Each week Shuffle Sundays features a cover chosen at random. The songs will usually be good, occasionally be bad, always be interesting. All downloads will only be available for one week, so get them while you can.
Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Mangum is indie rock’s J.D. Salinger. His album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea resonated with young people on a deeply personal level, leading to the high school “It changed my life” claims usually reserved for Catcher in the Rye.
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Each week Shuffle Sundays features a cover chosen at random. The songs will usually be good, occasionally be bad, always be interesting. All downloads will only be available for one week, so get them while you can.
This past week Late Night with Jimmy Fallon celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of Exile on Main St. with a week of covers. The festivities included Green Day, Sheryl Crow and Taj Mahal (who schooled the young’uns). The week wrapped up with Phish, the obvious choice since just last Halloween they performed all of Exile live. They kept it at five minutes for late night though, rambling through “Loving Cup.”
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Each week Shuffle Sundays features a cover chosen at random. The songs will usually be good, occasionally be bad, always be interesting. All downloads will only be available for one week, so get them while you can.
“Jesus Is on the Main Line” was first recorded by folk ethnomusicologiest Alan Lomax, recording his discovery Mississippi Fred McDowell in the late ‘50s. The song likely claims a longer history though — the railroad metaphor could date it as far back as the late 1800s.
Aerosmith released the most well-known version on their 2004 blues covers disc Honkin’ on Bobo. Before that, roots rocker Ry Cooder laid claim to the title. On his 1974 career-defining album Paradise and Lunch he found the bridge between gospel and rock. Here’s a live performance from around the time.
Mavis Staples – Jesus Is on the Main Line (Trad.) [Buy]
What do you think? Sound off in the comments section below.
Each week Shuffle Sundays features a cover chosen at random. The songs will usually be good, occasionally be bad, always be interesting. All downloads will only be available for one week, so get them while you can.
When Adele won Best New Artist at the 2009 Grammys, viewers’ collective reaction was: who? With Amy Winehouse the previous year’s champion, Academy voters seemed to be on a female soul revival kick. They dug a bit deeper for a follow-up, and it looked to be Adele’s big break.
“Chasing Pavements” and her follow-up single “Cold Shoulder” got some decent airplay, but she pretty soon disappeared back into the London streets from whence she came. Releasing as a single her bland cover of “Make You Feel My Love,” the worst Bob Dylan song since “Wiggle Wiggle,” didn’t help.
The Marches, whose cover of Thom Yorke’s “Black Swans” we featured in February, give “Cold Shoulder” the rock and roll kick in the ass it needed. The arresting melody gains new legs with the energetic delivery, complete with Adele-approximating falsetto.
The Marches – Cold Shoulder (Adele) [Buy]
What do you think? Sound off in the comments section below.
Each week Shuffle Sundays features a cover chosen at random. The songs will usually be good, occasionally be bad, always be interesting. All downloads will only be available for one week, so get them while you can.
My junior year of college I spent a term at the University of Edinburgh. One weekend the exchange group traveled to the small island of Iona off the Western coast. Populated more by sheep than people, it boasts an old abbey, a remnant of its role as the de facto headquarters of Celtic Christianity in the sixth and seventh centuries.
After a three-day weekend of drinking wine on the beach and poking around the grassy hills, we began the five-hour drive back east. Due to overly ambitious planning we stopped at various towns and castles along the way, most of which we were too tired to fully appreciate. However, one stop proved too beautiful for grumbling: Loch Lomond.
Loch Lomond is one of those idyllic places we Americans assume don’t exist anymore. If locals are making tourist bucks around the loch, we saw no sign. Our van just pulled off to the side of a small road and there it was, flat and deserted, the cloudy sky perfectly reflected in the still surface.
Before that day, I’d always thought of the song “Loch Lomond” as a pretty but corny tribute to a land of forest sprites or something. Once you see the loch though, you understand why it makes old-guard Scots tear up. I couldn’t give you a dictionary definition of a bonnie bank, but I know exactly what one looks like.
Dartmouth Aires – Loch Lomond (Trad.) [Buy]
What do you think? Sound off in the comments section below.
Each week Shuffle Sundays features a cover chosen at random. The songs will usually be good, occasionally be bad, always be interesting. Downloads are only available for one week, so get them while you can.
“Why are there so many songs about rainbows?”
It’s a valid question, but in the opening sequence of 1979’s Muppet Movie, you get the sense Kermit’s only really referring to one song: Over the Rainbow. Like that rainbow tune did for Dorothy, “The Rainbow Connection” establishes up front the main character’s restlessness, his/her desire to see what lies beyond the swamp/Kansas. For Kermit that’s Hollywood, for Dorothy that’s Oz. Same difference.
The song has been covered by, well, just about everyone. Willie Nelson did it. Jason Mraz did it. The Carpenters, Dixie Chicks, and Dresden Dolls did it. It’s safe to say none of those sound quite like the tongue-in-cheek beat jazz of Puttin’ on the Ritz. Picture Kermit singing in a smokey lounge, beret pulled low, cigarette dangling from his lower lip. If that sounds ridiculous, that’s kind of the point.
Puttin’ on the Ritz – The Rainbow Connection (Paul Williams / Kenneth Ascher) [Buy]
What do you think? Sound off in the comments section below.