SONG/VIDEO PREMIERE: SPAIN Drops Experimental Bessie Smith Tribute “HER USED-TO-BEEN”

In February of 1994, Josh Haden (son of jazz bass legend Charlie Haden) took his new band SPAIN to producer Tom Grimley’s Poop Alley Studios in LA for a recording session. There, the band recorded a handful of tracks, predating the release of the slowcore pioneers’ 1995 landmark album, The Blue Moods of Spain. Almost two decades later, SPAIN returns with the first-ever release of five of those previously unheard 1994 recordings, remixed and reimagined by Kramer and shared in the form of an LP entitled WORLD OF BLUE (out today via Shimmy-Disc/Joyful Noise). 

To celebrate this historic release, Glide is premiering the music video for the record’s final single, “HER USED-TO-BEEN,” created by Kramer. The track was previously released in a different ideation on a limited 7” with A-Side “I LIED.”

Haden wrote the following of the track, described as a “love song influenced by Bessie Smith.”

“In the late 1980s, I worked as a music librarian at KCRW while taking college classes at Santa Monica College. One of the perks of the job was taking home lots of great music. The music director let me keep a Bessie Smith box set, and I listened to those discs all the time. “Her Used-To-Been” is paraphrased from a Bessie Smith song about how the protagonist goes back to her abusive ex-. In my version, I’m the protagonist and I’m telling Bessie to not go back.”

WORLD OF BLUE is out now via all DSPS, and will be released on limited edition vinyl via Shimmy-Disc/Joyful Noise on October 21. Pre-Orders are open HERE.

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