Exciting new genre: Gothapella!Saturday, July 10, 2010
Friday, July 9, 2010
113. "Jenna Jameson's Letter to Santa" by Jenna Jameson
I've gotten away from explaining how my covers come to be as they are, but this one requires some background, I fear.For years I collected the limited-run Christmas compilations issued locally in Los Angeles by the KROQ morning show hosts Kevin & Bean, whose program was at times pretty funny; there were some brilliant pieces on the early compilations, mostly created by Jimmy Kimmel, who was their sidekick/comedy writer at the time. Over the years the returns diminished significantly and by this record, in 2002, you would usually have a lot of rather weak sketches and a handful of salacious "Dear Santa" letters read by celebrities, including this one by Jenna Jameson, whose apparently practiced the pre-internet occupation of "porn star".
So, what to do when The Machine gives you something like this? Well, the initials of the performer jogged my memory back to a Holiday "remix" I made many years ago, combining some hilarious dialogue by Stephen Root as Jimmy James on News Radio with a rather cheesy instrumental version of "God Bless Ye Merry Gentlemen" on one of my then-wife's Mannheim Steamroller records, which got some laughs around the office where I worked back then. (Please note that at that time, "remix" meant that I had a record player going into the left channel of an old Radio Shack mixer, and a Walkman with a tape of the dialogue recorded off the air into the right channel, and that's what you get here.)
So I dug up the tape and added a few modern touches, incorporating some of Ms. Jameson's "letter" into a newly crafted bridge section, and there you go, instant holiday cheer. Actually, the new part is pretty lame, but some of my old friends will probably be glad to have the News Radio bit available for public consumption for the first time ever.
In a bizarre instance of full-circle, I went looking for the name of the actor who played character asking Mr. James the questions, and while I did not find him, I did discover that, according to the IMDB, another noted adult film performer, Ron Jeremy, was an uncredited guest star in the same episode. Huh.
Rex Broome & His Holiday Fun-Time Pals are:
Caitlin Blackwood as Amelia Pond
Stephen Root as Jimmy James
Mannheim Steamroller as the Musical Accompanists
Rex Broome as All the Other Stuff
Thursday, July 8, 2010
112. "Right Here" by The Go-Betweens
Another completely classic song by Grant McLennan, one of my absolute favorites about whom I've rhapsodized plenty already. Sometimes you just get out of the way of the song, and that's largely what I did here, other than having some fun endensifying the harmonies here and there. I love this song.Personnel: Rex
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
111. "Lady Madonna" by the Beatles
After a few days of relatively respectful or at least considered covers, I often feel the urge to do one of those more randomized deals. I hit on the idea of walking into record store (in this case Rockaway, within walking distance of my house) and walking up to the super-budget used-and-totally unwanted shelf, finding the first thing that clearly contained instrumentals I'd never heard of, and taking it home for mutilation as a backing track.And so the dubious new age composition which has replaced the original melody and structure of "Lady Madonna" is actually track called "On My Wings" by an outfit named Nightingale, taken from the sampler compilation The Higher Octave Collection: Music from Around the World for Around the Clock. See, one disc is for day, and the other is for night or something. I added a one-pass gnarly guitar which doesn't really sound gnarled enough in context, and some warped vocals, which do.
Personnel:
Nightingale ~ backing track
Rex Broome ~ guitar, vocal
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
110. "Pretty As You Feel" by Jefferson Airplane
One problem with recording a song every day is that some days you feel like you have to puke, and you are therefore inevitably recording a song while you have to puke. This is such a day, and such a song.It is also, so far as I know, the only flat-out goth cover of a Jefferson Airplane song to feature heavily autotuned vocals and borrowed Michael Stipe lyrics. That may well sound disgustingly high-concept, but for some reason the last minute or so of this recording affects me as deeply emotionally as almost anything I've ever recorded. Then again, I have to puke, so factor that into the equation.
