Tag: Retro

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Vinyl

Vinyl love: Northside “Chicken rhythms”

(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: Northside
Album Title: Chicken rhythms
Year released: 1991
Year reissued: 2024
Details: RSD2024 release, Limited edition, yellow, numbered 1169

The skinny: My last ‘vinyl love’ post back in April featured one of my Record Store Day finds and I hinted, then, that there was one record that I didn’t find, but was still on the lookout for. This was that record. I ended up ordering a copy from one of the indie record stores whose online presences I frequent. I just couldn’t help myself. Released in 1991, “Chicken rhythms” was Northside’s lone full-length album, which I’ve alway seen as a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. And for the longest time, I held a grudge against fellow Mancunians, Happy Mondays*, whose excessive lifestyles likely played no small part in bankrupting theirs and Northside’s record label, Factory Records, forever shortening Northside’s discography. “Chicken Rhythms” was the first album I ever purchased on compact disc** and now I own it for my record shelves, a numbered, special edition Record Store Day release, pressed to yellow vinyl. Oh baby.

Standout track: “Take five”

*Have no fear, I forgave them eventually and we’re friends again.

**Because I couldn’t find it on cassette tape anywhere.

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Tunes

100 best covers: #41 The Lemonheads “Mrs. Robinson”

<< #42    |    #40 >>

By all accounts, the Lemonheads’ frontman and driving force, Evan Dando, hated the original version of the song “Mrs. Robinson”, almost as much as he disliked its author. You got the feeling he was heavily leaned on by the ‘powers that be’ to record the cover to go along with the 25th anniversary release of “The Graduate” on home video cassette. He must’ve really blown a gasket when it was tacked on to the end of the track listing on later rereleases of his band’s now classic 1992 album, “It’s a shame about Ray”.

So it’s amusing that this was likely many listeners gateway to the band. It certainly was mine. I distinctly remember recording the video during one of my Friday night CityLimits viewing sessions and falling for the update of a song I knew from my parents’ oldie radio station listening in the car. From there, I recorded the video for the aforementioned album’s title track based on name recognition and of course, I’ve already told the story on these pages on how showing these two videos to my aunt landed me a copy of the CD for Christmas. So yeah, I’ve got a history with the song.

I later developed an appreciation for NYC-based folk rock duo, Simon & Garfunkel who wrote and performed the original. Parts of it were written before the filming of “The graduate”, were shared with its filmmaker, and these appeared in the final film cut. Versions of these snippets appeared on the soundtrack but the actual full-fledged song wasn’t released until a year later as a single and appeared on the band’s fourth album, “Bookends”.

The Lemonheads’ cover has got raunchier guitars than the original acoustic finger picking and instead of the lilting harmonizing on the iconic do-de-do-do-do-do-do intro, it is Evan Dando’s solo, half hearted mimicry. Theirs is about twenty seconds shorter than the orginal but that’s probably more due to its sped up pacing. Indeed, the song is all there but the tone is very different. It rocks and rolls more and yet, it has been often criticized for being a lazy cover. And that may be so, but I couldn’t help myself but to fall hard for it, and that love hasn’t waned in the least in the 30+ years since its release.

(If you hadn’t guessed, I prefer the cover to the original here.)

Cover:

Original:

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

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: The Box “The best of The Box”

(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: The Box
Album Title: The best of The Box
Year released: 2024
Details: RSD2024 release, 2 x LP, fluorescent orange & fluorescent green, foil cover, gatefold sleeve

The skinny: I’ve been participating in Record Store Day festivities for more than a decade but with the diminishing amount of exclusive releases to catch my interest, it’s been a number of years since I’ve actually ventured out early enough to get stuck in lines and get involved in the crush and the rush of the crash and grab. This year, though, there were a few on my wishlist and I ventured out before the clock even reached ten. I got coffee and queued up for hours outside and inside a couple of my local shops and in the end, found three of the four that I had my eye on*. One of these was a Canadian RSD release of a new compilation called “The best of The Box”. I wrote recently how I realized that I was a fan of The Box (without even knowing it) when I posted about their single “L’affaire Dumoutier (Say to me)” for my Eighties Best 100 Redux. Listening to this vinyl the other night only reinforced for me how underrated and how talented the Canadian new wave band was at writing an ear worm that stuck with you throughout the decades. This release is pressed to two discs in fluorescent colours (orange and green)** and comes in a foil wrapped gatefold sleeve. Definitely a successful RSD for me.

Standout track: “Ordinary people”

*I wasn’t expecting to find the fourth one here in Canada but am still on the hunt for it and closing in.

**They were an 80s band, you know.