Every week Spotify produces a list of numbers I probably like, but don’t really know (read: haven’t played so far). This goes under the title Discover Weekly. So far: thank you Spotify!
In this blog I pick three suggestions from this list every week: the good, the bad, and the undiscovered. A great song; one that I do not really like (why is it in this list?); and one that is completely unexpected.
The Good,
The Good for this week was a no-brainer. Only two bars, and it was clear: Gram Parsons’ Brass Buttons from the album Grievous Angel is this week’s Good. One of my favorites: the song, the album, and the artist. Grievous Angel is Parsons’ second album, and thus the last one, actually. With only two albums Parsons became the great inspiration for the country rock. Country music was stuck in a mud of violin arrangements and easy listening. Gram Parson brought back some excitement. Not so much in this relaxed number, as country as country can be, but definitely in the opening track of the album: Return of the Grievous Angel:
Won’t you scratch my itch
Sweet Annie Rich
And welcome me back to town
The Bad,
Why torturing me with muzak, Spotify? My Discover Weekly list opens with piano-esque background music from some run down restaurant: Jimmy Webb plays Lullabye (Goodnight My Angel) in the least exciting way. The man who wrote memorable classics such as Wichita Lineman, Galveston, and of course McArthur Park.
And in a way this ‘bad one’ is a discovery for me as well, because it led me to the album Ten Easy Pieces, on which Jimmy Webb plays his own songs, in his own interpretation, on his own piano. And that is totally different from the way Glen Campbell, Richard Harris and Donna Summer treated them.
and The Unexpected
I must have been ten or twelve years old, when in between all the top 40 songs, my attention was drawn to a wall of sound. And that was long time before I knew about Phil Spector and his Wall of Sound. It really sounded like it. And thus, Dave Edmunds has always stayed in my musical memory. Even though none of his other songs has any resemblance to Born to be with you. Or maybe that is the reason why I love him: Dave Edmunds plays authentic, uncomplicated rock ‘n roll with his picking guitar. One time I had the pleasure to experience that in a church in my home town, Nijmegen.
The fact that Dion – DeMucci, from the Belmonts – has covered this song, escaped me. And maybe it will escape me again. It is not the pure voice of the Chordettes, nor the fat sound of Dave Edmunds, but just listen to it, and let yourself be surprised by the sax, the desparation in Dion’s voice, and definitely that one hit on the hi-hat.
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