This week's song is coming from one of the greatest electronic music bands of all time. It was released in 1978 in Kraftwerk's The Man-Machine album (released in German as Die Mensch-Maschine). The song was initially a B-side to their single, "The Model" ("Das Model"), but later the sides were swapped. The 12-inch single was pressed on luminous vinyl.
By the way, I am currently reading a book by Uwe Schütte called "Kraftwerk: Future Music from Germany". I would like to thank my dear friend from Basel (@cereyanlimusiki) who was kind enough to send me the book during these tough times. I highly recommend the book not only to Kraftwerk fans but to all music lovers.
Here is the song for this week;
"Neon Lights"
The song was written by the band members; Ralf Hütter, Florian Schneider and Karl Bartos.
It has a lilting melody and reflects Düsseldorf at night, paying tribute to the many colorful neon signs that advertise shops, hotels and bars in the band's hometown. "Neon Lights" is a frequently underrated classic in the Kraftwerk oeuvre, a sublimely atmospheric piece.
Andy Gill in his review for the NME hailed the album but he did not single out either the title track or "The Robots". Instead, without hesitation, he names "Neon Lights" the best track on the album. Indeed, the captivating melody has been described as a "sonic refutation of the allegations that Kraftwerk had no soul"...
Now the floor is yours, go ahead and make your comments (here, Instagram, Facebook wherever you feel like...).
nb. Please note that I intentionally do not include the original versions of the songs as it would be a little unfair to the artists covering the songs, and I am sure that sometimes you will be surprised to see that the songs you thought were the originals are just covers.
I am really starting to get desperate about this Covid issue as the numbers are drastically climbing before the arrival of the vaccine. Even after the vaccine's introduction, it looks like it is going to take some time for people to benefit from it. Therefore, in the meantime please wear a mask and pay attention to your personal hygiene, otherwise catching the virus will be a duck soup. Stay with good music and try to enjoy your week.
As Toscanini once said;
“Music is either good or it isn’t,
it’s not someone’s opinion.”
Here is the list for this weekend;
Air - "La Femme D'Argent"
Belle and Sebastian - "The Boy With the Arab Strap"
Ibeyi - "River"
GoGo Penguin - "Fanfares"
Merle Haggard - "Miner's Silver Ghost"
Hope you have a great weekend.
nb. You can open the actual youtube page by clicking the name on the upper left side of each video.
This week's song is coming from one of my favorite bands. It is a song by Fleetwood Mac from their eleventh studio album Rumours released in 1977. In the US, the song reached the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100, the band's only number-one single there; it sold over a million copies. In Canada, it also reached number one on the RPM Top 100 Singles chart.
Here is the song for this week;
"Dreams"
During the sessions for Rumours, everyone in the band was going through a breakup (Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham with each other, John and Christine McVie with each other, Mick Fleetwood with his wife Jenny Boyd) and doing a lot of drugs. They were able to work together, but most of the songwriting was on an individual basis. Stevie Nicks wrote this one in the studio next door where Sly Stone was recording. He had a big, semicircular bed and red velvet all over the walls - a great vibe for a song about romantic entanglements.
The line, "Players only love you when they're playing," was directed at Lindsey Buckingham. Stevie Nicks was not pleased when he brought "Go Your Own Way" to the sessions, which was clearly about her. Stevie told Q magazine June 2009: "It was the fairy and the gnome. I was trying to be all philosophical. And he was just mad."
Stevie Nicks recalled to The Daily Mail October 16, 2009: "I remember the night I wrote 'Dreams.' I walked in and handed a cassette of the song to Lindsey. It was a rough take, just me singing solo and playing the piano. Even though he was mad with me at the time, Lindsey played it and then looked up at me and smiled. What was going on between us was sad. We were couples who couldn't make it through. But, as musicians, we still respected each other - and we got some brilliant songs out of it."
Christine McVie said in a 1997 interview with Q: "'Dreams' developed in a bizarre way. When Stevie first played it for me on the piano, it was just three chords and one note in the left hand. I thought, This is really boring, but the Lindsey genius came into play and he fashioned three sections out of identical chords, making each section sound completely different. He created the impression that there's a thread running through the whole thing."
Christine McVie played both a Hammond organ and a Fender Rhodes electric piano on this track.
The song returned to the Billboard charts in 2018 after a meme went viral. A Twitter user named @bottledfleet edited parts of "Dreams" over footage of Alcorn State University's Golden Girls cheerleaders dancing to an overlay the song to prove that Fleetwood Mac is not boring. The video was posted on March 22, 2018 with the caption: "'Fleetwood Mac's music is so boring, you can't even dance to it."
The song got another boost when the TikTok user Doggface208 (real name Nathan Apodaca) uploaded a video of him skateboarding down a road while drinking Ocean Spray juice and lip-syncing along to "Dreams" on September 25, 2020. On October 4, Mick Fleetwood made his own TikTok re-creating Apodaca's video. Fleetwood posted: "@420doggface208 had it right. Dreams and Cranberry just hits different."
