Program 8
August 29, 2009
Buckwheat Zydeco do Bruce Channel – Hey Baby!
The Andrew Oldham Orchestra do The Rolling Stones – When Blue Turns to Grey
Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs do The Mamas & The Papas – Monday Monday
Flunk do New Order – Blue Monday
Telepathique do Bryan Adams – I’m Not The Man You Think I Am
Wyckham Porteous does Bruce Springsteen – Hungry Heart
Saturday nights at 7 on 97-7 WEXT
See Comments for my blog entry and your feedback about the show.
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I’m back home this week for the eighth and final edition of the show.
We start with Buckwheat Zydeco doing the old Bruce Channel classic Hey Baby! live at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival in 1998. The performance is all fun and sunshine, and I can tell you with authority that that’s exactly how the gig went down. I was there. Picture 30,000 people dancing on a sunny hillside in the summer, led by one of the greatest zydeco bands in the world, singing along to Hey Baby! Unforgettable.
Throughout the 1960s record companies put together theme-oriented albums of orchestral versions of the latest pop songs. Music For Family Time, Music For Picnics, Music For Gouging Your Inner Ear with a Fork…most of them were pretty awful. However, Rolling Stones producer Andrew Oldham put together some pretty snappy orchestral arrangements of songs by Jagger and Richards, releasing The Rolling Stones Songbook as a recording that stood head and shoulders above all of the dreck. The background singers on When Blue Turns To Grey still provide enough cheese to give some groovy cats beat feet, but I think its a gas.
I never would have thought that a recording of cover songs featuring Matthew Sweet and Susannah Hoffs would be quite as good as Under The Covers, Volume 1, but I was wrong. Their version of The Mamas and The Papas big hit Monday Monday from 1966 is the inspiration for this program.
I’m not familiar with the music of Flunk. I am very familiar with the music of New Order. Flunk’s languid version of Blue Monday bridges the gap between Joy Division and the greatest synth pop band of the 1980s. It also manages to connect the song with an entirely new audience of hipster chic kids out there. I like.
When girls do guys and guys do girls in song, the gender bending is always intriguing. Here we have Brazilian electro-pop duo Telepathique doing an obscure machismo ballad by Bryan Adams called I’m Not The Man You Think I Am. Perfect.
3 am by Wyckham Porteous is a great record. You should buy it. Not only is his version of Hungry Heart one of the best I’ve ever heard, his originals stick in your brain too. Wyckham has been around for years as a playwright, a poet, and a songwriter. If he were to record an album with Greg Brown it would be magnificent.
*Sigh* That’s it kids. The series is over. It may be back in one guise or another sometime in the future, but for now, it is, as they say in Italy, finito. If you loved it and want to hear more of it in the future, I encourage you to write and let the radio station know how you feel. I was happy to have you along for the brief ride and hope to be talking with you again soon.
In the meantime, please stay tuned for North of the Border starting sometime this fall in the same time slot. Details to come. The program features 60 minutes of music from Canada.
Bye for now.
Wayne
Wayne,, great job and program..I’ve enjoyed listening and will continue to listen to whatever range of programming you play..take care..Mike Delaney “Daves Dad”