This was the biggest hit by the Cocteau Twins - making the top 30 in the UK in 1984 - and brought them on import to the US - leading to the release of their first US album, a compilation called The Pink Opaque.
It's a beautiful, ethereal song.
I very much understated this song's beauty.
The vocal performance in this song is considered to be one of the best of all time.
And here's Elizabeth Fraser, singing it live like it's nothing.
Once upon a time, there was a woman named Pastelle LeBlanc, and she was a folk singer. She started a band with her sister and her husband called Vishtèn. They performed great folk music and promoted the niche Acadian culture they grew up in in New Brunswick.
Then Pastelle got breast cancer and died at age 42.
Rather than roll over, the two remaining members took some of their recordings - yes, Pastelle appears on this and she is CLEARLY playing accordion here, and co-wrote the song with her sister and her husband - and turned them into a collaboration and a tribute - Expansion - as part of a project called Vishtèn Connexions, which I guess makes it distinct, but also it isn't.
So as a lot of you know, I am working on a different musical project that is involving me listening to 1000 albums in a year, and I'm going to do something with it, too.
This post is about the best of the first 50 albums so far, and that is The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. I have to admit - Chappell Roan is an artist I did not get. She makes music for an audience that does not include me, or so I thought. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Well, this is the third post of a song from that album, and so I decided to give the whole album a listen..... and the songs, in context, are so much better. It tells a story, and a good one.
This song opens the album, and I swear I thought when it started that it was written by Taylor Swift.....
One day recently, the Spotify DJ decided it was the right time to send this song to me.
Wow, DJ nailed it.
Self descibed, and this is not a joke, "queer Filipinx kulintang gong punks", the band is based in Toronto - or, as they call it, Tkaronto (a name that is somewhat indigeneous-derived). They celebrate their Filipino roots while being punks that play traditional flat bells. Pantayo is literally the Tagalog word meaning "for us".
The song is a direct assault on the colonialism that the Phillipines has experienced, and the cultural colonialism that occurs in Filipino diasporas worldwide. It, and the rest of their self-titled album, resonated, as it was short-listed for the Polaris Prize in 2020.
I personally think the song sounds so much richer live. But first, listen to them introduce their instuments.
When asked what is the best band I have ever seen live, without fail, I say "Elastica".
And the thing is, I saw them twice, in the same year - and they had a different bassist each time.
I know what you're thinking right now. "Who cares?" Well, give me a second.
The second time I saw them, I saw them with Abby Travis, who is an absolute beast and amazing and, on later Lollapalooza dates, played back to back with Elastica and Beck in 1995 (she had already been playing with Beck, so I did see her play, apparently).
The FIRST time I saw them, I saw them at Lollapalooza 1995. It was an early date, and so original bassist Annie Holland was still with the band - she left about a week and a half later because of exhaustion. No, she didn't write this song, which was VERY CLEARLY ABOUT HER. No, it was primarily written by guitarist Donna Matthews and Jane Oliver and was about going to visit Annie in Brighton, where she spent most of her non-touring time.
By the way, they were EQUALLY solid BOTH times.
The song is short, but it rocks hard.
This is a pre-Lollapalooza show, with Annie on bass, where they are killing the song live.
And this is from a 1996 performance, when Annie was away from the band.
Annie did eventually return to the band.... but Donna Matthews left. Here's one of THOSE performances, from 2000.
I'm not gonna lie - it's great. It's missing the harmonies at the chorus, but it's still solid.
By the way, if you want to hear the ACTUAL performance - and probably me in the crowd - the audio of this performance is on YouTube. And I remember it like it was yesterday.
I cued it up to "Annie" for you. HOWEVER, you should hear the whole thing.
I was going to open this post with a fan-made video of this song with a lot of videos of police brutality.
Unfortunately, those videos are age-restricted and can't be embedded here.
This song began life as the B-side to "Holiday In Cambodia", a song with a similar feel, in 1980. The surf guitar riffs kind of hide the fact that this song is told from the story of a two awful police officers who are brutalizing people and abusing their power.
