Search This Blog

Thursday, January 13, 2011

301. "Lay Your Hands On Me" by Peter Gabriel


A triple failure, this one... a genuine strikeout. And it started so well.

Back during the preparation of Miranda's Christmas program, there was a bucket of percussion instruments in my car going wherever I went, inevitably circling back to her school. When it was removed, a single maraca escaped. At some point thereafter I found it and kind of stuffed it in the between-front-seats console. And last week, at a red light, for some reason I picked it up and idly gave it a few shakes at roughly the tempo I used on this cover. For reasons still not clear to me, this song came immediately to mind, and the idea for the cover was born: do this with as close to just voice and shaker as possible.

The first time I sat down to do it, my MOTU audio interface thing died on me. I thought it was really quite over with, and was trying to line up some kind of alternate means of recording (explaining, if not excusing, the extra-long break between recordings) when for no reason I can discern the MOTU started working again.

The second time I sat down to do it, I was abruptly seized by crippling heartburn. Heartburn is a bit of a new thing to me in the past two years, there being a reason for 39-40 as the title of the blog. Awful thing, heartburn. Sort of alarming that it's starting now, when I'm a lot less abusive of my physical being than I have been in the past, but there it is.

Third time I sat down to do it, the exact position of myself and the shaker relative to the mics having become strangely familiar, I got through it, except that it sucked. I gussied it up with a few overdubs, violating the original intent, but it's still closer to the original minimal concept than it would've been if I'd really gone in for "fixing" it. But then, I had a bunch more days to make up, so it'd have to do.

Image search trivia: Bon Jovi had a song by this title too? I must have known that at some point.

Personnel: Rex

1 comment:

  1. It's lovely and poignant, Rex. It's a difficult song to sing in the original key (PG covers almost always are). I think the arrangement suits it very well.

    And I am right there with you, re heartburn -- except inasmuch as mine is linked to my fatness while yours clearly isn't.

    ReplyDelete