Aye, Pirate Week: Nick Ca'e and Lou Reed.

Aye, ahoy, mateys. I been nearly swallowed up by Da'y Jones himself, but emerged t' send you more tunes from the likes o' some swank-bellied pirates like meself. Gar.

Arrr, in 2004, Johnny Depp and Gore 'erbinski, while workin' on the second and third Pirates o' the Caribbean mo'ies, thought it would be nice t' have some contemp'ry albums o' sea shanties t' help set the mood. Thar warn't any.

So they produced some.

Har be two tracks from Rogue's Gallery... (wiki liner notes), with two personal fa'orite artists o' mine (but just look at that tracklistin' -- if ye like She'll Grow Back, surely ye'll appreciate the talent har).

Nick Cave - Pinery Boy
mirror 1 -- mirror 2

Lou Reed feat. Antony - Leave Her, Johnny
mirror 1 -- mirror 2

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Stagger Lee Saturdays - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Elvis!

Here's a combination of what may be my favorite rendition of Stag ever, with what is certainly one of my least favorites. They contain the same themes -- sex, cursing, and violence (which, granted, go well with singing about Stag) -- but the execution is quite different.

Nick Cave takes most of his lyrics from a 1967 transcription of Stag found in The Life: The Lore and Poetry of The Black Hustler. Elvis pulls his lyrics out of his, by this time, drug-addled brain. Cave's version is violent, and tough, and perverse. Elvis's is scatological and ... well, immature.

But what else do they have in common? Well, right now I'm reading Gershon Legman's Rationale of the Dirty Joke, and in the introduction, he mentions this style of humor (and even attribution to true-life people):

"[War comics and spy novels, like violent Italian pulp novels and folk-ballads]... do not present their materials as jokes or made-up stories at all, but as factual relations concerning the violent and insensate actions of real persons, generally named, and implied to be historical, such as Blackbeard and Rasputin.
What is suggested here is not that all these stories are necessarily true ... What is meant is that these stories and individuals do personify what the tellers and singers well know to be real but inexplicable peculiarities of human behavior, which they are attempting somehow to fit into a rational view of the world, whether as horror or as humor. [This process of making horror innocuous] represents an effective and time-tested folk method of dealing with the unbearable abnormalities of human conduct..."

In other words, when Stag tells a bartender to kiss his ass, and eludes the police through sheer badness, he helps us ameliorate our own fears and demons. (I'm not comfortable with what this means about Elvis's personal demons being exorcised in this performance, really, but I've always thought of him as a big goofy kid anyway.)

Next week, we hear the textually unrelated version by Ike and Tina Turner, another favorite version of mine.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Stagger Lee
Elvis Presley - Stagger Lee (live 6-29-74)
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Qu'est-ce Que C'est? -- It Don't Look Like Anything.

So I'm currently rereading (this is my third time through) Patricia Highsmith's novel The Talented Mr. Ripley. It's a lot darker and more complex than the movie (which I don't particularly care for -- watch John Malkovich play Tom Ripley in Ripley's Game for a much closer portrayal). The novel is disturbing the freaking hell out of me.

And then, this week, I went to see Okkervil River live, and their song "Westfall" is a disturbingly danceable portrayal of insane murder. So you all get to hear this. (I've been holding onto some of these songs since I put together the Crazy? Probably mix, since I thought I might do something like this.) If you didn't already do so, remember to download yesterday's post too, since only the original version of "Psycho Killer" is in this mix, and there are five more covers there.

01 - Talking Heads - Psycho Killer
02 - Johnny Cash - Delia's Gone
03 - Neko Case - Make Your Bed
04 - Violent Femmes - Country Death Song
05 - The Byrds - Pretty Polly
06 - Springtime Is Wartime - Psycho Killer
07 - C. W. McCall - Comin' Back for More
08 - Jason Isbell - Psycho Killer
09 - Okkervil River - Westfall
10 - Bishop Allen - Psycho Killer
11 - Sufjan Stevens - John Wayne Gacy, Jr.
12 - The Faint - Psycho Killer
13 - Lou Reed - The Gun
14 - The Beatles - Maxwell's Silver Hammer
15 - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - The Curse Of Millhaven
16 - Wyclef Jean - Delia's Gone

Zip file 1 -- Zip file 2

Multiple Mondays - I Put A Spell On You

(Note for bookkeepers -- I started writing this post last night, but sadly fell asleep before the files finished uploading. Tuesday's regular one-song post will be up soon.)

Screamin' Jay Hawkins wrote this song in 1956 (or so -- there is debate).

In 2005 I compiled a CD for a friend, on which I whittled down my collection of about 35 versions of this song down to 27, enough to fit onto one disc. Then today I got it down to ten. And it was painful. I love this song, and there are more than ten versions I love (sorry, CCR, Alan Price, Them, Manfred Mann, et al.).

But I can't post more than ten here and expect all of you to listen. So here we go: a wide spectrum of versions of "I Put A Spell On You" in less-than-chronological order.

Zip file

Once again, you can find your own links.

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - God's Hotel

This song is not off a Nick Cave album, more's the pity. But this album is excellent. It has live radio recordings of Beck doing his Townes Van Zandt impression, plus John Cale, and Leonard Cohen, and Tori, and Lucinda Williams covering Nick Drake and... y'know what? Just buy it, okay? (While you're at it, check out the other three volumes as well.)

All I listened to at work last night was Nick Cave. And I love Murder Ballads with a passion that's deep and wide and other dimensions as well. But this song is so much fun that I decided to post it today, rather than any one of the five songs on Murder Ballads I couldn't live without.

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - God's Hotel
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