Seven Songs for the Week #153 - 11th Mar 26

I really couldn't decide what last two songs should be on the list this week. Beck's Devil's Haircut and its corresponding sample source, I Can Only Give You Anything by Them...

...Or should I include Jack-Ass instead and its sample source, It's All Over Now Baby Blue by Them. In the end, I split the diff. If I had a dollar for every Beck song that was based on a Them sample, I'd only have two dollars, but it's odd that it happened twice, etc.

I was listening to Kevin Rowland's My Beauty this week, which features his interpretation of this track. Instead I leaned back into the original. Russ Ballard is on this. Look him up.

Back in the 1990s, I went through a period of time trying to remember and find out what this song was. This was a tricky thing to do at the time. I could remember the tune and the vibe, but had no idea of the group or the specific title of the song. I can't remember how I landed on it eventually, but I picked up a budget CD compilation with it eventually. I must have first encountered it on Sixties Mania, a mid-1980s compilation with 40 fabulous 1960s hits which, in retrospect, had a big impact on my listening tastes. Checking the track listing now, it did also feature Concrete and Clay. Formative!

I discovered today that this track is actually a cover version, the original came out a year earlier by the Bystanders and did not chart. The Bystanders became the group Man.

Two listens this week to the new Squeeze album, albeit one originally written circa 1973. It's a melodic delight, and an efficient use of 42 minutes.

Went to see Ron Sexsmith this week for the ninth time, apparently. His support was Nora Joy, and earnest and pleasant young lady with a guitar. During Ron's section he brought her back on stage to sing with his band, explaining that she was the daughter of neighbours and had been writing and singing songs back during lockdown when she was 11. 11! Turns out Nora is only 16, and for that I'll forgive some of the youthful naiveté of the songs because she is... young. Ron Sexsmith was over 15 years older than that when his debut proper came out. Looking at Spotify, she's at 399 monthly listens. It will be interesting to see where that goes.

The new Gorillaz album (number one in the UK, Number 7 in the USA) is a rich thing that is rewarding multiple dips in and out of. They were on SNL last week and I was curious as to what songs they would play from the record. As it turned out, the first track they did was Clint Eastwood. Of course... OF COURSE. It's quite old fashioned of me to assume that they would only play stuff from the new album. With a national TV platform and an international online platform, why not play a song that is still present in the culture? Over a billion views on YouTube, over a billion streams on Spotify. It's not 100% uncommon that the SNL musical guest does an old song, maybe happens once a year, but it's usually a treat as their second song of the evening. Here though, bam, Clint Eastwood and the studio audience demonstrates their absolute delight at hearing the introductory bars of the song. https://youtu.be/pMKA0ahftME

When they got to doing their second song on SNL, it was The Moon Cave. The audience was now on their side and the performance is spectacular. Asha Puthli (81!) is there, as is Anoushka Shankar and then Black Thought appears to deliver the song's third act. The more I listen to this song the more I get.

I am very deep in a Gorillaz rabbit hole right now, prepping for seeing them in three weeks. I really hadn't paid much attention post Plastic Beach, nor was invested when they last played Dublin in 2022. It is remarkable at how huge they are compared to blur. 42m monthly listens on Spotify compared to 12m for blur. Top four Gorillaz songs on Spotify have 5bn streams, blur: 1.7bn, and most of those are Song 2. 13m YouTube subscribers compared to 640k. Numbers!