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100 best covers: #32 Black Box Recorder “Seasons in the sun”

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Well, I learned something new when writing this post. Before sitting down to draft it and indeed, when putting together this list, many moons ago, I was thinking that Terry Jacks was the originator of this song and I had an idea that the flavour of this post would be highly nostalgic, given that his version was one of my father’s faves. However, as I was tracking down the videos below for this post and doing a bit of fact checking, I realized that the origins of “Seasons in the sun” were just a tad more complicated.

Originating as a French language song titled “Le moribund” (“The dying man”), it was recorded and released back in 1961 by Belgian chanteur Jacques Brel for his fifth album, “Marieke”. I was quite surprised listening to it for the first time that though the pacing and melody was similar to the version I knew, it sounded quite different, was much darker, and it wasn’t just the language either. It had a staccato rhythm, amped by strings and horns, and the voice of Jacques Brel hovering heavenly above it all, weaving the persona of a dying man addressing from his deathbed a number of acquaintances, including a good friend, a priest, and… his wife’s lover.

“Le moribund” was translated and rewritten by California poet and singer/songwriter Rod McKuen in 1963* and he gave his version the title with which I was more familiar. And though his version was substantially different in terms of the title and word choices, it was still quite similar thematically.

Canadian singer/songwriter Terry Jacks then took McKuen’s words and used them as a springboard in the early 70s, taking the narrative even further away from the original, rewriting nearly half the words, and entirely removing the element of the cheating wife, leaving the impression of a life unfinished, no closure, just unhappiness at the passing. His version of the song was originally intended for The Beach Boys** but he ended up recording his own rendition in 1974 and it became a world wide sensation.

Despite the heartbreak of the content, his “Seasons in the Sun” was very much in the vein of the Beach Boys sound, focusing intently on the sunshine of the title, and of course, it had that unforgettable dreamy guitar riff at the beginning of each verse. And yeah, I know the song has been critically derided over the years and has been called out as one of the worst songs ever recorded, but it appealed to my sappy teenaged self, one of the songs that I adopted from my parents’ car playlists before I struck out on my own musically.

Fast forward twenty five years or so and I was just getting into the latest Luke Haines project, Black Box Recorder, at the recommendation of my good friend Tim, who also got me into The Auteurs. They recorded a cover of “Seasons in the sun” based on the Terry Jacks version*** during the sessions for their debut, 1998’s “England made me”. Theirs is a heavy and heavenly bass line, juxtaposed against Sara Nixey’s soft as cotton touch on vocals and the odd synth flourish, and yeah, they included a nod to that instantly recognizable riff. By the end, Luke Haines has joined the mix, singing backup and adding raunchy guitars and feedback, ripping the band aid off of some of the innocence of the Terry Jacks version, bringing the angst and darkness back, as if channeling Jacques Brel.

As much as the original appeals, as does what Brel does with his words, and as much as I loved the Terry Jacks version as a teen, I’m going to go with Black Box Recorder here.

Cover:

Original (in French):

Terry Jacks version:

*Part of his translation project to bring Brel’s work to the English speaking masses.

**They recorded a version in 1971 but weren’t happy with it. The recording eventually saw the light on one of the many box sets that were released many years later.

***They adjusted the first person narrative lyrics to a female voice to account for the fact that Sara was singing.

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

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Eighties’ best 100 redux: #80 Depeche Mode “People are people” (1984)

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If you’ve been around this blog before, you’d know that I’ve written about the legendary synth pop band originally from Basildon, England many times over. So instead of treading and retreading over familiar ground, I’ll tell you a story*. (Mind you if you are looking for more words about the band and this song, have a gander at the post on my top five favourites of their songs from the 80s.)

Nearly forty years ago, just as I was starting high school, I got my first job, if you can call it that. I took over delivering flyers to the houses in my neighbourhood from one of my friends for a company called Davcar Distributing. If you’re of an age that you don’t recognize the term, ‘flyers’ were printed advertisements that were like mini catalogues, printed on newsprint**, ranging any where from one to twelve pages, providing the weekly sales for grocery stories like A&P and Dominion and other commercial enterprises like Sears and Canadian Tire. It was piece work, getting pennies per flyer delivered. There were two or three hundred houses on my route and there were typically five to seven flyers to be delivered each week. The route took me a few hours to do on a Friday night and I would get $10 or so for my efforts.

