Cover Your Tracks: Ray Charles and Toots and The Maytals Cover John Denver

In 1975, the fabulous Charlie Rich, country singer and former Sun Records labelmate to Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, and Jerry Lee Lewis, walked onstage at the Country Music Awards, visibly intoxicated, and instead of handing an Entertainer Of The Year award to John Denver (which was what he was there to do in the first place), took out his lighter, and burned the envelope. Whether out of envy of John Denver (who was having a successful run in the early seventies, while Rich himself was languishing despite his immense talent), or as an affront to the country music industry for rewarding the not-very-authentically country Denver, the point was made. Indeed, Denver was more of a folky—Peter, Paul, and Mary covered his "Leaving On A Jet Plane", after all, and despite "Thank God I'm A Country Boy" and "Take Me Home, Country Roads", Denver's output will always have a seat in the corny 70s pop department.

I've always liked John Denver, if only for the sentimental memories of hearing his music daily on AM radio when I was a kid in Idaho in the 70s and 80s. But if his regular Muppet Show appearances put him in a league with Paul Williams (with whom he shares both AM radio songwriting and a regular Muppet Show gig), few can deny that the man could write a song. Exhibit A: In 1972, Ray Charles—no stranger to covering country songs, or any other genre, for that matter, slipped an amazing cover of "Take Me Home, Country Roads" on his 1972 album A Message From The People, taking Denver's gentle, folksy original and turning into a joyously funky country hoedown.

Here's Ray Charles covering "Take Me Home, Country Roads":

As good as Ray Charles' version is, this next version might even be better. Toots & The Maytals, one of the greatest reggae groups ever, may have been John Denver fans, and have recorded several other unexpected covers (you should hear their "Louie, Louie"). This track, originally from their 1974 LP "In The Dark", takes Ray Charles' version (likely the version they heard first) and somehow makes it even more sentimental and exhuberant, substituting "West Jamaica" for "West Virginia". Enjoy!

Toots & The Maytals covering "Take Me Home, Country Roads":

Broadcast: Study Series 04: Familiar Shapes and Noises [2010]

Whoa...I mean, whoa. I think Broadcast have gone on a lysergic holiday. After releasing a decade's worth of good-to-excellent dreamily melodic, slightly distorted keyboard pop which often sounded like Stereolab's younger, goth cousin, they seem to be taking a sonic detour into more abstract sculptures of spooky noise. I saw them play live at the Troubadour in November 2009, when they were touring in support of Broadcast & The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age, a collection of soundtracky noise fragments interspersed with a few actual songs. The record, as experimental as it was (at least in terms of its detour from more familiar Broadcast music), was no preparation for the live show, which began with a very long, intense instrumental (imagine a particular loud, unhinged, electronic, backwards Interstellar Overdrive) performed in front of a very aggressively trippy, black-and-white visual barrage of a video installation. The record's mention of "witch cults" perhaps explains what coven Broadcast had joined. Their path into electric horror movie acid trip soundtracks continues with their most recent release, the single Study Series 04: Familiar Shapes and Noises. This title is rather inaccurate, as the three songs' shapes and noises are more of the witch cult madness—it's odd that this unfocused music is going under the formal group name Broadcast & The Focus Group. I hope that they apply their passion for fragmentary noise to their songwriting; they have always have a good ear for squeezing weird noises out of keyboards. But this single, like the last record, has more weird soundscapes than weird songs, and while I do like the exploratory sonics, I feel like Broadcast could be casting better spells than this eye of newt, tongue of bat stuff. If you like Animal Collective's ODDSAC, you will probably like this; if you'd rather have a cup of tea with Tender Buttons, you might want to wait for them to come down out of their tree.