Peronnel: Rex, nauseous
Monday, July 5, 2010
109. "Beanbag Chair" by Yo La Tengo
Good fun on this one, with fake mandolins and sporadic fuzz bass and no drum kit and all that stuff.Yo La Tengo's I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass is one of those really quite excellent records which endures not in small part due to a wicked awesome and infinitely name-checkable title, like the Mekons' The Quality of Mercy is Not Strnen, Holly & the Italians' The Right to Be Italian, Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart by Camper Van Beethoven and every Fall album including a few that I just made up, like Rhetorik-Accelerator! and New Mikronauts Ascent Gruppe. For the diametrically opposite strategy (using your album title to fail it forever), see, if you have time, that Fiona Apple LP with the name that's longer than your average Pynchon novel and seventy-several times as pretentious.
Personnel: Rex
Sunday, July 4, 2010
108. "When I'm Gone" by Brenda Holloway
Hey, Dad, listen-- I finally did a whistling solo!This random selection is an example of one of the reasons I wanted to do 39-40, or indeed why I like hearing my music library randomized in general: I have a lot of cool compilations that are great fun to hear, things like big box sets of soul or surf or classic country or in this case Motown records, and they're great to listen to, but in some ways when you do so you're hearing this monolithic sound, and you don't get to focus in on the songs themselves unless you really have the time to listen more intently than, frankly, most adults including myself ever do. So here's a chance to take a good look at all the facets of an individual jewel, and maybe forge a special relationship with it. I really liked doing this tune.
Personnel: Rex
Saturday, July 3, 2010
107. "Chinese Envoy" by John Cale
A pleasure at last to do my own interpretation of a song by one of my very favorite musical artists in the word. Welsh, of course. They really do excel.Yesterday's cover set a new standard for 39-40 ass-suckage; today's is one of my favorites. Funny how that happens. Especially remarkable since I love this particular song so very much that I would've had an extremely easy time disappointing myself. I could actually hang out with Cale without feeling shame about this one. I'd be a silent moron, but it would be kind of cool anyway.
Personnel: Rex
Friday, July 2, 2010
106. "Satellite" by Elvis Costello
Bar none the worst cover I've done for 39-40, in no way owing to the participation of my lovely and talented wife. At least it has kind of a concept behind it and I haven't yet devolved to my ultimate nightmare circumstance of, like, reading the lyrics into a cellphone or something.I wouldn't say that this actually gets better a minute and a half in, but it does get different, so you might consider hanging in there at least that far for a laugh. And the last 50 seconds or so have some entertainment value. Of a sort. Sort of, a.
I'm so glad we recorded this after hanging out with Elvis a month ago... I don't know that I could have faced him having done this.
Personnel: Rex and Gen.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
105. "Cornflake Girl" by Tori Amos
I think I'm somewhat of a rarity as a casual Tori Amos fan... most people seem to either love her or hate her. I've never seen any reason to do the latter, but I've also never really gone through a period of being severely spellbound by her. I admire her a lot, and I think she takes a lot of unnecessary guff just for being who she is.This particular song reminds me of a weird, somewhat actually good period of enjoyable radio in the mid '90s when the bloom was off of the grunge explosion and subsequent bandwagoneering, and stations like KROQ didn't quite know what to play until the miracle of Nu Metal was delivered to them by the Gods of Awful Things. There were halting attempts to play some of various Next Big Genres, like electronica Britpop or loungecore or lo-fi indie stuff; none pf them ever achieved dominance, so you had some actually eclectic radio for a while (none of which remained in rotation or is much remembered today). But commercial radio was briefly mixing up Sebadoh, Underworld, Black Grape, The Cardigans, and Portishead. I recall "Cornflake Girl" as one of the most enjoyable singles of that time, and also because I was dead sure that the title was a lift from Billy Bragg's "Body of Water".
Personnel: Rex
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
103. "Achin' to Be" by The Replacements
So Cliff was over at the house to work with me on some demos for Skates & Rays, and The Machine had picked this Replacements song for me to do, and I roped him into contributing. Seemed a natural as he's one of the few people I know who agree with me that Don't Tell a Soul is a good album. As a sort of odd unplanned part of the process, all of the drum samples we ended up using were played by Derek, our drummer, so we had unwittingly created a Skates & Rays song. Ooops! But we've never done a thing where Cliff and I switch off vocals Waylon & Willie style, and it's me on the bass and Cliff on lead guitar, so that's new.In the course of finishing, editing and mixing the track, I had planned to add a second lead guitar to bounce off of Cliff's, and then the little 12-string riff on its own. But Eden and I were at the movies today and I thought she might have fun playing the riff, so she did. And that turned out to be all it needed. Neat how things work out sometimes.
