Showing posts with label Gang of Four. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gang of Four. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 8, 2019

2019: January 8th - New Sharon Van Etten!



From her forthcoming album Remind Me Tomorrow, which Jagjaguwar drops on the 18th, same day as the new Thirsty Crows record. Pre-order HERE.

I've fallen back on Gang of Four's Return the Gift pretty hard. I know most folks do not agree with me on this, but I will take the 2012, re-recorded versions of all these classic Gang of Four songs over their originals any day. Part of this is probably because I discovered Gang of Four waaaaay after the fact - early 00s - and only ever knew the album That's Entertainment as one of their albums, i.e. a collection of songs fit together as an overall work, and never knew it that well to begin with. I don't want to belabor the point, but here's an A and B of my favorite song on an album that is pretty much full of "favorite songs."

1982:



And the 2012 version:



I didn't live and love with this original version - from the album Songs of the Free - so I don't have a horse in that race. I just think the up-tempo, almost Pop approach and the slamming recording of the '12 version is a much better representation of what the band seemed to be going for with the song.


The Arrow Video release of Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator contains a feature-length, making-of documentary titled Re-Animator Resurrectus. I can't recommend this supplemental feature enough! I've always loved Re-Animator as one of the stalwart classics of the Horror genre, and more specifically the 80s era of the Horror genre, but this doc has really given me an even deeper appreciation for the film. Somehow I never realized that Re-Animator was Gordon's Hollywood film. The doc talks to everyone: Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Bruce Abbot, David Gale... everyone! And of course there's plenty of screen time with Gordon and Brian Yuzna, and a lot of frank discussion about how to adequately adapt  H.P. Lovecraft to film and make it work.

There's a bunch of other great interview extras on the disc (I have the one-disc version), and all of it really opened the film up for me. Can't wait to watch it again.

Playlist from 1/07:

Ben Frost - By the Throat
Nick Lowe - Jesus of Cool
Arctic Monkeys - No. 1 Party Anthem
Gang of Four - I Love a Man in Uniform (2012)
Foster the People - Life on the Nickel
Self - What a Fool Believes
Arctic Monkeys - Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino
Barry Adamson - Oedipus Schmoedipus
U2 - War
Ben Frost - Aurora

Card of the day:


This, I believe, is a direct reference to the final pages of my book, which despite a somewhat frustrating session yesterday brought on by sheer exhaustion from a very physical day at work, is still coming along swimmingly.

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Gang of Four - I Love a Man in Uniform (Re-recorded)



Speaking of Post-Punk...

I'll admit, I had some trouble getting into Gang of Four initially. That's Entertainment sprawls a bit, and as much as I loved their sound upon hearing it I never really liked the way that sound was represented by their recordings. Slowly though I got used to it, mostly through the incredibly original musicianship going on with all instruments involved (the guitar on Tourist! Oh my...) but the rift with the recording kind of prevented me from digging any deeper.

At some point a man I respect very much, Dayton, Ohio's Larry Evans - of The Smug Brothers - told me in a beer-fueled conversation that I was doing myself a great disservice not digging deeper into Gang of Four's catalog. Almost at the same time Mr. Brown sent me a copy of the retrospective A Brief History of the 20th Century, which featured the original version of the above song, I Love a Man in Uniform. I gravitated back to this particular track again and again and it made me curious...

Sometime later I wanted to return the favor to Mr. Brown so on one of the occasions that he visited us we hit up a local record store and I picked up a copy of Return the Gift for him. At the time I had no idea it was an album of re-recordings of classic GOF songs. We popped that disc into the stereo and lo and behold here it was! The Gang of Four record I had been waiting for. All those classic records are fine - there's still several I need to explore, but the recording on these new versions are just fantastic; crisp, clear and very much what these guys deserve to sound like. Hard to imagine a band doing this and having it make such a stronger impression - maybe this is mostly because I don't have the history with these guys that other do, but here's the original version of the song - you tell me if the new one doesn't trump it by about 1000%.