Here's "Inside Out" from Broadcast's Study Series 04: Familiar Shapes and Noises [2010]:

Washed Out: High Times EP [2009]

Washed Out, the stage name of Ernest Greene, seems to be a pretty well-chosen moniker for an artist who songs radiate an echoey, spacey aura, full of home-studio fuzz and (presumably) deliberately low-fidelity sonics. Washed Out has been labeled "chillwave", a nebulous and generally unhelpful term which seems to denote young artists working at home on their laptops who produce low budget, ambient pop with 80s electropop melodies and rhythms. Despite the silly label, there is certainly an aspect of Washed Out's sound that lends itself to chilling out: there is nothing violent or antagonistic in Greene's music, to be sure.

His most recent effort is a brief EP released, appropriately enough, only on cassette. The cassette, with its limited sonic range, is suited to Greene's hazy sound, not to mention his apparently modest ambitions. While the nine tracks on this EP are largely brief and instrumental, they have the lo-fi glow of the 80s all over them, and sound like demos and experiments, which they probably are. If you liked the highly enjoyable Life Of Leisure EP (which I wrote about here), you'll probably enjoy this one too. Get it here.

From Washed Out's High Times EP, here's "Belong":

Note: Also look for Washed Out's beautiful Adult Swim Singles Project track "You And I".

Idling & Moving: Jeff Lynne Pre-E.L.O.

The Electric Light Orchestra were responsible for some of the best radio hits of the 70s: "Evil Woman", "Strange Magic", "Livin' Thing", and a host of others which combined Beatles melodicism with smooth 70s strings and over-the-top production which vied with the Bee Gees, Queen, ABBA, and Supertramp for decadently-produced-yet-accessible pop. But ELO always came off as a unit, a pop orchestra rather than a star showcase, and so for many, ELO leader Jeff Lynne was the guy in the Traveling Wilburys who wasn't immediately recognizable. But while it's hard to call him an equal of Roy Orbison or Bob Dylan or George Harrison, he certainly has made his mark on popular music. Before ELO, he was in two celebrated though little-known (in the U.S.) groups, both of which anticipate his later ELO glory, and which are the subject of this post.

The Idle Race (who were from Birmingham) issued only a few albums in the late 60s, but never had any success in the U.S., possibly due to their unmistakable Englishness, which often limits otherwise excellent UK-based bands from catching on in the States, where British pop has often been the stuff of cultists. Their first record, The Birthday Party, was released in 1968 and, with its brief, witty, catchy songs, comes highly recommended to fans of mid-period Beatles and the Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society.

Here's "Lucky Man" by the Idle Race:

Lynne left the Idle Race in 1970 to join fellow Birmingham group The Move, which was led by eccentric guitar wizard Roy Wood and had had a string of zippy hits in the UK. Unfortunately, the Move failed to deliver on the promise of their early power-Mod hits, and followed their excellent self-titled 1968 debut with a couple of loud, prog-ish, and ultimately unfocused LPs. Lynne and Wood started to plot a new group, to be called the Electric Light Orchestra, which would expand the sound of rock to include classical motifs and instrumentation, not unlike some the Beatles' more elaborate creations. In the meantime, though, they still owed their record company some Move product. The final Move LP, Message From The Country, from 1971, is something of a stylistic mish-mash, but has many excellent moments, the best of which look forward to the best work of ELO. Lynne and Wood would only make one ELO album together, after which Wood departed to start his own group. But the ELO ball was rolling, and Lynne would go on to pop Xanadu.

From Message From The Country, here's the gorgeous, sweet-and-sour "No Time":

Preview: Destroyer, "Archer On The Beach EP" [due 11-2-10]

