Hole’s pulverising Velvet Underground-style cover of Joni Mitchell’s most famous song. From Hole’s 1991 debut album “Pretty on the Inside,” this will probably piss off a lot of fans of the original. I don’t think it approaches Judy Collins’s very famous cover version from 1968 (one of my Top 10 favorite songs of all time), but I have to give it up to Courtney and company for their original interpretation here.
I don’t have much to say about this, other than the fact this is my all-time favorite KISS song. Some people love “Rock & Roll All Nite.” Some people groove on “Detroit Rock City.” Some people love “Beth,” one of the first power ballads. All of these are respectable choices. But in my mind, “Strutter,” the first song off their eponymous debut album in 1973 is one of the best Side 1 Track 1’s in rock history. It’s the one KISS song that never ceases to put a smile on my face and involuntarily puts my fist in the air and head bobbing in admiration.
One of the first “adult” movies I ever watched was “The World According to Garp” during the summer of 1982. Based on the best-selling novel by John Irving, “Garp” was the tale of T.S. Garp, a writer coming to terms with his own talent as a writer in the shadow of a more famous parent and as a man trying to reconcile his own manhood during a tumultuous time of gender politics (his mother being a very famous feminist writer).
This was an important film in my artistic makeup. Like Lina Wertmuller’s “Seven Beauties,” it’s one of those rare films that mix comedy and tragedy in a completely non-cheesy or schmaltzy mix. Even at 12 years of age, the ending left me completely shattered … as it still does today.
This was the first “dramatic” performance Robin Williams was credited with and in my mind, he was completely underrated. There is one part of the film where he degenerates into the Robin Williams-schtick people know and don’t love anymore, but overall, he deserved an Oscar nod for “Garp,” playing the straight man in a world of lunatics, freaks, and “true believers.” John Lithgow and Glenn Close (in their breakout performances) got their Oscar nods and they were richly deserved.
For a major studio film, this is pretty ballsy material and deserved more attention and acclaim than it received at the time. Over 32 years later, the film … and the performances … hold up very damn well. An underrated American classic.
In honor of Valentine’s Day, this is my all-time favorite romantic scene from a film. From the Quentin Tarantino-scripted / Tony Scott-directed 1993 cult classic “True Romance,” I first saw this at a time when I was a lot like Christian Slater’s character Clarence. This movie gave me hope at a bleak time in my life. Eventually, I found my Alabama … ironically in Alabama … three years later. Thankfully, she was not a call girl, four-days on the job or otherwise. And yes, I’m envious of my friends in Norfolk, Virginia who are watching this on a big screen tonight at the Naro in Norfolk, Virginia.
If you grew up in Southeastern Virginia or Northeastern North Carolina, the name of this band is hopefully bringing a smile to your face, as it’s a clever take on the Great Dismal Swamp. Want your smile to grow bigger? Take a listen to their song “Death Mansion.” This is nasty, snotty garage punk at its finest. It reminds me a lot of the New York Dolls’ “Chatterbox” only faster and more aggressive.
On the eve of Valentine’s Day, this is the Man in Black’s version of Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.” OK, not exactly, but both songs share the same melody and tackle the same subject matter. While Dylan sounds like he’s trying to be diplomatic despite his bitterness, Cash is having none of it. Dylan says “Fare thee well” … Cash says “F–k off!” If you’re a fan of the Dylan classic, “Understand Your Man” almost seems like some kind of redneck parody, even though it isn’t. I think it stands up well on its own and one of the best “I’m out of here” songs ever recorded.
One of Elvis Costello’s best and …. arguably … least-regarded songs is “Battered Old Bird” from the 1986 “Blood and Chocolate” album. It’s a song you never hear on the radio or even discussed that much. Graham Thompson dismissed the song in less than a sentence (calling it “dreary” and “disjointed”) in his Costello biography “Complicated Shadows.” I had pretty much forgotten about the song myself until I heard it again today and it knocked the wind out of me.
From what I’ve gathered “Battered Old Bird” is about the building where Costello grew up as a young boy and the various people who lived there. The song almost sounds like Costello’s version of the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby,” only much sadder and more despairing. The song starts off quiet and builds in intensity and emotion, with Costello’s voice getting louder and cracking at various moments.
Some particularly memorable lyrics:
“But on the first floor there are two old maids
Each one wishing that the other was afraid
And next door to them is a man so mild
‘Til he chopped off the head of a visitor’s child
He danced upon the bonfire
Swallowed sleeping pills like dreams
With a bottle of sweet sherry
That everything redeems”
And another:
“Here’s a boy if ever there was
Who’s going to do big things
Guess that’s what they all say
And that’s how the trouble begins
I’ve seen them rise and fall
Been through their big deals and smalls
He’d better have a dream that goes
Beyond four walls”
Again, this song crept up out of nowhere on my iPod today and nearly left me shattered by the end of it. An immensely powerful song that should be a standard, even though I’m kind of glad it isn’t.
The most notorious live album of all-time “Metallic K.O.” was recorded 40 years years ago today. As a selling point back in the day, it was said you could hear beer bottles smashing against guitar strings. By this point, Iggy and the Stooges had worn out all of their good will and were drowning in a sea of heroin, booze, and “not playing nicely with others.” They were openly hostile with audiences and baiting them to beat the crap out of them …which often happened. Here’s the most infamous track from that legendary album. And, most importantly, Iggy is still alive to celebrate this milestone.
If you listen to 80s stations, you’d think there were only 200 songs recorded during that decade. As much as I love “Come on Eileen,” “Tainted Love,” “Hungry Like the Wolf,” or “Billie Jean,” I’m totally burned out on these handful of hits. Which I why when I listen to 80s stations nowadays, I tend to listen to the Top 40 countdowns for a particular week during some random year in that decade. Here is where you get to hear a lot of songs that were hits, but for whatever reason, are shut out of the very tight programming of such stations. Some of these rarely played songs are terrible … some of them are great. “This Little Girl” by Gary U.S. Bonds is one of the great ones.
Gary U.S. Bonds was a rocker from the early 1960s who had a lot of seminal hits back in the day (“New Orleans,” “Quarter to Three”) and then faded away until Bruce Springsteen and the E. Street Band resurrected Bonds in 1981 with a hit album (“Dedication”) and this gem that made it all the way to #11 on the Billboard charts that year.
I don’t know about you, but where I lived at the time (Tidewater, VA area), you could not escape this song that year. This song was EVERYWHERE and then after a year, I never heard it again … until I happened upon one of those Top 40 countdown shows that replayed the most popular songs for a particular week in 1981. A great, great song that should be in heavy rotation on these 80s stations, but sadly isn’t.
In honor of the current Winter Olympics in Sochi, here’s the band DVDA doing a version of “What Would Brian Boitano Do?” from “South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut.” I don’t know whether to bang my head, start a fight, dance a jig, or do all three.
If you don’t know what the term “DVDA” means, you’ll have to look this up on Wikipedia. I mean, you’ll go to hell if you do, but it’s there if you follow Sam Kinison’s attitude of “My view of life is, ‘If you’re going to miss Heaven, why miss it by two inches?'”
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