Here are the 6 versions I picked for you;
The Corrs - "Dreams"
Lissie - "Dreams"
Dianne Reeves - "Dreams"
The Kills - "Dreams"
Yo La Tengo - "Dreams"
Richie Havens - "Dreams"
Now the floor is yours, go ahead and make your comments (here, Instagram, Facebook wherever you feel like...).
nb. Please note that I intentionally do not include the original versions of the songs as it would be a little unfair to the artists covering the songs, and I am sure that sometimes you will be surprised to see that the songs you thought were the originals are just covers.
Another series of lockdowns have just been announced as the Covid cases have peaked. I wish all the best to the people who are suffering during these unpleasant times. Keep your hopes up and stay with music...
As Jean Paul once said;
“Music is the moonlight in the gloomy night of life."
Here is the list for this weekend;
Hamilton Leithauser - "I Don't Need Anyone"
Breakwater - "Release the Beast"
Kamaal Williams - "New Heights"
Eleggua - "Daymé Arocena"
Richard Devine - "Harmonic Symmetry"
Hope you have a great weekend.
nb. You can open the actual youtube page by clicking the name on the upper left side of each video.
This week's song is a very popular song from the 70s that was written by Eddie Curtis, Ahmet Ertegun and Steve Miller. It was released in 1973 from Capitol records.
Here is the song for this week;
"The Joker"
The song topped the US Billboard Hot 100 in early 1974.More than 16 years later, in September 1990, it reached number one in the UK Singles Chart for two weeks after being used in "Great Deal", a Hugh Johnson-directed television advertisement for Levi's, thus holding the record for the longest gap between transatlantic chart-toppers.
The line in this song, "I speak of the pompatus of love," has baffled listeners for some time. Greil Marcus provided the best explanation we've seen in a 2002 article for Los Angeles Magazine titled "In The Secret Country." The word "Pompatus" does exist in the Oxford English Dictionary, and it means "to act with pomp and splendor." Miller most likely heard the word on a song called "The Letter," which was recorded by the Los Angeles doo-wop group The Medallions in 1954. It was written by their lead singer Vernon Green, who was 16 at the time and crippled with polio. The song contains these lyrics:
"Let me whisper sweet words of dismortality and discuss the pompatus of love
Put it together and what do you have? Matrimony"...
The song's accompaniment is borrowed heavily from the song "Soul Sister" By Allen Toussaint. During the song, Steve Miller references The Clovers' 1954 song "Lovey Dovey" when he sings "You're the cutest thing that I ever did see / Really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree / Lovey dovey, lovey dovey, lovey dovey all the time".
The song is noted for its wolf whistle played on a slide guitar after the "lovey dovey" parts and the "some people call me Maurice" part.
The line "I'm a midnight toker" is a marijuana reference (as is the "toke" in Brewer & Shipley's hit "One Toke Over The Line" from 1970). Many stoners related to this song, and in 2012, Spin magazine named it the most commercially successful pot song of all time.
Steve Miller told the story of the song in an interview with Mojo November 2012: "I got this funny, lazy, sexy little tune," he recalled, "but it didn't come together until a party in Novato, north of San Francisco. I sat on the hood of a car under the stars with an acoustic guitar making up lyrics and 'I'm a joker, I'm a smoker, 'I'm a midnight toker' came out. My chorus! The 'some people call me the space cowboy' and 'the gangster of love' referred to earlier songs of mine and so did 'Maurice' and 'the propitious of love.' You don't have to use words. It was just a goof. I produced myself. Nobody pushing us around. That 12-string acoustic I played, it was made by Epiphone's last master guitar-maker. I forget his name, sorry. The basic rhythm track, when we cut it I was very precise with the bassist, Gerald Johnson about the line he should play. Then there's the slide guitar sound, which I put through a Leslie speaker and a wah-wah pedal, among other things."
Here are the 5 versions I picked for you;
Barb Jungr - "The Joker"
Fatboy Slim - "The Joker"
Ace Frehley - "The Joker"
K.D. Lang - "The Joker"
Eddy Zoltan - "The Joker"
Now the floor is yours, go ahead and make your comments (here, Instagram, Facebook wherever you feel like...).
nb. Please note that I intentionally do not include the original versions of the songs as it would be a little unfair to the artists covering the songs, and I am sure that sometimes you will be surprised to see that the songs you thought were the originals are just covers.
Sorry for last week's break. It's been a hectic week with work and the radio programs. I hope you have missed the weekend songs post. In the meantime, the whole world is closely following the US elections. Whatever the result, let's hope that democracy wins in the end...
As Jimmy Heath once said;
“I prefer music where melody, harmony and rhythm
come together and no element overshadows the other.
Jazz at its best is a democracy of creativity"
Here is the list for this weekend;
Gil Scott-Heron - "New York Is Killing Me"
Letta Mbulu- "Mahlalela"
Panthera - "Voyager"
Agnes Obel - "The Curse"
Nick Drake - "Pink Moon"
Hope you have a great weekend.
nb. You can open the actual youtube page by clicking the name on the upper left side of each video.
