Covered

 

Last week I posted I'm Free a cover version by The Soup Dragons. After this I recognized, that during the years I never featured The Rolling Stones on these pages. To be honest, I thought about it but wasn't sure if I should write about a chapter of their musical history, their best songs, their main influences or something else. Maybe I will find the time for a post in the future. While listening to I'm free, many cover versions of her songs came to my mind. Many are irrelevant and far too close to the original. Others have been radically altered or deconstructed to fit the sound of the performer. Like Devo or Motörhead, for example, who have amplified the driving force of Sympathy for the Devil with minimal means. This is just a small subjective overview of how these songs could have sounded if someone else had written them and should in no way be seen in competition with Rol's fantastic Top Ten.

Enjoy

Ghost Ranch

 

Sometimes it is unbelievable that there is band 20 years on duty and releasing records after records and I didn't got any notice from them. This thoughts went through my head when I got the new of the latest record by Son Of The Velvet Rat, a band formed by Georg Altziebler and his wife Heike Binder from Graz, Austria. Their sound has nothing in common with music I was used to from my neighbors. It is reasonable because they left their homeland and moved years ago to Joshua Tree, close to the Mojave desert, Southern California. Their sound could be described as a very Townes Van Zandt magnificent version of Americana or desert rock. Altziebler's rough voice sounds perfect to songs with great (county-)guitars. And a song like Rosary where Marc Ribot adds a guitar performance can't be bad. A record I will sure listen more than once this years.

Willi Resetarits 1969 - 2022

 

For his dialect blues and rock, the Austrian singer Willi Resetarits was known as "Ostbahn-Kurti" - now the musician has died at the age of 73. He died on Sunday by an accident in his home. He started his career in the late 60's as a member of Schmetterlinge a political agitating band. They got country-wide known as they represented Austria in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1977 where less people understood the irony in their song about commercial mass compatible songs. Since the eighties Resetarits, switched to lead vocals and harmonica, portrayed the rock'n "roll art figure Ostbahn Kurti. He invented the fictional biography of the forgotten Viennese suburban rock'n' roller with proletarian pride, slippery street-smart Viennese wordplay and earthy interpretations of great post-sixties blues and rock classics in the Viennese dialect, including his versions of several songs by Bruce Fire ("Feia"), Townes Van Zandt's "At my Window" (Liagn and lochn) and songs by Dave Edmunds, ZZ Top, Steve Miller or Frank Zappa. In recent years he has been very committed to social projects and became one of the most humorous and therefore most credible and vocal speakers for integration and dignified dealings with refugees and minorities of the republic. He was not a phenomenal musician or songwriter but beyond doubt a very good live artist and I can bear witness when I saw him several times live with his band during the last decades. 

Rest easy Willi

Waiting Around To Die

There are songs that can't be destroyed by covers. Many of them wrote Townes van Zandt who left us too early in 1997. He was one of the most important singer-songwriter in his time and the greatest gift he gave me, was taking me back to simple folk and country with his songs. This version is by Vancouver's The Be Good Tanyas and shows how gigantic this song is - even when he was played in a soft bluegrass version.

And here the song by the master himself:

Dead Flowers

A few days ago I watched once again to The Big Lebowski, one of my favourite films ever. The story is so fanciful and madcap but always a pleasure to watch. Also the soundtrack is difficult to many others. A very unique mixture of classic film music by Henry Mancini and classic country/rock songs. There is one song on this movie I love much. It is Town Van Zandt's version of Rolling Stones' Dead Flowers. I am not the greatest fan of the Stones but I agree to a lot of songs when they turned into country and they collaborated with Gram Parson. When their original version was great than I would like to name Towne's version epic because he sings this song with much more empathy than Mr. Jagger could do.

Townes Van Zant - Dead Flowers

Bonus Post: Tecumseh Valley

Cruising through my records I got back once again to one of the greatest singer-songwriter of all time. Townes Van Zandt probably made the most intimate songs ever. Telling stories about the lost and forgotten ones and made them a memorial. This song was so sad that it touched my heart whenever I listen to it and I have to hide my tears behind this story. What more can I say about a great song? Certainly nothing than a big respect to Towns. And I still love the pure and uncut version.

Now that I can hear music

This picture from the early 60s shows little Harold Whittles a kid who was deaf from birth. The photographer Jack Bradley took this photo just at that moment when the hearing aid was switched in for the first time. The surprise, this sense - this hear what is accepted for most by us as natural - for the first time perceives to be able, is expressed in this photo very well. 

I made some mind about people with impediments and think at least we should be grateful that we can use our senses. Otherwise, if someone is deaf or blind from birth he/she don't know what they are missing. I can't imagine my life without hearing and it is really hard just to play your favorite tunes in your head without playing them on an other system.

Todays track comes from a singer I don't know much about but he a couple of years ago he made amazing version of this Townes Van Zandt song.

Bill Baird - I'll be here in the morning