Personnel:
Clifford Ulrich ~ Lead vocals (stereo right), lead guitar (6-string), harmonica
Rex Broome ~ Lead vocals (stereo left), acoustic guitar, bass, backing vocals
Derek Hanna ~ Drums
Eden Hain~ Lead guitar (12-string)
Monday, June 28, 2010
102. "All I Wanna Do Is Fall In Love" by Robyn Hitchcock
So for this one I did something that I might've been able to do on maybe one or two previous songs, but never have. I knew this song really well, so I decided not to bother to listen to it before working it out. I guessed at the key, choosing something that fit my range and thus was probably the original key since my singing was basically developed from Hitchcock anyhow, and I did look up the lyrics online, but I didn't consult a chord chart or anything. I went by memory... I didn't quite get the chord sequence right, but it worked for the melody line; I couldn't remember the bridge, either, and I think what I played is actually more like the bridge to "He's a Reptile", but then, what isn't?It ends rather abruptly as Eden sat down beside me and I thought she might need something.
As to the photo, we didn't have any radishes in the house, but we do eat rather a lot of corn.
Personnel: Rex
Sunday, June 27, 2010
101. "You'll Accomp'ny Me" by Bob Seger
I'm actually pretty ignorant of Bob Seger's music-- this song comes from a compilation in my parents' collection-- with the exception of "Old Time Rock & Roll" which I played a million times with Thunderhill. I'm not sure I'd really ever heard this song before. But I connected with it pretty quickly and without overthinking it, and that's often the best way. The vocal was a first take and one of my favorites that I've done so far.I've mentioned a couple times that I often borrow the early Billy Bragg approach for my voice and guitar performances... this time I went a little too far at a certain point, and I almost ended up literally doing a cover of "Love Gets Dangerous". These things happen.
Personnel: Rex
Saturday, June 26, 2010
100. "W.B" by The Fall
It's Day 100 and Song 100 for 39-40. And I get to do The Fall again! The Unutterable is a great, great record, and not necessarily appreciated as such. It doesn't actually get dissed very much, but it comes from such a spotty period in Fall history-- the preceding Levitate is confused at best and the subsequent Are You Are Missing Winner is quite likely the gruppe's worst ever, brilliant title notwithstanding-- and it sounds so unusual for a Fall record that it is a little hard to process. But it is brilliant, totally brilliant, probably in my top 5 personal favorite Fall records.It is, though, tough to do a Fall cover without sounding like you're doing a bad MES impersonation. It took me a while to land on an approach that did the trick for me. And having done so, I went ahead and recorded the "B-side", a "Part II" whose lyrics were a direct reading of the William Blake poem from which MES cribbed a lot of his original lyrics. That part I totally did as an MES impression. It's long. Is it self-indulgent? Well, I should say so. I've been doing this daily for 100 songs now... I figure I've earned it.
Personnel:
Miranda & Ridley ~ Distorted giggling of the sort that ends up on real Fall tracks
Rex ~ Everything else
Additional lyrics ~ William Blake, from "Song of Liberty"
Friday, June 25, 2010
99. "Venu la Klaun (Send in the Clowns)" by Alberta Casey
Yes, it's a karaoke backing track... I had to spend most of my time on this track learning to sing it in Esperanto! Which led down a number of blind alleys. I had Casey's original as a roadmap, but in order not to screw it up-- which seems only fair, since I pronounced yesterday's dada poetry correctly-- I took to the series of tubeses in search of an Esperanto translation engine. It was easily found, but offered translations from English into three different variants of Esperanto, which, for a supposedly universal language, isn't really a good sign. Good job, opposing Esperanto-speaking factions!
But anyhow, none of the translations of the lyrics to "Send in the Clowns" looked anything like what Casey was singing, so it was back to transliteration in the end. And I also learned that singing along with an orchestral backing track is way harder than it might seem, timing-wise. The tempo slides around a lot. It's not just the lack of drums... it's something else, and it gives me a bit more appreciation for singers who have a sharp enough feel for phrasing to do this kind of thing on regular basis.
