O-o-h Child was originally recorded by Chicago’s Five Stairsteps, it was released both as a single and on the 1970 album The Stairsteps. O-o-h Child reached #8 on the Billboard charts. What did I learn this week? That the correct way to spell the song title is O-o-h Child.
The Contestants:
Beth Orton: Beth Orton leads us off this week with her down-tempo solo acoustic performance. This cover was included in an episode of the television show Alias. Source: The Other Side Of Daybreak
Taking our weekly audio look back, there’s a bit of a supergroup vibe going on. Tim Palmieri and Todd Stoops had the jazz/fusion thing going on in Kung Fu and Scott Metzger/Will Bernard channeled Hendrix in their ensemble Some Cat From Japan. We mix in tracks from Gov’t Mule and Umphrey’s McGee for the Rock & Roll contingent, and complete the audio with Marco Benvento’s long overdue collaboration with moe. as the band celebrates its 20th year.
[Thanks to sonicsound for this week’s photo]
Artist & Title: Gov’t Mule – Broke Down On The Brazos Date & Venue: 2010-01-20 Revolution Live, Ft. Lauderdale FL Taper & Show Download:Steve Kwartin
This tune is the first track on Gov’t Mule 2009 album By A Thread. I’ve featured tapes from a lot of friends in this column since its creation and I was very happy to see that I could use my first track from taper legend Steve Kwartin. As Steve says in the torrent information on bt.etree.org, “If you like what you hear – buy a taper a beer”. Mule plays tonight at The Lyric Theater in Oxford MS.
As we listen back to selections from live shows of the previous week, we’ve got solo performances from Reid Genauer and Panda Bear, Beatles and Floyd covers from Jackie Greene and The Machine plus Umphrey’s McGee constructing an almost half-hour combination of an original and a jazz cover.
[Thanks to Craig T for this week’s photo]
Artist & Title: Jackie Greene – Taxman > Mexican Girl Date & Venue: 2010-01-16 Catalyst, Santa Cruz CA Taper & Show Download:lou
I have featured Jackie Greene a couple of times in this feature and I have always selected tracks from his incredible 2008 album Giving Up The Ghost. This week, I have selected a combination of a Beatles cover and the fan-favorite original Mexican Girl. Greene is currently in Jamaica playing with both The Radiators and Ratdog. When he gets back, he does 11 dates in the US that takes him from Utah to Brooklyn.
Ballad Of A Thin Man is the fifth track on the 1965 Bob Dylan album Highway 61 Revisited. There are many theories regarding who the song is about, the most common one being that it’s about a reporter who can’t fully understand the meaning behind Dylan’s lyrics.
The Contestants:
Elliot Smith: This is a very popular download on the Live Music Archive, over 100,000 people have downloaded this show, and if you’re not one of them – you should be. Smith channels Dylan’s vocal delivery in a way that I’ve never heard him do on his original material. And I’m pretty sure he nails every single word which is pretty hard for a live Dylan cover. Source:10-11-1998
Last Week’s Sauce features recordings of shows from the previous week.
[Thanks to newplanet7 for this week’s photo]
Artist & Title: Cracker – Eurotrash Girl Date & Venue: 2010-01-09 The Cubby Bear Lounge, Chicago IL Taper & Show Download:Brian Emerick
I’m a sucker for live song introductions. When I saw there was a separate 5-minute long track introducing Eurotrash Girl, probably my favorite Cracker song, I was intrigued. Turns out it’s not so much an explanation of the song, but a rambling story that spans continents about different times he has told the same story. It’s worth checking out. The song follows. Cracker is on tour with Camper Van Beethoven (the groups share two members) and they play tonight in Philadelphia before the co-bill heads to NYC, Toronto and Cambridge, MA.
Helpless was written by Neil Young and released on the 1970 Crosby Stills Nash & Young album Deja Vu. There are three definitive performances by Young of this tune – the studio recording, Young’s performance with The Band that is captured in both audio and video formats at The Last Waltz where drugs were involved and the third is from MTV’s Unplugged.
We’ve got a lot of renditions this week, more than I normally allow, but when it was time to cut some, I thought they were all pretty damn good.
