Which one is your favorite? - LXXI -

There was breaking news in the music world during the week. The enigmatic and highly influential French electronic music duo Daft Punk was splitting. Founded by the former indie-rock bandmates Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter in Paris in 1993, Daft Punk won six Grammy Awards; collaborated widely, with artists from Giorgio Moroder to the Weeknd; and influenced many producers, D.J.s, rappers and pop stars. That's why I chose a popular song from Daft Punk for this week's post.

Here is the song for this week;

"Get Lucky"

The first single from Daft Punk's fourth studio album Random Access Memories features American rapper and record producer Pharrell Williams on vocals and studio legend Nile Rodgers of disco pioneers Chic on guitar. Speaking to Rolling Stone about his work on the French duo's record, Nile Rodgers said: "About a year ago, I get a knock on the door - first a virtual one and then a real knock - from Guy-Manuel and Thomas. The collaboration felt so unbelievably natural that it made me realise that I need to be in the studio with people. I love partnering with people. And then from that moment, a windfall of recording started happening. I just started going in with whomever I could."

Before its release as a single, "Get Lucky" was featured in television advertisements broadcast during Saturday Night Live, after which Rodgers and Williams announced their involvement in the track. Small excerpts also appear throughout the promotional video series The Collaborators.

"Get Lucky" is a disco song with lyrics that, according to Williams, are about the good fortune of connecting with someone, as well as sexual chemistry. After it leaked in mid-April, the single was released as a digital download on 19 April 2013. "Get Lucky" has since received acclaim from critics, and has spawned num erous cover versions and parodies. The single reached the top ten in the music charts of over 32 countries, and has sold more than 9.3 million copies.

The song won awards for Record of the Year and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards, during which Stevie Wonder joined Rodgers, Williams and Daft Punk onstage to perform the song.

The song broke Spotify streaming records on the day of its release. It achieved the highest number of streams on the Swedish online music site in 24 hours in both the UK and US. It became Daft Punk's first UK #1 single.

This song is a prime example of Daft Punk's move away from pure House to more of a funk-style in the album Random Access Memories, following a popular song structure (verse, chorus, middle 8, etc.) rather than the typical EDM structure (intro, build-up, drop, breakdown, drop).

For 2017 Bastille Day, a French military band performed a medley of the song along for French president Emmanuel Macron and his guest, the American president Donald Trump, at place de la Concorde in Paris.

Here are the 7 versions I picked for you;

• Thomas Dutronc - "Get Lucky"

• Biffy Clyro - "Get Lucky"

• Daughter - "Get Lucky"

• The Struts - "Get Lucky"

• Halestorm - "Get Lucky"

• Wilco - "Get Lucky" 

• Scary Pockets - "Get Lucky"

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.

Five Songs for the Weekend - CXI -

I have subscribed to a streaming service called "MUBI". It is a movie platform and you can watch (well mostly) true cinema from new and/or award-winning directors. It is a curated streaming service, which offers an ever-changing collection of hand-picked films, introducing one new film each day. I suggest you take a look and maybe try it for a week for free. I am sure you will be addicted...

As Jean-Luc Godard once said;

“Photography is truth. 

The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second."

Here is the list for this weekend;

• Portico Quartet - "Prickly Pear"

• Kelly Lee Owens - "Corner Of My Sky"

• Elsa Hewitt - "That Thing"

• Gusgus - "Over"

• Soccer Mommy - "Night Swimming"

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.

Which one is your favorite? - LXX -

This week's song is from the 60s but most of you will remember it from the 1991 Alan Parker movie "The Commitments"... It is a rhythm and blues (R&B) song written and first recorded by Mack Rice in 1965. It was released on the Blue Rock label in May 1965 with "Sir Mack Rice" as the artist.

Here is the song for this week;

"Mustang Sally"

It gained greater popularity when Wilson Pickett covered it the following year on a single, a version that was also released on the 1966 album, The Wicked Pickett.

Rice was visiting singer Della Reese, who was considering buying a new Lincoln Continental for her drummer and band leader Calvin Shields for his birthday. Rice and other band members were teasing Shields about the pending gift, and Shields replied that he did not want a Lincoln; he wanted a Ford Mustang. Rice had never heard of the Mustang, which had just come out, but he teased Shields about wanting a smaller car. He decided there might be a song in the situation, changing it to be about a woman who doesn't want to do anything but ride around in her new car. Rice called the early version "Mustang Mama," but changed the title after Aretha Franklin suggested "Mustang Sally" because he used the name Sally in the chorus.

Rice got part of the chorus from the children's game song (recorded by various artists) "Little Sally Walker," versions of which include the lyrics "Ride Sally ride, wipe your weepin' eyes," with variations. His variation goes, "All you wanna do is ride around, Sally/Ride, Sally, ride/One of these early mornings/You're gonna be wipin' your weepin' eyes."

Here are the 6 versions I picked for you;

• Wilson Pickett - "Mustang Sally"

• The Commitments - "Mustang Sally"

• Buddy Guy - "Mustang Sally"

• Los Lobos - "Mustang Sally"

• Bruce Springsteen, Chaka Khan & John Fogerty - "Mustang Sally"

• The Coasters - "Mustang Sally"

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.

Five Songs for the Weekend - CX -

All back to normal after 2 days of snow. Supposedly this would be the worst snowstorm of the last 3 decades had said the weather station...I guess weather-wise, this is the new normal now; a big snowstorm means just two days of fluffies :)...

As Mark Twain once said;

“Climate is what we expect, 

weather is what we get."