Personnel:
Backing Track ~ Avid Entertainment
Vocals ~ Rex Broome
Thursday, June 24, 2010
98. "I Zimbra" by Talking Heads
This is kinda weird, because it's actually the second time I've sung these lyrics for 39-40. Way back when we did the Bjork cover with ten million vocals, the kids and I squirreled away some subliminal vocal tracks in foreign languages other than Icelandic... you almost certainly can't hear them, but somewhere on there Miranda's singing a blessing in Hebrew, Eden is reading a translation she'd just done for Latin, and I'm chanting the dada lyrics used in "I Zimbra".It may not sound like it, but this was a fairly elaborate and challenging project. There are a lot of guitars playing interlocking polyrhythmic riffs and figures on this song-- that's practically why it exists-- and I was interested in distilling them down until they could be played on one guitar. I wanted to make sure that all the major parts were represented one way or another. Sometimes that meant working out ways to play two parts at a time, working a lead figure into a rhythm part, and sometimes it just meant switching parts up every time they came around. I didn't totally nail it, but I learned a lot in the process and I think I'll be able to do this kind of thing better if I try it again.
Personnel: Rex
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
97. "Fodder" by The March Violets
Holy shit that was close. It's a tight squeeze to get the songs done during summer vacation when the kids are home all the time. There are certainly times when they are otherwise occupied and I can steal a moment or two to lay down tracks, but I tend to not want to record my amp most of the time... it just needs to be too loud to not interfere with any activity they might be working on. So my guitar tones for a while are going to be a lot more amp-simulatey than I would like... however, the tone I got today worked out pretty well, and fit with the hack and slash Andy Gill imitation I settled on for the tune. I forget sometimes that I can do that kind of stuff.But the real problem came about because I'd left the vocals for the end of the day, and with scant hours remaining, the only website with March Violets lyrics, which had been working just fine earlier in the day, went down down down. Now of course I could listen to the tune and transcribe it, but that takes time, and time was dwindling rapidly. I squeaked it out, but I'm going to have to alter my strategy somehow tomorrow. Holy shit that was close.
Personnel: Rex
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
96. "Sinner Sinner Sinner" by Bow Wow Wow
So the scheduling stuff does you in, especially during the summer. Right now I have two kids on summer vacation and one still in school for a week more. Balancing things out, I'd planned on taking the two vacationeers to Disneyland tomorrow, but at the last minute that got changed to today. How to bash out a Bow Wow Wow cover within that time frame? Well, I'll tell you.Takes about an hour to get to Disneyland from Silver Lake. So before we leave I prep a disc of the song we're going to cover, and a suitably long loop of a drum part at the same tempo, and grab a bunch of percussion instruments and similar stuff, and my laptop, which I hand over to Miranda (9) for the drive. We listen to the original; Miranda learns the guitar part on kazoo, we all get the chain gang vocal bits down, and then Miranda records the whole shebang straight into the laptop using its onboard mic. Later at home, quick as can be, I cut it all together to the original beat, and it probably sounds better than it would have if I'd agonized over a more thoroughly realized concept. The kids are alright.
It was only fairly recently, after hearing "Afrodisiac" in Marie Antoinette, that I realized that Bow Wow Wow actually kicked ass. I think I'd long assumed they were kind of a part of that style-over-substance pop-starry slick side of New Wave for which I had no affinity, Duran Duran or Frankie Goes to Hollywood or some such. Ooops... wrong.
Personnel:
Miranda Broome: Kazoo, vocals, engineering
Ridley Broome: Percussion, vocals
Rex Broome: Vocals, editing and assembly
Monday, June 21, 2010
95. "Kream" by Live Skull
I'm not entirely sure, but I think this is the first time I've done a second song from a single album, so I'm grateful that it's a great favorite of mine. If I were doing one of those increasingly popular cover-an-entire-album projects, I guess I'd be well on the way to having Dusted in the bag.This one is a lot more in line with the usual Live Skull MO than "Alive Again" was, so it was fun to work out the odd textural riffs and voicings on two guitars, and I'm damned proud that the "lead" guitar is really close to the actual part on the record. And it was also cool to be able to retain that sense of menace on nothing more than two acoustic guitars. Always a bonus when adding harmonies makes it sound creepier instead of prettier, too.
Personnel: Rex
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