(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)
Artist: Oasis Album Title: Time flies… 1994-2009 Year released: 2010 Year reissued: 2025 Details: 4 x LP, orange, green, pink, blue, 15th anniversary, RSD limited edition, 5363/15000
The skinny: In a parallel universe, I would be attending the first of two Oasis gigs at the newly constructed Rogers Stadium in Toronto with a handful of old friends tonight. The risk in procuring tickets over a year in advance of a gig is that there’s always a possibility that your circumstances could change. In this case, they did change and I needed to give up my ticket. But no fear, I take small comfort in two things. First, that I have seen them already once before*. And second, that I managed to procure this special Record Store Day, coloured vinyl, 4 disc box set reissue of their 2006 ‘best of’ compilation “Stop the clocks” from an online indie shop earlier this year. I’m not always convinced that compilations are the way to go, especially when I already have the best of the artist in question’s albums in my record collection. However, I made the exception for this one given how pretty it looked and that it included a couple of great tracks that I was still missing on vinyl, most importantly, the amazing non-album single featured below. And I’ve listened to set this a few times since it arrived and with all these great tracks, back to back, there’s been no regrets. For those attending tonight, I bet it’s going to be a great show, no matter their setlist, so please enjoy for me.
Standout track: “Whatever”
*That infamous gig at Virgin festival 2008 where a ‘fan’ ridiculously hid under the stage the whole day only to leap out while Oasis were playing and push Noel Gallagher from behind.
It started off with me reading “The Body”, one of four novellas in Stephen King’s “Different seasons”, because I learned that it was the story upon which “Stand by me”, one of my favourite movies at the time, was based. And because I flew through it in a matter of a couple of days and I still had a few weeks on my Bowmanville Public Library loan, I read the other three in the series*, loving those as well. From there, I read “The shining”, “The Dead Zone”, “It”, “The Stand”, “Christine”, “Carrie”, and when I finally ran out of King books, I moved on to Dean Koontz, Anne Rice, and Clive Barker. It wasn’t long before I was ploughing through the Horror section at our local video rental store. If it was scary, freaky, or even just a little bit creepy, I loved it. I even still distinctly remember lining up at the Cumberland theatres in Toronto with Ryan, my roommate at the time, to see “The Blair Witch project” and walking out dazed at the end, adrenaline still coursing through my veins.
It was “28 days later” that ruined me. I borrowed the DVD from the Ottawa Public Library and watched it alone** late one night, all the way to the end, even watching all the alternate endings. The fast moving zombies and almost credible storyline creeped me out beyond belief and stuck with me for months. I haven’t been able to watch anything else that was close to resembling a zombie film***, or any horror or otherwise supernatural film for that matter, that was released post 9/11.
I say all this in relation to today’s 100 best covers post because I have still yet to see the film “Donnie Darko”, the soundtrack for which this song was originally recorded, and more than likely, never will. I know that it was a small indie production with a great cast and though it didn’t make a lot of money when it was first released, falling victim to general unease about its content following September 11, 2001, it built up a cult following in the years that followed and is now considered a classic of the genre. I also know that its soundtrack was very well regarded, the score put together by songwriter Michael Andrews, whose only previous work was on a little known indie film and couple of television shows, most notably “Freaks and geeks”. Inspired by Ennio Morricone, Andrews wanted to include a proper song on the otherwise instrumental score and so enlisted his childhood friend and musician Gary Jules on a cover of the Tears for Fears single “Mad world”. The song was featured in the film’s closing sequence and garnered so much attention that it was released as a single a few years later, in 2003, and closed out the year on top of the charts.
Tears for fears’ original was also a massive hit when it was first released as a single, the band’s third, decades earlier, back in 1982. It is new wave percussive melody, sinister and eerie synths and industrial beats, over which lie the inimitable vocals of Curt Smith. It is slower and sombre at the verses but picks up at the choruses, just enough to dance to, much like the Roland Orzabal does on the dock in the music video. As austere as the original might sound, the Michael Andrews and Gary Jules cover is even more stripped back. A pure and simple, slowed down, melancholic piano at the beginning with Gary Jules’ soft touch on vocal, almost a whisper in the wind. The music builds slowly, more in scope than in tempo, but remains steadily haunting.
As much as I love the original, this cover is an example**** of where the remake doesn’t just copy, pay homage, or build upon the original, but it takes it to somewhere else entirely and it takes on a life of its own. Apologies to all the old fellow new wavers out there, advantage to the cover.
Cover:
Original:
*Also included in that book is “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank redemption”, upon which you all know the film that is based.
**Because Victoria, my girlfriend (at the time) and now, my lovely wife, was never able to watch scary films.
***Not even “Shaun of the dead”.
****And there’s going to be a few more of these to come.
For the rest of the 100 best covers list, click here.
For a couple of weeks last month, my life* revolved around Ottawa’s Bluesfest, the local big music festival and arguably one of the biggest in Canada. I’ve been attending this shindig to some extent for the past fifteen years or so and have seen some amazing acts in the process. In fact, one of the things I love most about it, besides discovering new bands, is how it has made it possible for me to see a litany of acts that I likely wouldn’t have otherwise seen. Green Day is a band that fits into this latter category from this year’s edition, a band that I’ve known for decades but never really actively followed and would never have bought a concert ticket to just see them. But man, they did put on a great show and played pretty much every song I would have wanted to hear, including this one.
I first heard of the punk trio from California with the release of “Dookie”, the band’s major label debut. A number of the singles from that album got regular play on CFNY in 1994 and given that that was the radio station of choice for me, I heard quite a bit of them, their songs were ear worms that stuck with me, in spite of me. Later on, that summer, I distinctly remember watching footage of their legendary performance at Woodstock ‘94, the mud fight that ensued, and my appreciation for the band grew. The following fall, my university friend Craig loaned me his CD copy of “Dookie” one day while giving me a ride back to my basement apartment north of the city. I recorded it to cassette and it entered into history as part of my soundtrack for second year university.
I stopped actively following Green Day after that though, and am pretty certain that I haven’t listened to any of the eleven studio albums since “Dookie” in full. However, as I discovered at their show, I’ve still been indirectly exposed to a lot of their material. I was amazed but shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was at the crowd that they drew**. And it occurred to me as I sang along with the masses at how well they have transitioned from the punk pranksters of their youth to a crowd pleasing stadium rock band and seemingly managed to keep their integrity intact.
“Peel me off this Velcro seat
And get me moving
I sure as hell can’t do it by myself”
“Longview” was among the songs they played at the show that I was able to and happily sang along with. It was the first song that I ever heard by Green Day and is still quite simply my favourite by the group. The themes of boredom and lethargy definitely rang true for me back in the day, especially when I thought I was going to be stuck in my small hometown forever, and the memories have me wistfully smiling every time I hear the words. That loping drum intro and out for a stroll bass line gets me every time and when it jumps into overdrive at the chorus, I’m right there with the band. Yeah, it plays that loud-quiet-loud card, giving you downtime between explosions to catch your breath. This is perfect gen X power chord punk.
*And my wife will tell you hers too despite not attending at all this year.
**Rumour has it that was the best attended night of the festival this year and possibly, any of the years yet.
For the rest of the Best tunes of 1994 list, click here.
My (life in) music lists 