Alternate Takes

by M. Alberto Rivera

It happened one morning a few years ago. I woke up with King of the Road in my head. The song is originally by Roger Miller. But it wasn’t his version rattling around in my brain. REM’s version from my favorite album of theirs, Dead Letter Office. It’s a drunken sloppy mess of a song and a lot of fun.

Michael Stipe forgets most of the words. The band seems to be remembering the songs as they go, half a beat before they play the notes. When they get to the ending it sort of dissolves, coming apart from indifference, alcohol and a lack of preparation. Whatever. I love this audio disaster. Same with The Replacements live version of If I Only Had a Brain. While not the best versions of these songs, they are the ones I enjoy. It’s a lot like missing your moms cooking, not because it was particularly good, but it is what you grew with, and therefore familiar.

Getting a song stuck in your head can be an arduous thing to ignore and even trickier to remove, but when it’s a specific performance of a particular song, be prepared to live with it for a while. This happened pre-YouTube, and I tore the house apart looking for my copy of Dead Letter Office. The song ran itself round my head till I was beginning to fixate over it.

And as was the case with King of the Road, many is the time I discovered the remake before going on to hear the original. Probably the best example of this is Jimi Hendrix’s version All Along the Watchtower. Hendrix took a lyrically remarkable song and gave it music of comparable intensity. Dylan is extraordinarily malleable this way. No slouch musically, it is very easy to overlook his playing and solely focus on his lyrics, which let’s face it, are amazing. There’s a reason why everyone from The Ramones to gospel singer Mavis Staples have covered him.

And speaking of Dylan, I listened to Diamonds and Rust for years before realizing it was written by Joan Baez, singing about Bob Dylan. After tracking down Joan Baez’s version in the analog age, I decided I’d still rather hear Judas Priest than Joan Baez.

Then there are those times when the original I tracked down and wonder, what the hell? When the Levee Breaks by Memphis Minnie was a jarring thing to hear after years of listening to Zeppelins version of it. To my 16 year old ears, I couldn’t make sense of the recording quality which was state of the art at the time of recording. And I was really uncomfortable the first time I heard it. Hissy, with background noise like crazy, I wondered how anyone had ever enjoyed listening to recordings like these; not really processing this was as good as it got at that time. I eventually learned to appreciate these recordings for their unflinching honesty. If the musician flubbed a part, there was nowhere to hide. Or fix it. The take was either good or it wasn’t.

But I’ve scratched my head wondering how an artist heard the original and was able to make a song sound so good when the original sucked so badly? What did they hear that inspired them to reinterpret and reconstruct a turd into something listenable?

Budgie is the best example of this. Metallica recorded 3, maybe 5 of their songs in the late 80’s, early 90’s as b sides. And I loved them. LOVED these songs. As Metallica was becoming increasingly less like the Metallica I had been obsessed with in high school, these b sides reminded me of that band. And I hate to sound like a broken record, but this was pre-internet and discovering the obscure wasn’t as easy as doing a Google search.

Metallica put out And Justice For All, which was an uneven recording, but they got a pass as they were still mourning the loss of Cliff Burton. As was their audience. Nobody could have guessed at this time how important Cliff was to the band. He wasn’t just an amazing bass player. His input and sensibilities helped craft the amazing first three albums. Anyone wishing to second guess this notion only has to listen to every subsequent release to see what’s missing. He wasn’t always indulgent. Sometimes he played precious little, providing the right accents to a song. I’m going out on limb here, but he also probably understood when it was time to change things up musically, before they became tedious.

I have some Budgie albums for sale. I may as well be selling pieces of Christ’s cross because they are that rare, and unfortunately for me, nowhere near as valuable. When I found them I felt as though I’d won the lottery; until the needle hit the groove.

Budgie reminds of a bad Black Sabbath sound a-like band; out of time and slightly out of tune. Just before I listened to Budgie, I was thrilled to have found such an obscurity, thinking this would kick like a mule, AND I would be the only kid on the block in possession of this rare bit of metal history. I will have out done you all, yet again!!! (insert snide and knowing diabolical laughter here)

Budgie blew. Unlistenable crap. And yet, when Metallica laid into their songs, they came alive and screamed, with all the subtlety of a dieing man fighting for life. Go figure.

Then there are remakes that are laughably bad. Painful in comparison to other versions or the originals. I could write for days on my love/hate relationship with Metallica, but will spare you the indulgence here.

