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100 best covers: #68 Echo And The Bunnymen “People are strange”

<< #69    |    #67 >>

So this here’s another example of a cover that I heard first and with which I was quite familiar before finally hearing the original. Interestingly, though, both discoveries were the result of films from my youth and their soundtracks.

Echo & the Bunnymen’s cover of “People are strange” was featured on the soundtrack for the original “Lost boys” film, which came out in 1987. I remember watching it (against my parents’ wishes) as a teenager with my adopted older brother as soon as it was released to VHS. Was I scared? A bit. Okay, maybe a lot. A young Kiefer Sutherland was quite terrifying as a vampire. But I was a big fan of two Coreys back in the day and they were hilarious as the intrepid vampire hunters.

A few years after that, in 1991, the big film of the summer was Oliver Stone’s biopic, “The doors”, for which I was still just a tad too young to see in the theatres. I watched it on VHS, again, months later but the film had already done its work revitalizing the public’s interest in the 60s psych rock band and I fell in line, copying a friends copy of their ‘best of’ to cassette tape. It was here that I put the proverbial face and name to more than a few songs with which I was already familiar and discovered a few new favourites, including what I learned (the hard way) was the original version of “People are strange”.

I love Echo & The Bunnymen and this cover but I think I might give the edge to The Doors here. The latter’s musicianship, especially that of Ray Manzarek, often takes a back seat in the shadows of their infamous poet/frontman but it really is good stuff. The carnival/side show feel of the original “People are strange” is a lot of fun but the cover shades up on the sinister feel exponentially, which is not necessarily a bad thing (especially given the subject of the film on whose soundtrack it appears). Ian McCulloch’s vocals are more overtly darker than Morrison’s and the sound bleaker, yeah, the organs have more reverb (but really, Manzarek needed none of that).

Okay. I give up. Both versions are quite haunting… though for very different reasons. Thoughts?

Cover:

The original:

For the rest of the 100 best covers list, click here.

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Best tunes of 2002: #12 Hot Hot Heat “Bandages”

<< #13    |    #11 >>

Through several posts in my Best tunes of 2001 series, I mentioned the beginnings of an indie rock renaissance, one that was intrinsically tied to a garage rock and post-punk revival. This will become a common theme that I have and will likely continue to touch on through this series on my favourite tunes of 2002 and onwards through future series for 2003 and 2004. They say that everything is cyclical. Who ‘they’ are is still a mystery but you can almost see how the indie rockers of the early 2000s were raised on a steady diet of Joy Division and Bauhaus, perhaps not directly, but even through older siblings constantly blasting the tunes on their record players in their bedrooms. But it didn’t stop there. The indie rock scene evolved just as it did the first time, slowly through the dark dredge of post-punk into the jittery freneticism of the new wave.

I remember being fascinated as I started to hear new music that was oh so familiar to me, sounding very much like the music of my youth. One of the first of these, borne of reflections of Elvis Costello and Talking Heads through blurred and foggy mirrors, a young Canadian quartet sported this same restlessness and angsty geek rock. This was Hot Hot Heat.

The band formed in 1999 in British Columbia, on the west coast of Canada. The best known lineup of Steve Bays, Dustin Hawthorne, Paul Hawley, and Dante DeCaro stabilized in 2000, were signed to SubPop in 2001, and their debut, “Make up the breakdown”, appeared a year after that. The first single to be released was, of course, this synth heavy number called “Bandages”. The drumming and bass line kept a simple beat and the guitars angular and staccato, almost ska-like in feel, while Steve Bays yelped and rasped up nonsense.

“These bandages are anonymity
I’ve been shaking from making an awful decision
I’ve been running and running
Feels like my head is spinning round and round, around, around, around, around, around“

“Bandages” clocked in at 3 minutes and a third but felt only a third that long. It was catchy and danceable and despite all the retro feels, was as fresh as a hot shower and a mint pillow. And man does it leave you breathless. I can only imagine what it did to dancefloors around that time.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2002 list, click here.

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Best tunes of 1992: #11 Pure “Spiritual pollution”

<< #12    |    #10 >>

Well, it’s Canada day again, albeit one the likes of which we’ve never seen before. And hopefully, we’ll never see again.

I’ve saved this particular post for today because the band in question is a lesser known and perhaps, not as well remembered Canadian alternative rock band from the  90s. Pure were one of the few Canadian acts that I listened to around that time and it was likely because their sound was similar to the Madchester hooks with which I had been obsessed. As you may recall, I’ve already made mention on these pages that my tastes tended to British music in the early 1990s. American alternative rock had turned its ears to Seattle and Canadian bands were following suit,

Pure, though, were a four-piece from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada that formed in 1991. The original members comprised of drummer Leigh Grant, bassist Dave Hadley, guitarist Todd Simko, and vocalist Jody Birch. They got their first taste of success when one of their tracks appeared on the soundtrack for “Cool world”, a half animated/half live-action film that featured a young Brad Pitt. Then, their debut album, “Pureafunalia”, was released in 1992 and it’s first single, “Blast”, hit the airwaves and music video channels and thus, caught my attention. That track was just shy of making it on to this very list but there was no way “Spiritual pollution” wouldn’t be included. Sure, it wasn’t released as a single until the following year but I was already hooked on it from listening to that debut album in 1992.

A dirty and cool guitar riff opens the proceedings, putting a strut in your step and a feather in your cap. And then: Bah dah da-da-da-dah, duh duh duh da-dah… oh, the glorious horns. The beat pops and cracks in, sounding like robotic handclaps, the synth bass washes, and then, that guitar riff and the horn flourishes return for more fanfare. And over top it all, frontman Jody Birch is just cool, laying it all just there, a hepcat, not needing our spiritual pollution. No, not at all.

That debut album mixed dancefloor grooves with 60s psychedelic guitar rock but later on, their sound tended to be more pedestrian, and though I enjoyed their sophomore release, 1994’s “Generation six pack”. My love affair with the band started to fizzle from there. But we’ll always have the horns of “Spiritual pollution”. I could listen to and hum that riff all day long… Especially on this odd Canada day…

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1992 list, click here.