "Fast" Eddie Hoh).

G. Love and Special Sauce want to play you a representative jamband version, Lou Rawls adds his distinctive jazzy soul touch to the song, and Jenny DeVivo turns the song into a techie dance groove, complete with obscure audio samples.

Finally, we're going to hear two of my ten favorite covers of all time. Luna's take on this song has one of the five best openings of any pop song ever (someday I'll write a post with the entire list) -- this is one of the peppiest records ever, and my favorite version of this song.

Then, my final mention of Dr. John (previously 1 2 3) for a while: his dirty, funky, greasy voodoo take on the song is not only the best thing about Blues Brothers 2000, it's quite possibly the best thing any human being did in the entirety of 1998.

I have about 30 more versions of this song, almost all of them good, so if I get any requests I'd be more than happy to put up a second volume of this song. As usual, I recommend the zipfile, but you can cherrypick if you feel like it.

Zip file

Donovan 1 2
The Little Boy Blues 1 2
Sam Gopal 1 2
The Dedikation 1 2
Steven Stills, Mike Bloomfield, and Al Kooper 1 2
G. Love and Special Sauce 1 2
Lou Rawls 1 2
Jenny DeVivo 1 2
Luna 1 2
Dr. John and The Blues Brothers Band 1 2

Stagger Lee Saturdays - James Brown

James Brown was the Hardest-Working Man In Show Business -- you all know that, so I won't bother with the introductory links this week.

This is a tasty, horn-driven version from 1967, a perfect slab of Famous Flame-broiled goodness. This song is almost out of print on CD, but luckily I found a cheapish import for your buy link down there. Enjoy!

(I apologize for the peremptory nature of this post, but I have another theme week up my sleeve, which starts tomorrow morning.)

James Brown - Stagger Lee
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Stagger Lee Saturdays - Sam The Sham

Sam The Sham (official fansite wiki AMG) is best known as the be-turbaned lead singer of The Pharaohs, who had the two rockin' novelty hits "Wooly Bully" and "Li'l Red Riding Hood." The year after "...Riding Hood," Sam (born Domingo Samudio) took off the turban and released his tarot-card covered album, Ten of Pentacles. In addition to his cover of Lloyd Price's take on Stag, it also includes covers of "Stand By Me" and two songs by The Coasters, along with quite a few originals.

Sam's sax player and co-songwriter, Frank Carabetta, is featured heavily on this track, along with a lovely piano really high in the mix. I know this makes two weeks in a row with really horn-heavy pop versions of Stag, so we'll have a bluesy version next Saturday.

(Note: this song is long out of print, except on an imported German 3-disc box set, so the buy link is probably wishful thinking yet again.)

Sam The Sham - Stagger Lee
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Stagger Lee Saturdays: The Rulers

Happy New Year, everyone!

I wanna thank everyone who swung by here for Christmas, and especially the people who commented (even though I still haven't uploaded working zips for you yet). Here's our first Stag of the new year, and it's a nice Jamaican ska version from The Rulers. Next week, we'll hear The Clash do their cover of this.

The Rulers - Wrong Em Boyo
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