Here is the list for this weekend;

• Nils Frahm - "Fundamental Values"

• Frank Zappa - "Black Napkins"

• She Past Away - "Rituel"

• Lijadu Sisters - "Come On Home"

• Portico Quartet - "Prickly Pear"

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.

Which one is your favorite? - LXIX -

This week's piece is dedicated to the great Chick Corea who passed away very recently. He was considered to be one of the major piano players to emerge in jazz and a pioneer in the creation of fusion at a time when jazz was fading away...

Here is the song for this week;

"Spain"

It is an instrumental jazz fusion composition by jazz pianist and composer Chick Corea. It is likely Corea's most recognized piece, and is considered a jazz standard. "Spain" was composed in 1971 and appeared in its original (and most well-known) rendition on the album Light as a Feather, with performances by Corea (Rhodes electric piano), Airto Moreira (drums), Flora Purim (vocals and percussion), Stanley Clarke (bass), and Joe Farrell (flute). 

The introduction used in the song is from Concierto de Aranjuez, a guitar concerto by the Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo.

The Light as a Feather version of "Spain" received two Grammy nominations, for Best Instrumental Arrangement and for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Group. In 2001, Corea was awarded the Best Instrumental Arrangement Grammy for "Spain for Sextet and Orchestra".

Here are the 7 versions I picked for you;

• Bela Fleck & The Flecktones - "Spain"

• Al Jarreau - "Spain (I Can Recall)"

• Stevie Wonder - "Spain"

• Blood, Sweat & Tears - "Spain"

• Michel Camilo & Tomatito - "Spain"

• Wolfgang Haffner - "Spain"

And just for this post here is the great Chick Corea with Hiromi...RIP great master!

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.

Five Songs for the Weekend - CIX -

The weather station reported that after many weeks of warm weather, a snowstorm is coming our way. Well it was about time, otherwise we would have to take out our swimwear from the closet as this winter is probably the warmest winter in a decade... Nothing to do with global warming yeah? 😠

As Truman Fisher once said;

“The pause is as important as the note."

Here is the list for this weekend;

• Archie Shepp & Horace Parlan - "Goin' Home"

• Liars - "Octagon"

• Derrick Harriott - "The Loser'

• Ólafur Arnalds & Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir - "Particles"

• Outkast ft. Cee-Lo, Big Rube, & Erykah Badu - "Liberation"

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.

Which one is your favorite? - LXVIII -

I just noticed that I have not written enough about Bowie songs, so here is one from 1977 co-written by the man himself and Brian Eno and recorded in July and August 1977 at Hansa Studio by the Wall. It was released on 23 September 1977 as the lead single from his 12th studio album of the same name, backed with the song "V-2 Schneider". A product of Bowie's "Berlin" period, the track was not a huge hit in the United Kingdom or the United States after its release, but it has since become one of his signature songs. 

Here is the song for this week;

"Heroes"

This was originally an instrumental composition, whose title was a reference to the 1975 track "Hero" by the German Krautrock band Neu!. This song tells the story of a German couple who are so determined to be together that they meet every day under a gun turret on The Berlin Wall. Bowie, who was living in Berlin at the time, was inspired by an affair between his producer Tony Visconti and backup singer Antonia Maass, who would kiss "by the wall" in front of Bowie as he looked out of the Hansa Studio window. Bowie didn't mention Visconti's role in inspiring this song until 2003, when he told Performing Songwriter magazine: "I'm allowed to talk about it now. I wasn't at the time. I always said it was a couple of lovers by the Berlin Wall that prompted the idea. Actually, it was Tony Visconti and his girlfriend. Tony was married at the time. And I could never say who it was. But I can now say that the lovers were Tony and a German girl that he'd met whilst we were in Berlin. I did ask his permission if I could say that. I think possibly the marriage was in the last few months, and it was very touching because I could see that Tony was very much in love with this girl, and it was that relationship which sort of motivated the song."

Following his death in January 2016, the German government thanked Bowie for "helping to bring down the Wall", adding "you are now among Heroes".

"Heroes'" has received numerous accolades since its release, as seen with its inclusion on lists ranking the "greatest songs" compiled by various music publications; Rolling Stone named the song the 46th greatest ever, and NME named it the 15th greatest. Bowie scholar David Buckley has written that "'Heroes'" "is perhaps pop's definitive statement of the potential triumph of the human spirit over adversity".

Robert Fripp, formerly of King Crimson, played guitar on this track. His band, King Crimson, performed the song at the Admiralspalast in Berlin on September 11, 2016 in celebration of Bowie. This version was released on an EP called Heroes in 2017. Featured in this song are not only Brian Eno's synthesizer and Robert Fripp's guitar, but also producer Tony Visconti banging on a metal ashtray that was lying around the studio.

Here are the 7 versions I picked for you;

• Motörhead - "Heroes"

• Depeche Mode - "Heroes"

• Oasis - "Heroes"

• Peter Gabriel - "Heroes"

• Blondie - "Heroes"

• King Crimson - "Heroes"

• Janelle Monáe - "Heroes"

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.

Five Songs for the Weekend - CVIII -

Virus variants continue to evolve all around the world and people are asking whether the vaccines will be controlling this situation or not. It seems that we still have many uncertainties ahead of us and we need to pay even more attention today. No one is sure when this pandemic will end but it seems that not in the very near future.

As Anselm Kiefer once said;

“Art is longing. You never arrive, 

but you keep going in the hope that you will."

Here is the list for this weekend;

• Sophie (RIP) - "It's OK to Cry"

• Ane Brun - "Do You Remember"

• David Lynch & Lykke Li - "I'm Waiting Here"

• Aldous Harding - "The Barrel"

• FKA Twigs - "Cellophane"

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.