In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.
Gary Mounfield, who performed as Mani, died on November 20 in his beloved home town of Manchester, four days after he turned 63.
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Songs are always about time and place. The time and place where the composer conceived them, with a new set created when a new person hears them and associates them with a place, lover, or friend. You can say the same about a cover version.
Kurt Weill’s best-known songs come from a place of emotional turmoil, at a time of national confusion and fear. There was some resolution on the former, but the wider issue turned into an international catastrophe. This is always the challenge of covering the songs of interwar Germany. How can you capture the sense of the time and place that the songs came from, when you know the disastrous outcome?
For instance, Alan Cumming played Emcee in Cabaret hundreds of times in London and New York, and even at the Kennedy Center. He knew how the show was going to end. The reason that he won a Tony Award for the production is that he could hide that knowledge from the audience at the exuberant start of the show, but could still generate the necessary pain at the end. When Ute Lemper recorded her wonderful Weill album in 1988, she was doing so in West Berlin before the Wall came down. She does not hide that she knows where the chaos of the Weimar Republic led, and how the story had gone. She saw it every day, and that is what drives the album’s emotional intensity.
Rufus Wainwright, a Canadian citizen, has chosen to release an album of Weill songs from a period when an angry but complacent nation wandered mistakenly into disaster, without seemingly seeing it for what it was, until it was too late. Perhaps because some of them were having too much fun, or were too selfish to care about others. Who knows why?
Wainwright clearly knows these songs very intimately, and feels them closely and strongly. He may have been listening to them since before he was born. His parents would be familiar with one of the greatest songwriters of the period, and both he and his sister Martha have performed versions of them over the years. He has said that Canadian Opera singer Teresa Stratas’ interpretations were his touchstone in developing his love for the songs. He has exquisite musical knowledge of the genres that Weill operated in, having written operas, worked in jazz, and lived in the home of the Moritat. Also, he has a huge linguistic advantage, having loved in three of the languages that Weill created songs for, and has lost in at least two of them (his marriage to a German seems solid).
All of this means that, whatever the driver for doing it now, we are on solid ground. I’m a Stranger Here Myself: Wainwright Does Weill features a series of tracks with the Pacific Jazz Orchestra, recorded live, with occasional guest artists. It is a marvel and a joy.
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When Andre 3000 appeared on Questlove’s podcast, the host noted that he was on a tour bus when he heard the album Aquemini for the first time. As soon as he heard “SpottieOttieDopaliscious,” he knew that Outkast had conquered another musical genre, and that marching bands across the country would soon be playing the tune. He was right.
Outkast are a great hip-hop band, and they helped define a whole genre of Southern hip-hop, which survives and thrives today. But they also provided some of the great crossover pop songs of the past 30 years. One way of looking at success is how many musicians want to pay tribute to your canon. Covers, of course, and there are many of these for Atlanta’s finest, and the site has covered some of the greatest ones from Outkast here and here. Continue reading »
Chrissie Hynde has been a rock star for more than fifty years. The Pretenders have not been together quite that long, but Hynde was already making her name as a girl about town and rock-star-in-waiting in London. She has lived the life full-time for all of that period. It is a surprise, then, that she does not fully appreciate the credit that has accrued with that history, and how people still want to hear what she has to say.
Supporting their tenth Album in 2023, The Pretenders initially booked themselves into smaller venues, before it became clear that they had underestimated the love that the world had for her and the band. Eventually the tour went so well that a live album was made and released. Did Hynde not think she was in the class of National Treasures that could call on her friends to make a duets album? The story is that a friend had to remind her that it was an opportunity, if not a duty, to do so. Consider Duets Special an opportunity/duty fulfilled.
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Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.
Our journey through the Oscar-winning songs of the 1980s brings us to “Up Where We Belong,” the 1983 winner. Read about Christopher Cross’s “Arthur’s Theme” here.
