"Down Home Girl" by THE COASTERS: I had no idea when I started putting this post together that Tuwa's Shanty had their own post going about the Alvin Robinson version of this song. His post pretty much nails everything I love about this song, too, so you might as well head over there to download their track. The first time I ever heard any rendition of this Butler/Leiber song was on THE ROLLING STONES' cover-filled Now LP. The Stones' version is sexy, but The Coasters just lay the mack down on this mother. (BONUS TRACK: "Down Home Girl" by OLD CROW MEDICINE SHOW)
"Jealous Guy" by DONNY HATHAWAY: God bless you, Soul Sides. I can't imagine living my life without hearing this song, and I owe it all to Oliver Wang's blog, and more specifically, the awesome CD of funk and soul gems he curated. I wish I could put out my own album, if only in the hopes I could introduce a song to someone that could move them as much as Hathaway's cover of John Lennon's classic has moved me.
"Incinerate" by SONIC YOUTH: Bloggers have been all over this song for a while now, but I don't care -- this song is just gorgeous and encapsulates everything great about one of my favorite bands. Listening to this you can hear all of the influence these guys have had, on bands like the Smashing Pumpkins, The Pixies, Yo La Tengo, 18th Dye and more. While I enjoyed Sonic Youth's past couple of albums, I really think their new record, Rather Ripped, is exceptional and up there with some of their best albums (Sister, Daydream Nation, Goo, etc.. (BONUS TRACK: A 1988 Peel session from Sonic Youth, where they cover The Fall's "Rouche Rumble")
"For Your Information" by THE CEDARS: Please, God, tell me someone out there can tell me more about the Cedars. What I've learned, I got from a fantastic blog called Little Hits. Everyone I have played this song for has been stunned to find out that these guys were from Lebanon. This song, from 1967, was a huge hit. . . in Turkey. It's a damn shame they never blew up worldwide, because this is the coolest blend of the Middle East and Western pop music I've ever heard, and that includes "Norwegian Wood."
"Lloyd, I'm Ready to be Heartbroken" by CAMERA OBSCURA: It's a fact -- I'm a huge sucker for a girl with a quirky accent, and Camera Obscura's Tracyanne Campbell has a great sexy, Scottish one that turns words like "down" into something that sounds like "doyne." This track is a mini-masterpiece, with soaring strings, a church organ and percussion straight out of a Phil Spector tune. (BONUS TRACK: "Teenager" by CAMERA OBSCURA)
"Quiet Town" by JOSH ROUSE: I've confessed previously to my guilty love of Josh Rouse's pitch perfect brand of lite-rock. Yacht Rock be damned, this guy is just plain SMOOOOTH. "Quiet Town" is from Rouse's newest album, Subtitulo, an album dedicated to Rouse's newfound home in Spain. (BONUS TRACK: Here's a repost of one of my favorite Rouse songs, the imitation Smiths-y-ness of "Winter in the Hamptons")
Pimps of Gore is back, bitches.
6 comments:
I fuckin love Josh Rouse.
Glad you're back to posting. Kickass tunes.
Welcome back! "For Your Information" is a pretty kick-ass song. Speaking of cross-cultural, musical awesomeness: Are you familiar with the song "Mathar" by the Dave Pike Set? It is also fantastic. (Sadly, I don't have a copy of it. I did some cursory looking, but all I could find was an .avi file and the possibility that Theivery Corp. has a song by the same name. Sorry.)
Everything else in your post is, as always, top-notch. Thank you.
I'll try to hunt "Mathar" down. Sounds interesting. Thanks, SH.
D
bout time you got off your ass and got back to blogging....but you're slipping...I had already heard and fallen in love with Donny Hathaway's version of Jealous Guy.....and I think I could make a whole mixer of different versions of Down Home Girl....OCMS, Nic Armstrong, Taylor Grocery Band, The Coasters, the Stones...I had never heard the OCMS version though, so thanks...gotta love the Beatles riff on the harmonica.
There were literally thousands of such crazy songs in Turkey in the '60s (some very badly recorded and some astonishingly of high quality -that I've been discovering in the last few monthsnow that I've started to take an interest in this material. Although I lived in Turkey most of the '60s, I was never interested in the what is now called 'crossover' stuff; it was considered very naff at the time, especially the Cedars. They were thought of as being the cheesiest of them all -some of the worst bands and solo singers covered them -and they were the favourites of the lowest taste listeners.)
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