Every few weeks, Carol***, one of the proprietors of the company, would ask if I would take on one of the nearby routes when the regular delivery kid wasn’t able to, and it would mean a bit more money that week, but also cut into more of my prized weekend time. At some point, I was asked if I would be interested in taking over all the down routes**** in my small town and after some cajoling and promises of help from my mother, I agreed. It meant that a walk on Friday night turned into a whole weekend endeavour. I would be responsible for 10-12 routes on any given week, sometimes more, and I figure that at some point over the two years that I delivered these flyers that I probably walked up to the door of every house in Bowmanville.

We quickly had it down to an art though. Friday nights after dinner, we would put on a movie or two and sort out the flyers, unbundling stacks, and fitting each flyer within in each other so that they were ready for delivery and stow them in black plastic Knob Hill Farms baskets*****. My mother had a road map of the town, on which she highlighted each route to which we delivered in a different colour marker and we knew exactly how many houses were on each route and so, how many flyers needed to be delivered. She would drop me off at the beginning of each route, loaded down with two paper carrier bags loaded with pre-sorted flyers, one on each shoulder, and pick me up at the other end, where she waited in our little silver chevette reading a Harlequin romance novel. Then, while she drove off to the start of the next route, I would refill my bags with the exact amount of flyers needed.

This is the job where I gained my love/hate relationship with walking and my very real fear of dogs. Don’t laugh. I was once chased by a massive Dobermann pinscher for 200 metres or so, on a Sunday night at dusk, after a whole weekend of deliveries, from the front porch of a heritage house over an overgrown lawn and over a five foot wide drainage ditch and into the front passenger side door of my mother’s car, which she luckily had the foresight to open for me as she saw the chase ensuing. It was like the Chopper scene in Stand by me, in slo-mo and everything, but the danger was very real. My mother had to get the car washed the next day to erase the dog slobber froth from the passenger window.

And I could tell many other stories from those days – from the odd people I ran into on the streets and the conversations, to the different lifestyles of Bowmanville’s residents, their possessions and collections, and the relationships to their pets****** – but this post would end up like War and Peace in length. Instead, I’ll get back to the point. What does this job have to do “People are people” by Depeche Mode?

Well, as you can imagine, all that walking alone would afford lots of time to think and have conversations with oneself and before I was able to save up for a Walkman, sing songs to oneself as well. One of these songs was Depeche Mode’s “People are people”. I will never be able to tell you now where I first heard the songs, whether on the radio or at a school dance, but those chorus lines stuck with me. “People are people, so why should it be / You and I should get along so awfully?” These were the only lines I knew and sang them over and over again. They resounded for me. They were words that had meaning. And applying them to my own experiences thus far in life, I gave them my own meaning.

When I later discovered the author of these words, I became a fan of Depeche Mode. “Some great reward” would be the first album I would own by the band, mostly because of “People are people”, buying it on cassette, with money earned from a different job. And I’ve never looked back… except of course, to remember singing those chorus lines over and over while walking sidewalks burdened by loads of flyers.

Original Eighties best 100 position: n/a

Favourite lyric: “Now you’re punching, and you’re kicking, and you’re shouting at me / I’m relying on your common decency / So far, it hasn’t surfaced, but I’m sure it exists / It just takes a while to travel from your head to your fist” These lines always made me laugh.

Where are they now?: Despite losing band mates, near deaths, deaths, and dealing with a host of other trials and tribulations over the years, Depeche Mode are still going strong, now just a duo, after 45 years. They released their 15th studio album, “Memento mori”, back in 2023.

*One of which I’ve hinted at pieces at least twice in two previous Depeche Mode related posts.

**Some companies still print them and deliver them directly to mailboxes through Canada Post but many just make them available online.

***I believe that was her name.

****Down routes were all the routes that didn’t have a regular carrier.

*****Those who know, know.

******I’ll never forget the pet raccoon that would pull the flyers from me as I was feeding them into the mail slot in the front door.

For the rest of the Eighties’ best 100 redux list, click here.

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100 best covers: #35 Michael Andrews and Gary Jules “Mad world”

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I used to be a massive horror buff.

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.