Funeral to Finish

  There's a fascinating thing with older albums that you don't see that much anymore, and that's the Instant Cover.  By that I mean artists covering really popular songs that were only, like, a year old.  This record contains, of course, three lock-solid All Time Greatest songs that are all Four Tops originals, "Reach Out I'll Be There," "Standing in the Shadows of Love," and "Bernadette" (all three written and produced by H-D-H, the absolutely DEADLY songwriting team Holland-Dozier-Holland, more on which below).  These songs are all canonical and cannot be questioned. But then there are a slew of covers, including not one but TWO Monkees covers, "Last Train to Clarksville" and "I'm a Believer."  Crazy, right?  It's like if Kendrick said "OK, I've got another stone classic album, lemme just throw on two Bieber covers to round it out."  I mean, the Tops are of course amazing singers and do great rend...

  I would wager a fair amount that almost every person reading this blog has, at some time or another, drunk-wailed "ALLLLLLLISON, I KNOW this world is KILLING YOU" in a bar or at a party or just at home, looking forlornly out a window.  That song, "Alison," was wired into my brain by the time I was 17 and will never leave.  And it's just one of the songs on this incredible collection. The songwriting is, of course, nearly flawless; the melodies juke around, always taking a slightly unexpected but then almost inevitable turn.  There's the straight punkabilly of "Mystery Dance" and the pure pop of "(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes."  Of course it was produced by Nick Lowe; his sensibility is obvious, but Elvis takes it and runs with it.   Then, of course, there are the lyrics.  Elvis is probably one of the top 5 or 10 greatest lyricists in rock history, and it's obvious on this, his first album, that he's interested in wordplay...

  I think I owned this album on vinyl at one point?  I was at least vaguely familiar with most of the songs and the cover looks familiar so I think I might have.  Right now I'm imagining the trail of vinyl albums stretched out behind me from town to town.  I guess they're all in a landfill somewhere now. Cool album!  There is some straight-ahead rockabilly kind of stuff ("Don't Worry Baby") and some songs obviously strongly influenced by Latin music ("Corrido #1," which is sung in English, interestingly).  "Our Last Night" has a melody that could have been sung by Hank Williams.  It's that kind of blend. "How Will the Wolf Survive," the closer on the album, is the song you probably will have heard.  I clearly remember hearing it on the radio in the mid-80's.  Maybe you did too. As far as I can tell, Los Lobos is still around.  In 2009, they released an album of Disney covers called "Los Lobos Goes Disney," which kind...

  Never listened to this album, so I put it on yesterday and there's this spoken word kind of intro and then I realize I know the first song, because it's so ubiquitous in popular culture that I knew the opening notes by heart, without ever knowing who it was or where it was from. I know, right?  The even trippier thing is I can't place where I've heard it but it's so immediately familiar that I must have heard it hundreds of times!  Wild.  A little digging around shows that it's been in movies like "The Hangover" but I probably know it from some of the commercial it's been in, like this . Anyway, R&B is not really my thing but I enjoyed this album enough.  I mean, it sold 10 million copies in the US, so it certainly spoke to a lot of people.  I did enjoy the vocals in "Caught Up" quite a bit, and there is no doubt that Usher is a gifted singer.  But maybe just not for me, and that's ok!  Not everyone loves everything. One incredi...

  Wow!  First "Crooked Rain," now this!  It's a 1-2 punch of Dad Rock for the ages. Can't say they don't have a sense of humor about themselves, though, huh?  Above photo taken by the author at the Bill Graham Civic, November 2017.  Now that was a fun show - except for the Millennials who insisted on yelling at each other through literally every song - but nothing really compares to their set at the Pitchfork Festival in Chicago in 2010, a show I was lucky enough to be at, where my eyes were first opened to this truly great band.  Here's a video of "All My Friends," a song from the album we're discussing today, and yet another Gen X anthem.   Remember when we were talking about "Gold Soundz" in the last installment and how it's maybe about growing up?  Same thing here, except it's about being on the wrong side of 40 instead of 30.  It's the sequel to GS, I guess.  And, apparently, the second best song of the 2000s !  (Outka...

  So far in this project I've encountered the first album I personally owned , but here we have the first album that is one of My Favorite Albums of All Time (so much so that, when I did the incredibly predictable music nerd exercise of compiling a list of my Top 20 Albums ever in 2009, this was #11), so I may not be completely objective about it.  I know this album so well that I really didn't have to listen to it again for this project but it's always a pleasure to return to so I did anyway. Big picture, this, to me, is an album about growing up, becoming an adult.  Not that growing up between 18 and 25, but the slacker Gen X version of growing up between 25 and 29, when you're realizing you can't just hang out and drink beer every day any more, that you have to move on and actually become an adult. "Gold Soundz," the centerpiece and best song on the album, is a paean to lost love and a lost life: So drunk in the August sun And you're the kind of gir...

  Imagine my surprise when I got about halfway through this album, looked at the tracklist, and realized this ISN'T the album with "West End Girls" on it.  Straight honesty here, I did not know the Pet Shop Boys had another album, or really, another song.   So this is a pleasant enough EXTREMELY '80s synthpop record.  There are some nice melodies and the whole thing sounds somewhere between Wham! and Depeche Mode, maybe more towards the Depeche Mode side but lighter.   Do you want to know how '80s this is?  Listen to the first 30 seconds of "What Have I Done to Deserve This?"  It is the perfect distillation of what you think of when you think "'80s music."  Actually, the whole song is. Featuring Dusty Springfield!  Yes, that Dusty Springfield.  This song might be the keystone that holds the entire '80s together.  From Wiki : "It was kept from the top of the Billboard charts by "Seasons Change" by Exposé and "Father F...