30 Day Song Challege, Day 11 - A Song From Your Favorite Band

I'm calling bullshit on this one, just like I did on Day 1 (Your Favorite Song). Just like I don't have a favorite song, I don't have a favorite band. There are bands I'm really into at the moment (e.g Raconteurs & The Mountain Goats), there are bands I haven't listened to in a long time but would leave on if they came up on shuffle (The Welcome Wagon, Violent Femmes) and there are bands I listened to obsessively for a long time, but then stopped for some reason (Pink Floyd, The Velvet Underground).

So, what constitutes my favorite band? I have no idea, so I'm gonna bend the rules and do a song from all three categories. Take that!

11a - A Song From a Band You're Really Into Right Now: The Crystal Method, "I Know It's You," from Legion of Boom.



I first started listening to The Crystal Method in 1998, during a month-long stay in Greenville, SC. (That's a story for some other time.) Vegas was in heavy rotation, for a year, especially in the car as it makes excellent driving music. But they fell off my playlist for a few years. A friend recently turned me on to Legion of Boom recently though, and it gets played a good bit on my computer at work. "I Know It's You" is one of my favorite tracks, very much reminiscent of their work on Vegas, and Milla Jovovich's spooky vocals work perfectly with their distorted bassline and drums. I am amazed that track hasn't yet been appropriated for an action-movie chase sequence or television commercial, like pretty much every track on Vegas was.

11b - A Song From A Band I Haven't Listened To In A Long Time But Would Leave On If They Came Up On Shuffle: The Cure, "Pictures of You," from Disintegration.



I guess The Cure might also fall into the category of "bands I listened to obsessively." It's hard to tell, really, because I listened to them a lot mostly because people I was around listened to them a lot. I really do like their music, at least everything up to Disintegration, but they haven't made it onto a playlist in a long time.

"Pictures of You," is probably one of my favorite songs; it has great instrumentation and clean, if mopey, vocals from Robert Smith. The video is only so-so, sadly, but stands out as yet another example of the director doing everything he can to make the band miserable. (This was sort of a theme in their videos. For another example, check out the video for "Close To Me.")

11c - A Song From A Band I Listened To Obsessively For A Long Time, But Then Stopped For Some Reason: The Velvet Underground and Nico, "Femme Fatale," from The Velvet Underground and Nico (aka: "the banana album," "peel slowly and see")


velvet underground - femme fatale by erioluk

My friend AJ introduced me to the Velvet Underground in my Junior year of high school. He loaned me his vinyl copy of The Velvet Underground and Nico and by the time I handed it back a week later I'd already made two cassette copies. (I needed one for home and one to live in the Chevette, you see.) From then until 1995 or so I pretty much listened to anything by The Velvets or Lou Reed that I could get my hands on.

And then, I sort of, stopped. I don't know what happened. I know I started getting back into techno around that time, so that might have had something to do with it. Or maybe it was Lou's later albums that put me off. Whatever the reason, I haven't listened to anything by the Velvets in a long time; the closest I've come, in fact, was a brief stint listening to a cover of that first album by Beck's Record Club - something I blogged about here a while ago.

So, there we are. Another "day" finished in this interminable challenge. Look forward to my next entry, when I'll most likely call bullshit on the topic again and then spend entirely too long writing about it. Excelsior!

Beck's Record Club

Alright, so I'm about a month late jumping on this particular bandwagon but, as a fan of both Beck and The Velvet Underground, I'd be remiss if I didn't at least mention the Record Club project. Briefly, here's how it works: Beck and a bunch of his friends get together, they choose an album, and then they cover it, song by song, laying down the whole LP in one day. Their first pick was one of my favorite albums ever: The Velvet Underground and Nico.

When I first heard about the Record Club, I really liked the idea - I still do, really - but after listening to their covers of the Velvets' songs I've found I'm not so thrilled with the results when the idea is put into practice. I'm sure this is in no small part due to the fact that I've pretty much memorized every song, every off-key note, every junk-soaked phrase of the source material. I know this album like I know few other things in my life. If they'd started by covering Digital Underground's Sex Packets, as Beck claims they almost did, I probably wouldn't be judging the results so harshly.

But still. These tracks - most of them, at least - sound like exactly what they are: rough, unrehearsed experiments. On the Record Club website, Beck himself writes, "some of the songs are rough renditions, often first takes documenting what happened over the course of a day. There is no intention to 'add to' the original work or attempt to recreate the power of the original recording. Only to play music and document what happens." This is the sort of stuff I'd expect to hear from a favorite local band, at the end of their last set of the night, when they're just goofing around on songs that they feel like playing.

But listen up, Beck, this album is important to me. I don't want to hear you and your friends goofing around with it, and I really don't want to hear you goofing around with "Heroin," or "Venus in Furs," two of my favorite songs on the album. The cover of "Heroin," in particular, is just awful. Out of kindness, I'm not even going to link to it. It's that bad. I'm talking about the musical equivalent of a goatse prank. All I could do was stare unbelieving at the screen for almost a minute before frantically clicking away.

I have to admit, though, that this experiment also yielded some pretty decent tracks. For example, I really enjoyed the cover of "Sunday Morning," probably because Beck had a chance to rehearse it on stage during his 2002 tour with The Flaming Lips. He does a good job capturing Lou Reed's relaxed, slightly sleepy delivery; although I'd guess "slightly sleepy" isn't too much of a stretch for the guy who pioneered slack-rock. He also provides the vocals for "I'll Be Your Mirror," and he does Nico proud.

The best of the bunch, though is the cover of "All Tomorrow's Parties." This track is absolutely brilliant, with Icelandic singer Thorunn Magnusdottir giving a slightly softer, sweeter rendition of Nico's vocals while Beck's long-time drummer Joey Waronker plays drums with one hand and keyboard with the other. Check it out:

Record Club: Velvet Underground & Nico "All Tomorrow's Parties" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

I still think that the Record Club is a great idea, and I'm looking forward to future releases. I just hope that, from here out, they pick albums that I'm not quite so emotionally invested in. Take note, Beck, you just stay away from The Wall and Nothing's Shocking and we'll be all good.