Five Good Covers: “The Bottle” (Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson)

 Posted by at 10:00 am  1 Response »
Sep 052023
 

In Search of Gil Scott-Heron is a fine new graphic novel about the life of a great artist. Or more accurately, as with the movies Round Midnight or Searching For Sugarman, it is as much about the life of a fan as the life of a special artist. French documentary maker Thomas Mauceri documents how he fell in love with the politics and music of the Godfather of Rap (a term Scott-Heron was not that keen on) during an academic stay in the United States. As a fan, he had experiences and met new people that he could not have done otherwise. The novel is beautifully drawn by Seb Piquet and the lettering for the English edition is expertly done by Lauren Bowes. In addition to the recollections of Mauceri, the book is interspersed with biography and observations about Gil Scott-Heron and his life as a pioneer and leader, and the less celebratory parts of his life. Much of the book is set around the time of the artist’s death in 2011. For those who saw him on his final tour, completed not long before his death, it is very poignant. We could see the fire and the talent, but also the losses that Scott-Heron heavily bore. His final album I’m New Here is a testament to that loss.

Even for a fan, there is new information in there. One key observation is that, at the time of his death, Scott-Heron had a small, well-maintained apartment in New York City. Given the chaos of his addictions and spells of imprisonment, this was a surprise. His friends note that the royalties from Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson’s hit song “The Bottle” gave him a steady income throughout the last 30 years of his life. Included on the 1974 album Winter in America, it is Jackson and Scott-Heron’s best-remembered hit, although “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” might be the most influential.

A dancefloor-filling hit song about crippling, chronic addition, “The Bottle” is a beautiful, contradictory creation. It has upbeat Caribbean rhythms wrapped Scott-Heron’s mellifluous voice. Brian Jackson brings a beautiful flute to the whole piece, infusing it with light and air, along with his other instrumental parts. The stories within it are dark but the music is light. Scott-Heron’s stories of the addicted are garnered from discussions with the visitors to a liquor store near Washington DC. We can imagine why he was there.

The song has been covered many times throughout the years by artists trying to capture the different themes. Here are five that capture the messages in a novel way.
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Lifeguard Take Jam Song “In the City” to Chicago

 Posted by at 9:00 am  1 Response »
Sep 052023
 
lifeguard in the city

There has been some indignation on these pages recently that some cherished British Bands were ‘One Hit Wonders’ in the US, but there is no accounting for taste. However the offence caused to Dexy’s Midnight Runners and Siouxsie and the Banshees is nothing compared to that experienced by The Jam. Multiple number-one singles and albums in the UK, and an ongoing cottage industry in the UK detailing their every move between 1976 and 1983, mean nothing to the Billboard Singles Charts. The band never got a single into the top 100. However, the kids know where it’s at.  Helping spread the Jam gospel, Chicago punk trio Lifeguard bring us their cover of “In The City.” Continue reading »

Five Good Covers: That’s Entertainment (The Jam)

 Posted by at 4:00 pm  3 Responses »
Nov 032017
 

Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.

that's entertainment covers

There are many reasons to love Paul Weller, the primary songwriter and singer for The Jam, but here’s a reason to hate him: he claims to have written 1981’s great “That’s Entertainment,” in ten minutes, while drunk. I suspect that most of us couldn’t write a song as good as “That’s Entertainment” if we spent our entire life trying, whether or not we were under the influence of any substance.

The Jam rose to fame, at least in England, on the back of songs that were mostly angry, fast and loud. As time went on, though, they began to include softer songs, without diluting their powerful political and social point of view. What makes “That’s Entertainment” so potent is the sense of barely contained rage in its mostly acoustic, relatively quiet arrangement. The lyrics are a stream of consciousness collage of scenes from ordinary life in Margaret Thatcher’s England, a country that Weller felt was tilting strongly toward the wealthy and privileged and away from the needs of ordinary people.  According to Weller, these vignettes were all visible from the bus he was on the night he wrote the song, and as a whole, they paint a picture of sadness and hopelessness.

So, Weller sings about “paint splattered walls and the cry of a tomcat,” “a freezing cold flat and damp on the walls,” and “opening the windows and breathing in petrol,” each verse followed by the sarcastic refrain “That’s entertainment, that’s entertainment.” (The song was, in part, inspired by a poem, “Entertainment,” by Paul Drew, and I wonder if there is also a backhanded reference to the glossy musicals compiled by MGM in their films from the mid-1970s with the same title). Continue reading »

Cover Me Q&A: What cover song would you like to have played at your wedding?

 Posted by at 12:00 pm  8 Responses »
Jun 222016
 

Welcome to Cover Me Q&A, where we take your questions about cover songs and answer them to the best of our ability.

Here at Cover Me Q&A, we’ll be taking questions about cover songs and giving as many different answers as we can. This will give us a chance to hold forth on covers we might not otherwise get to talk about, to give Cover Me readers a chance to learn more about individual staffers’ tastes and writing styles, and to provide an opportunity for some back-and-forth, as we’ll be taking requests (learn how to do so at feature’s end).

Today’s question, in honor of the month of June: What cover song would you like to have played at your wedding?
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