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Rolling Stones - "Brown Sugar" single.
I used to listen to 1050 Chum AM in the days when this was a hit. I would play on the swings and listen to my little AM radio. When Brown Sugar came on, Keith's opening riff said "hey it's a party, swing faster Paul!!!" then Mick sang that unintelligible first line which I decoded as "Gull coast later bow forgotten fleece...soda mini market Donna New Orleans... I think I nearly swung a full revolution around. I remember a friend of mine worked at Music World at Fairview Mall and he had gotten the "zipper" cover of Sticky Fingers, I remember seeing it and worrying that the zip would scratch the record, "how impractical" I reasoned.
XTC - Go 2, Drums And Wires
I was a teenage XTC fan. When punk rock came along I was actually feeling quite happy. A year before that I was seriously considering abandoning music. I had just discovered that the music biz was full of shit and all the bands were starting to sound like Foreigner or the Eagles. But along with punk came a shitload of creative bands that were blowing the cobwebs off of the whole idea of rock. On tracks like "Meccanic Dancing" and "Battery Brides", XTC were very dextrous and boisterous and had weird timing breaks and clanky, dissonant guitars and a singer who sounded to me like a yodelling pirate (the west country accent of Swindon's Andy Partridge) GO 2 was the one that hooked me, I went back and bought the first one White Music after that and within a year they'd moved into even fresher ground with Drums And Wires. They were now a two guitar band and Dave Gregory's more schooled, almost jazz, virtuosity was the perfect foil for Andy's brash experimentation. I still think that no one has since recorded anything as dark and yet hooky as "Complicated Game" or "Roads Girdle The Globe".
Edison Lighthouse "Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes"single
Such a tight little record with a compelling melody and excellent bridge. When I think of radio music that made me want to write songs, it's not always the pithy or critically approved that springs to my mind. It's trashy disposo-pop like this.
Crowded House - eponymous debut album
I had really dug Split Enz's True Colours album for the singles I Got You and What's The Matter With You, which were Neil Finn tunes. I hadn't heard that they'd split up until one day when I was in a record store and I saw the Crowded House album in the racks with a sticker that read "featuring Neil Finn formerly of Split Enz", this was 6 months before "Don't Dream It's Over" was a hit single but something overtook me to buy this record without hearing a note. I took it home and loved every song on it. It was great to hear someone like Finn who was so unafraid to put a little McCartney in his Lennonesque songs of melancholy and detatchment. I was in a songwriting partnership called Life Time Nine at the time and when my partner Andrew dismissed the album as "70's crap" I knew we would have to part.
Rush - Fly By Night
I'd be remiss if I didn't admit that when I was 16, learning how to play guitar, I lived in the same neighborhood that Alex and Geddy used to live in. We had a band, Nighthawk, that played a few Rush covers like "Fly By Night" and "Lakeside Park". Like Springsteen is to Jersey, Rush are to North York. Local heroes exalted to mythic proportions. So the fact that you could make it from my 'hood, was a prime motivator in me wanted to try and learn how to play like Alex Lifeson...that was until
Max Webster - eponymous first album
I think my brother Peter brought this into the house, along with the Rush stuff too. Max Webster were the next level up, a thinking mans Rush. We didn't know of Zappa, so this was like the weirdest shit from outer space you'd ever heard. Pye Dubois' lyrics were my Allen Ginsberg, suburban beat poetry with Kim Mitchell's fluid riffery and jagged time stops and Terry Watkinson's farty moog solos all topped off with original drummer Paul Kersey's wacked roto toms(stereo panning anyone?) Max played my highschool and I just stared up at Kim's hands as he trilled off mindblowing solo after solo. And I wasn't even on drugs!! I felt like the designated driver at Woodstock...
Talking Heads - Talking Heads 77, Fear Of Music, & Remain In Light
David Byrne must have known that 77 was going to be special so he named the record after the year of it's birth. As with XTC, I found that postpunk, the music world was opening up to possibilities that weren't visible only two years prior. "Don't Worry About The Government", "Book I Read" and of course "Psycho Killer" were like little melodramas from the other side of the world. A bohemian world that I so desperately identified with. Let my people paint. Michael Phillip Wojewoda and I were hanging out with his big sister Nicky at OCA parties and this was the soundtrack. I think Tina Weymouth, more than Chrissy Hynde or Joan Jett, made a statement for women as musicians. She was just the bass player, and while I would be lying to say I didn't have a crush on her, it had nothing to do with her being just a member of the band. By the time Fear Of Music came out, Mike and I had formed a band called Space Invaders and we were doing a cover of David Byrne's "Air", this album also featured "I Zimbra" which pointed toward Remain In Light. I bought that one on the same day that John Hinckley shot at Ronald Reagan. I remember it sounded like nothing else I'd ever heard (I'd never heard Parliament Funkadelic apparently) the interchanging melodies and loopy grooves seemed like they were woven on a loom as opposed to played in a studio. This album is the reason a lot of UK bands like Spandau Ballet went "African". It changed the whole face of modern rock™.
(take that ! Alan Cross)
Brian Eno - My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, Here Come The Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)
It should be noted that Remain In Light wouldn't have been the same without Byrne and Eno's "My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts" which was recorded previously but released later. The sampler as an instrument evolved around that time but before that Eno was doing stuff with actual tape loops and processing. Our band, Space Invaders, all loved Brian Eno and we often performed a loving cover of Eno's "Burning Airlines Give You So Much More" from Taking Tiger Mountain. I loved, and still love today, the sonic and melodic inventions of Eno on his four "pop song" albums (including Before And After Science and Another Green World). What a lot of hipsters overlooked or chose to ignore, was that under all the neat "treatments" and textures and wacky singing was a pure pop heart singing beautiful little songs that were written with love. The fact that he would strive to make the sonic landscape wholly original really made a mark on me and is probably why I like Beck today.
I know I wrote you a friggin essay but I even forgot to rant and rave about:
Joni Mitchell - Blue
My girlfriend Liza once lifted the lyrics to "All I Want" as a love letter to me when we were first going out. She also knit me a sweater just like in the song. It was too and tight, thanks anyway. She was hurt about it but I really did appreciate it. I married her later to punish her for something bad that she surely must have done in a previous life. I took my CD booklet from Blue to the Much Music Intimate and Interactive with Joni Mitchell in Toronto a couple of years back. She signed it, sharpie pen in one hand and ubiquitous ciggie in the other. Show me a more direct and personal album that is as crafted as this and I'll be very surprised. Now that I live in California, "River" has new meaning "it doesn't snow here / It stays pretty green" as does the part in "A Case Of You" - "I drew a map of Canada / with your face sketched on it wice. Sloan's cover of A Case Of You is very sympathetic to the original spirit and yet retains all the loose and groovy things that we've come to love about Sloan so I'd say it's a succesful cover. |