For the second year in a row, the inimitable Destroyer will release a vinyl-only ambient techno EP, this time in collaboration with Tim Hecker and Loscil. What it will sound like is uncertain, but if last year's astounding Bay Of Pigs is any index, then we are in for another wonky, interstellar ride with cryptic lyrics. Ever since featuring a 23-minute ambient remix (by the same Loscil) on side four of the vinyl edition of Rubies (my favorite favorite record, ever), Destroyer overlord Dan Bejar has proven his willingness to escape from any stylistic foxholes. He has recorded extremely low-fidelity bedroom pop, neo-glam rock overtures, fake symphonic torch ballads, folky reveries, and now seems to be heading further into the realm of synthetic soundscapes with half-sung poetic manifestos. His lyrics are so far away from what you would expect from ambient music, so unabashedly non-techno, that their presence in the electronic wash of sound is akin to slapping mustard and ketchup on a glossy sphere of translucent gelatin (example: the lyrics to the 14-minute track "Bay Of Pigs", the backing track of which could pass for a futuristic movie soundtrack, begin "Listen, I've been drinking..."). I hope Bejar will still make full-length LPs in the future; until then, I'll happily take these ambient postcards from the edge. Preorder here from the good folks at Merge, and do it fast—only 1,000 will be pressed up.

For those who missed it, here's "Bay Of Pigs" from 2009:

Battle of the Bobs: Seger Does Dylan

My brother and I have a small obsession with Bob Seger. More specifically, with the track "Night Moves", a phrase tatooed on at least one Portland, Oregon bartender, whom we were naturally forced to nickname Night Moves. When or why Night Moves got his ink is unknown, but I imagine there's a pretty kickass and utterly rock-n'roll explanation behind it. I am guessing that Michigan is somehow involved. For us, growing up in Ohio in the 80s, Seger (not to mention his heartland demographic peers John Cougar, Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Money, and the hapless Michael Stanley) was a huge presence on the radio, the Voice of the Rust Belt, always ready with a wistful mid-tempo stroll down memory lane. Unfortunately, the midtempo Seger eclipsed the younger, Detroit rock city Seger of rock'n'roll lore. Before he was crooning "Main Street", "Still The Same", "Like A Rock", or "Against The Wind", Bob Seger was a fiery rock'n'roller, a peer of Detroit legends like the MC5 and the Amboy Dukes. His mid-to-late 70s rock songs ("Katmandu", "Rock And Roll Never Forgets", "Hollywood Nights", the cranky "Old Time Rock And Roll") always seemed strained to me. A famous bootleg called Michigan Nuggets sets the record straight, featuring several of Seger's hard-to-find late 60s shredders. Here's "Persecution Smith", a 1966 single by Bob Seger & The Last Heard. It's a pretty blatant ripoff, both sonically and lyrically, of Bringing It All Back Home/Highway 61 Revisited-era Dylan, but it rocks hard (especially the guitar), and serves as a dose of real old time rock'n'roll.

Bob Seger & The Last Heard, "Persecution Smith":

The Drone Zone: Them, "Square Room"

Most people who have heard of the band Them at all know it as Van Morrison's early band, which he left in 1966 to pursue a solo career. As one of rock's all-time great vocalists, Van Morrison would go on to much greater success, leaving behind his early garage punk days (with Them hits like the timeless "Gloria", "Here Come The Night", and "Mystic Eyes"). The rest of the band, though, soldiered on, and while they did not find commercial success, Them cut five more records before throwing in the towel in 1972. Losing a singer as distinctive as Morrison may have set them back in terms of sales, but there was still plenty of talent in the band, and their post-Morrison records are full of garage rock energy. Moving to the US, they embraced the West Coast psychedelic sound, and in 1968 released the excellent Now And Them album, which sounds sort of like an Irish version of the Doors' first album. Coincidentally, Them had once shared a stage with the Doors, who opened for them during a residence at the famed Whisky-A-Go-Go in 1966. The Doors must have made an impression, as the track "Square Room" shows—it's very similar in tone and length to the infamous Doors epic "The End", with creepy, snaking guitars, but minus Jimbo's Oedipal outbursts. For those who like the music of "The End" but can do without the "poetry", this track will be most welcome. [For the record, I do love the Doors, but sometimes Jim Morrison can grate. Exhibit A: "Horse Latitudes"—'nuff said.]

Them, "Square Room":