"There's a time in life for Hoagy Carmichael. There's a time in life for Claude Debussy. There's a time in life for Jerry Lee Lewis. There's a time in life for Destiny's Child. All these things have their moment." ~Elvis Costello
A song most associate most strongly with Patsy Cline, “Sweet Dreams” had actually been a hit at least twice already before her version was released just after her death in 1963.
In 1956 Don Gibson, the song’s writer, had a top ten country hit with the song. And in 1960 Faron Young’s version did even better. But since Cline’s version has done the most business in the years since, it’s become the “classic”.
Elvis Costello shocked fans in 1981 by releasing Almost Blue, a country album recorded in Nashville. It was his first album not to reach the top 30 in America, his fans not being ready to let him out of his New Wave pigeon-hole. But some of it really does stand up all these years later, including his take of “Sweet Dreams”, which includes some sublime piano work by Steve Nieve.
Kate & Anna McGarrigle: “Complante Pour Ste-Catherine” (1980)
Montreal-born Kate and Anna McGarrigle’s introduction to an international audience came via Linda Ronstadt’s recording of their “Heart Like a Wheel” as the title track of one of her platinum-selling albums.
Their French Record, from 1980, is a favorite among fans, even those who don’t know a word of French.
Kate McGarrigle and Louden Wainwright III (of 1970’s “Dead Skunk” fame) are the parents of Rufus and Martha Wainwright.
Roy Orbison hides a rifle inside his guitar and uses it to kill countless Native Americans as he makes his way across the old west. Adding insult to injury, he then proceeds to appropriate their culture as part of his stage show.
We realize this movie was made almost a half-century ago and it was a different time, but it’s still hard to even watch the trailer for this film without cringing constantly. Also, we’re surprised that having a rifle hidden inside his guitar didn’t throw the instrument out of tune.
Halloween seems the perfect time for the haunting voice of Alasdair MacLean. And Autumn as fitting a time as any for the band Spin magazine called “Aggressively, gratuitously lovely”.
Back into that falling night the birches and the silhouettes the haunted plain sweet lord, here I am again
You flower through my nails and skin moving like the sunlight in the alleyways but in this life we won’t meet again
When my (former) wife and I married and combined households in the mid-1990’s my burgeoning CD collection merged with her one-and-only CD, k.d. lang’s Ingénue.
“You own one CD?”
I scoffed (silently, to myself). Then I gave her single CD a listen and scoffed no more, realizing it was a masterpiece and better than 90% of my collection.
Actually, it did take a few listens. Most of the album is downtempo and brooding. This isn’t exactly beach party music. It’s a song cycle of consonant tone, with one contemplative mood piece following the next until the perfectly-sequenced affair concludes with the cathartic “Constant Craving”, the album’s only “hit” and a song I used to try to irritate the wife by rendering as “Instant Gravy” (never worked).
Producer and co-writer Ben Mink created a chamber pop album of such meticulous craftsmanship and consummate taste it reminds me of Elvis Costello’s Imperial Bedroom, to which the word “masterpiece” was affixed on its release.
Mink places the subdued but compelling songs in elegantly adorned settings: strings, accordion, vibraphone, mandolin, slide guitar and many other instruments make their subtle way into a mix and bow out in turn, ensuring things never get tedious.
The songs are the best batch k.d. ever assembled on one LP. From this record on, one could hear echoes of Ingénue here and there on subsequent records, but never the consistent tone or quality of songs throughout an entire album.
Ingénue marked a transition from her early, rather hokey “cowgal” period into her art pop/torch singer incarnation. It’s a unique album in lang’s career and in all of pop music’s canon.
Incidentally, the Rolling Stones inadvertently appropriated the melody of “Instant Gravy” “Constant Craving” in their 1997 hit “Anybody Seen My Baby”. Quoting Wikipedia:
Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the song also carries writing credits for k.d. lang and Ben Mink.The song is known for its chorus, which sounds strikingly similar to lang’s 1992 hit song “Constant Craving“. Jagger and Richards claimed to have never heard the song before, only having discovered the similarity prior to the song’s release. As Richards writes in his autobiography Life, “My daughter Angela and her friend were at Redlands and I was playing the record and they start singing this totally different song over it. They were hearing k.d. Lang’s ‘Constant Craving.’ It was Angela and her friend that copped it.”The two gave lang credit, along with her co-writer Mink, to avoid any lawsuits. Afterwards, lang said she was “completely honored and flattered” by receiving the songwriting credit.
A recent Metafilter post introduces us to Galeazzo Frudua, a musician from Bologna, Italy who, “possesses an uncannily good ear for harmony, and has produced a series of videos that painstakingly and expertly analyze and demonstrate for you the vocal harmonies employed in various Beatles songs.” These detailed tutorials, writes the Metafilter poster, are made all the more watchable by Frudua’s “perceptive commentary, capable singing voice, unassuming manner, impressive video editing skills and, hey, his charming Italian accent.”
In his first tutorial, for “Nowhere Man” (above), Frudua begins by introducing “Lennon voice”: “Lennon voice is very simple, and it goes like this.” And, handily, flawlessly, it does. Frudua, who seems to be recording in the back of a restaurant, matches the tone of Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison’s harmonies separately and together impressively. He particularly favors Rubber Soul. Hear his “In My Life” below. He calls it “one of the best performances ever of John Lennon in the Beatles” as well as “a fantastic campus on learning how to sing.”
Anecdotally, having worked with choir singers, opera singers, and a capella singers, I can say that Frudua’s ability is not particularly rare but is the effect of constant practice. One Metafilter poster puts it well: “It’s not hard if you have a bit of an ear, and some experience…. Harmonies are a kind of language. Spend some time learning the grammar and a few phrases and it can open up quickly.” Frudua’s not only a master of vocal harmony, he’s also an expert luthier and builds custom guitars for dozens of Italian artists. In his breakdown below of “You Never Give Me Your Money,” the intro to the Abbey Road medley, Frudua takes on a particularly difficult harmony, as he explains in great detail in his careful introduction to the song’s harmonic grammar. He tells us we can use this tutorial “as a guide for your Beatles’ tribute band or reproduce them in your home recording.” You may do those things if you wish. Or you could watch Frudua do them better. See his full series here.