A brash, cocky individual, who travels by motorcycle and who appears to think of little but himself, arrives at a Naval Aviator school on the US Pacific Coast. He encounters tough love from a father figure / instructor and the love of a woman who is emotionally and intellectually smarter than he is. He is part of a system exquisitely designed to find the best in people, and discard them if it is not there, bringing him to a place where he is a much better person. During breaks from elevating himself and saving the nation, he can let off steam in a special tavern, where the jukebox always has the right song available. A classmate is tragically lost during the process. The protagonist is ultimately ready to defend and elevate his nation in its time of need. The sacrifice and Military Method have won out.
An Officer and a Gentleman was a huge movie in 1982, and those of us around at the time could not miss its presence. Young men in ersatz dress uniform were regularly carrying young women around city centers, or TV shows (in the years before Internet memes). Richard Gere was the idol of the day. However, the movie was soon eclipsed by Top Gun, which drew upon aspects of the story and added layers of bombast and more modern sexual politics. Of course, the main thing that the 1986 movie added was sexy shots of planes and boats, which required a relationship with the Navy. Could they have achieved that relationship without the sizzle reel of a multiple Oscar-winning film? Simpson and Bruckheimer, along with Tony Scott, certainly set their ambitions higher. It ultimately worked for all parties, as the Navy saw a bump in recruitment and Top Gun became a cultural phenomenon. There was probably not a rush for paper mill jobs after Officer.
Another similarity between the two films was the use of emotive music, and how integral it was to each movie. Director Taylor Hackford is a musical sophisticate, and directed Jamie Foxx in Ray, but he had a limited budget for the soundtrack in this case. The jukebox in the bar contains Van Morrison, Pat Benatar and Dire Straits. The cheesiness of the music at the Officers’ mixer is very specific. Hackford hired Jack Nitzsche to do the soundtrack. But he did not have a hook for the final, climactic scene. Despite its schmaltzy nature, and against the better initial judgement of the director and probably, a few lines of the Naval Code of Conduct, the arrival of Gere, in his first act as an officer and in an iconic Dress White Suit, at the factory where his lover worked to rescue her from a life of drudgery was loved by test audiences and had to stay in. But you needed the music to drive the point home. Nitzsche initially struggled, but then his then-wife, Buffy Sainte-Marie, let him use her work in progress, “Up Where We Belong,” which seemed to fit the mood and theme. With lyrics from Will Jennings, emphasizing that love (or person or Country) can lift us all, with the implication that the Navy can elevate the nation, the complete package was a winner.
Jennifer Warnes already had one Oscar-winning song to her name (“It Goes Like It Goes,” from Norma Rae), and was immediately in the frame for this opportunity to present the work. Although the piece is not necessarily a two-hander or a call-and-response, Warnes thought it might work as a duet. Her choice as a partner, as she had some leverage, was Joe Cocker. Who wouldn’t want to work with him? As it happens, lots of people, as his career was in the doldrums. But his powerful voice, honed by years of experience and a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit, was the perfect foil for Warnes, whose voice was sophisticated but more delicate. There is a dynamic between the powerful but controlled voice of Cocker, and Warnes’ controlled passion. The song could be interpreted as the partnership between Gere and Debra Winger. Or Cocker could be a representation of Lou Gossett Jr., the Staff Sergeant whose apparent hard heart was just a man who wanted the Navy to only have the best in their ranks. It could be the nation itself, battered and bruised by military escapades, but still standing tall. Overall, the package was a winning one, reaching the Top of the Charts and taking the 1983 Best Song Oscar, with Olivia Newton-John doing the presenting honors.
There have been many covers over the years, here are Five of the Best.
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Orchestral adaptations of The Beatles are a well-established but not necessarily revered part of the cover music world. They can be a hastily rehearsed group of classical musicians or even an orchestra collaborating (vying?) with an established 4 or 5-piece R&B tribute act for a live sing-along. Fun but not necessarily enlightening. Even more ambitious attempts often cannot see a way to dispense with vocals and a pop rhythm section. Some use instrumental lines to match the vocals from the records, in an appropriate register. You can hear the oboe doing Paul’s voice work in many of them. Continue reading »