The Contestants:
Buffy Sainte-Marie: This cover was recorded just a year after the original release of CSNY’s version of Helpless. In fact, Neil Young plays on this album but I have been unable to determine if he plays on this track. For those of you listening on headphones, crazy reverb/delay on the snare drum in the intro to this song. I’m not sure if this is intentional as it disappears once the vocals kick in. Source: She Used To Wanna Be A Ballerina
In our fifth installment of New Year’s Eve Report this week, we’re taking a look at the Umphrey’s McGee 3-night run that started with one show at Chicago’s Vic Theater and continued with two nights at The Aragon Ballroom.
It was “throwback night” at The Vic on the 29th as UM played a venue a little too small for their current draw and all the merchandise onsale reflected an older “look” that was also mirrored in the show poster. It also looked like the music might be from an earlier era as the first hour featured songs that were all at least seven years old, including the fan-favorite rarity Front Porch which clocked in at twenty minutes. But UM made it clear that this would not be a night of exclusively old material when they closed the first set with The Floor, a tune debuted in 2007.
This setlist segment may not make sense to a lot of you, but here is how the second set opened:
Preamble > Mantis Ghetts > Pay the Snucka > Mantis > Mantis Ghetts > Mantis > Pay the Snucka
Preamble is just a short pre-recorded ditty that always precedes the epic track of UM’s 2009 release Mantis when played live. Mantis Ghetts was a bonus track issued to those that purchased the album online, and it’s essentially this gangster remix of an instrumental section of Mantis. Gangster shit was a theme that would continue (really for the whole run) as the band dropped into Pay The Snucka, a band anthem that intentionally rips off it’s first section from Eminem’s Kill You. This section was well executed and extremely well received by the sold-out audience.
To close the second set UM performed one of their original mashups from this year’s Halloween Las Tortugas Festival in Yosemite Park. This one combines sections of Queen’s Fat Bottomed Girls, Led Zeppelin’s Good Times Bad Times, and UM original Nemo. Basically it starts with just the Queen a capella vocal intro. Then there’s the hits from the GTBT intro, then UM starts playing the guitar lines from Nemo as keyboardist Joel Cummins sings the first verse of Fat Bottomed Girls. A straight verse of GTBT follows next before the Nemo vocals kicks in while the guitars still play GTBT. And so on, and so on.
A debut cover of Steppin’ Razor written by Joe Higgs but popularized by Peter Tosh rounded out the show nicely.
Click here to view UM’s official blog on the preparations for the 12/29 show.
READ ON for the review of the shows from the Aragon and more photos from Tammy.
Last Week’s Sauce features recordings of shows from the previous week. This week we’ll look at almost exclusively shows that took place on New Year’s Eve.
[Thanks to sonicsound for this week’s photo]
Artist & Title: Assembly Of Dust – Brown Sugar Date & Venue: 2009-12-31 Tupelo Music Hall, Salisbury MA Taper & Show Download:SmokinJoe
“You should have heard him just around midnight”. A few covers, an acoustic section and a fan requested bustout of Strangefolk’s Far From Yourself round out this New Year’s show from Reid Genauer and Assembly of Dust. Reid hits the road again solo for a few shows to start 2010. Catching him solo is highly recommended, I’ve said it before, Reid is one of the best screamers of our generation.
Time is the fourth track on Pink Floyd’s 1973 release Dark Side Of The Moon. Well, this song called Time is anyway. Let me tell you, rounding up the renditions for this week was no easy task as: a) There are lots of other songs simply called “Time” and b) There are thousands of songs with the word “time” in them, and you can’t always make search terms do exactly what you want them, no matter how hard you try.
The Contestants:
Dream Theater: According to the 3,585 comments there are on YouTube for this video at the time of publication, this cover is both the best ever and fucking awful all at once. The YouTube comments section is an interesting cross-section of humanity. Anyway, one very frequent comment is that guitarist John Petrucci really rips, and that is hard to deny. Couldn’t tell you the date of this video, I read about 50 of those 3,000+ comments and nobody mentioned it.
All week we’re going to be taking a quick look at some of HT’s favorite bands and just what they had up their sleeve this past New Year’s Eve. In this era of High Speed Internet and ever-evolving digital camera technology, the media available on YouTube, bt.etree.org, and the Live Music Archive really makes this job quite easy.
Gov’t Mule recruited the vocal stylings of Dana Fuchs as well as a three-piece horn section to work their way through a whole bunch of first-time-covers from the likes of Santana, Big Brother & The Holding Company, Sly & The Family Stone, and Crosby Stills & Nash to name just a few of the artists, many of which performed at the original Woodstock Festival.