The song was actually written in direct response to a real 1970's incident in Oakland, CA, but, let's face it - it is more broadly applicable. Written by Jello Biafra and East Bay Ray (who is responsible for the fantastic surf guitar riffs), the song experienced a resurgence in popularity after the George Floyd murder. And yeah. It was a murder. That's how I feel about that.
Back in the day, when the band performed live a lot, they brought even more energy than they did in the studio.
It's 1969. You just picked up your copy of Led Zeppelin II. You've just finished side one. You flip it over.
You are smacked in your face with arguably the greatest riff in rock and roll history.
The iconic guitar solo in the middle was actually recorded separately from the rest of the track - and Jimmy Page used a pull-off technique that inspired guitar virtuosos for decades.
Led Zeppelin was a great blues band who manged to get volume turned up to 11, and this song was arguably their magnum opus.
Even though he originally recorded it separate from the rest of the track, hearing and watching Jimmy Page performing what is almost inarguably his greatest solo of all time, live, embellishing the hell out of it, is incredible. This performance is from 1979.
This song was Grammy nominated in 1996 after being a huge hit song around the world in 1995.... except in the United States, where it was NOT a hit. Canada? Loved it! New Zealand? Huge hit. Spain? Top 5. United States? #75 on the Hot 100.
Let's be honest - even though Kravitz wrote and produced this song, it sounds like he lifted half the riff from "Heartbreaker" by Led Zeppelin. It's undeniable (and probably why it failed in the US). In reality, that riff was the riff from "Are You Gonna Go My Way" - which shared an album with this song - played backwards.... so, not actually lifted. But man, I sure thought it was, too.
Anyway, the song is a pretty solid rock song.
Oh yes, he plays it live, and it's perhaps more impressive as a straight-ahead rock song. Here he is performing it in 2011. Not pictured: the painting in his attic that's aging for him.
Does Throwing Muses have new music out? They sure do.
Did I go back to the 90s for some of their older stuff anyway? I sure did.
No, Limbo is not my favorite album of theirs - it was post-Tanya era Muses, which is never my preference. It was their first album on Rykodisc after a decade with Sire Records (and of course, as always on 4AD). The album and stress on it - combined with Kristin Hersh's successful solo career - led to the band breaking up for several years.
As most of their music, written by Kristin, the song is at once noisy - a bit noisier than their earlier work - and dark. Even though Limbo isn't my favorite of theirs, this song floats to the top for me.
I love Kristin's voice live. It comes through a lot raspier than on record.
This 1995 song by folkie Jill Sobule was her biggest hit, in both the US and Canada. It was on my short list to be posting this song very soon.
Unfortunately, her untimely death today in a house fire at age 66 hastened that for me.
In 2009, in response to Katy Perry's song of the same name, Sobule said, and I quote: "Fuck you Katy Perry, you fucking stupid, maybe “not good for the gays,” title thieving, haven’t heard much else, so not quite sure if you’re talented, fucking little slut." No, she really said that.
She didn't actually harbor any ill will against Katy Perry. She was kidding. Perry's song sparked new interest in Sobule's.
Anyway, this song was sweet and earnest and kind, and here it is.
Jill was touring until, no joke, this week. She was literally scheduled to perform in Denver tomorrow. This is a performance of this song from February of this year. Her storytelling is pretty damned amazing.
This is a sad day for music, and she will be missed.
Well, I had a significant power outage yesterday. Absolutely huge. I was personally in the dark for a day and a half.
And I had grand plans for an *NSYNC post yesterday, too! Oh well. Next year.
Today, I'm dealing with the aftermath, so I felt like I'd pull out an easy one from my youth. "Pump Up The Jam" was Technotronic's first and biggest hit. The brainchild of a couple of Belgian producers, the vocals were provided by Congolese-Belgian artist Ya Kid K. She does NOT, however, appear in the video.
The song was a massive worldwide hit in 1989, hitting #2 on the US charts and pretty high elsewhere.