I mostly ignored the band once the black album came out. As much as one can ignore a band whose music and videos are suddenly every-damn-where. I bought the black album, Metallica, for you purists or clueless, the day it was released. I listened to it 6 times waiting for it to sound like the band I had adored the past few years and when it never did, I shelved it in disgust. I never again spent a dime on them.

I became incredibly annoyed with their half-assed remake of Whiskey in the Jar. They sound like a bunch of drunken weekend warriors playing for free beer at the local VFW. It was just stupid and ham fisted and if Phil Lynott and Cliff Burton inspired this rendition, surely they spin in their graves whenever it gets played. I liked watching the video for Whiskey, but with the sound off. Really I’ve heard scores of versions of this song, my favorites being Thin Lizzys’ and U2s’.

Thin Lizzys’ because it reminds me of a happy time in my life; being 22, my friend Claire, and overall being optimistic with my life’s present direction. And it’s a beautiful rendition of the song. U2s’ live version in Dublin is great because they had enough sense to quit playing and allow the crowd’s singing to carry the moment.

The Bridge: an Alternative Tribute to Neal Young is/was a significant musical landmark for 2 reasons. 1, the word alternative wasn’t yet the overused word to describe anybody with a tattoo and body piercing whose music was on the radio. 2, almost all the artists appearing on the recording used this opportunity to invert, pervert, re-think and retool a Neal Young song. Nobody played it straight. O-k, Soul Asylum didn’t really mess with Barstool Blues, but everyone else took big chances with their rethinking of Youngs work.

Nick Cave’s rendition of Helpless is painfully beautiful and to my ears, definitive. Bongwater seriously reworks Mr. Soul. As does Sonic Youth’s Computer Age. Retooling a song doesn’t automatically make it better, but I always appreciate the effort to re-imagine something familiar into something new and less obvious.

So let me ask you, what do you think of when you get a song stuck in your head?

Androgynous in Orlando

by M. Alberto Rivera

I live an hours drive East of Orlando and avoid the city the way most avoid a relative who’s always in need of money. Nightmare traffic aside, there seems to be a great many people in the city with nowhere to go and all day to get there. Prior to owning a GPS, there was a unique pain to endure while travelling in Orlando; navigation. Because every-damn-body seems to have moved there from somewhere else, no one knows how to get anywhere besides their job or home. Orlando was an orange grove that became a city, but no one gave any thought to the cities layout until long after it was bursting at the seams with too much amusement park related traffic.

But Orlando is blessed with an ongoing free concert series of major artists every 3-4 months. In December, 2007, Joan Jett was up to bat to perform. I always like something for free, have always like JJ’s radio hits; so this was a good match all around. We braved the elements, the hostile locals, wandering tourists and made our way downtown.

My daughter, Isabella, was 3 at the time, and had already been to at least a dozen shows. I Love Rock and Roll was one of her favorite songs. I put her on my shoulders and walked up to the back of the crowd, where we had a fair view of the stage. She excitedly bounced up and down to the intro music of Blitzkrieg Bop, a song she knew better than most. But when Joan hit the stage to the tough blast of Bad Reputation, Isabella couldn’t contain herself. “This is the song from Shrek!” she screamed with delight. And she was right. She and I loved the song for very different reasons, but it was cool to see such unfiltered happiness fill her.

After 3 or 4 songs, I walked to the back of the cordoned off area, away from the crowd, close to the street, stepping slowly in time to the music. After 20 seconds I realized I’d been singing along with every word, not quite sure what it was I was saying. The song title arrived at the chorus, and I accompanied Ms. Jett, saying in dry imitation, Androgynous” I laughed to myself, as I realized she was playing a song from the classic Replacements album, Let It Be.

Let It Be was one of the biggest independent/alternative releases of the mid 1980’s. At this writing it’s sold about 250,000 copies; huge by indie standards, but barely a blip on the mainstream radar. This raised their profile from a regional curiosity to a national touring disaster.

I read an article on The Replacements in lieu of paying attention during geometry class which explained Let It Be was named such because according to Paul Westerberg, “Nothing in rock is sacred”, which I couldn’t begin to comprehend as I read the words in 1984. I dismissed the band out of hand as pointless and unlistenable back then because they didn’t look like the metal acts I favored at the time. It would be years before I’d ever get the chance to actually hear them.