Dream A Little Dream Of Me...

For the holidays, The Soft Close-Ups have put up a free download of our version of Dream A Little Dream Of Me.  David made a nice little video for it too:



I've always loved this song since I was a kid and my mom used to play the Mama Cass version:



Really liked the Terry Hall & Salad version that came out on the HELP compilation in 1995:



Always loved The Beautiful South version:



Just found out about the Andy Bell/Erasure version:



Doris Day:




The original Ozzie Nelson version:



Sylvie Vartan singing it in Italian as Nostalgy and in French as Les Yeux Ouverts:





Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong:

Franz Liszt/Roger Daltrey - Love's Dream...

R.I.P. Ken Russell.   I was just saying again last week how brilliant the film Lisztomania is.  Like Beatlemania, though long before, Franz Liszt would inspire delirium amongst his concert audiences.  Poet Heinrich Heine is credited with the term 'Lisztomania'.  In the film, The Who's Roger Daltrey plays Liszt, while Paul Nicholas is his archenemy Richard Wagner. Ringo Starr plays The Pope and Rick Wakeman appears as Thor, a Viking Wagner attempts to reanimate.  I picked this up for my friend Craig MacNeil two years ago and he practically insisted I watch it before sending it to him. So glad I listened to him. The soundtrack is ace, and this lovely number is my favourite:




Liszt's Liebestraum No. 3, played by pianist David Wilde.

Bettye Swann - Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye/Make Me Yours

In January of 2005, I moved back to London and, wandering down to a part of the Portobello Road I'd never been to before, happened upon Honest Jon's Records.  The shop also functioning as a record label (I didn't know at the time of its association with Damon Albarn) had just released collections by Candi Staton, Bettye Swann, and Willie Hightower.  Intrigued by what promised some lovely soul, but not wanting to spend too much on records and artists I'd never heard before, I opted for the first two, having always been a sucker for the female voice.  I got home and fell in love.

Bettye Swann's version of Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye remains one of the most gorgeous songs I've ever heard.  Such sweet melancholy tinged with everloving joy.  Her voice brings a great sigh of pleasure filled with everything, heavenly backing vocals adding to its depth.  The rolling piano announcing the stately horns beginning at 2:28 until the end is one of my favourite sections in all of music, it makes your heart melt.  Everything about this song, its feel, its performance, is perfect.



Two years later I'm back in London, this time at Flashback Records in Angel and seeing Bettye Swann's The Money Recordings, I buy it immediately. Rushing home to listen, I find, on the other side of the pop spectrum now, a delicious opening track called Make Me Yours.  Simply joyous, a POP delight.

The Slits - Vindictive...

I stopped by the studio the other day to visit the recording of Viv Albertine's xmas single.

My favourite Slits song was always Vindictive.   I was enormously excited the first time I heard it and it still thrills.  Such commanding energy, it sounds like they're ripping and tearing the song and everything else apart.  Riotous fun.  I never really knew what they were singing and it seems a lot of other people didn't either.

David J - Space Cowboy...

The other day I finally got around to listening to the free cd that came with the first issue of Alan Moore's Dodgem Logic magazine.  You can download the whole thing for free here.  And the last song is a lovely acoustic reminiscence by David J, whose work (Bauhaus, Love & Rockets, solo records, The Sinister Ducks with Alan Moore and Alex Green) I have always loved.  Here's my review of his just-released solo album, Not Long For This World, a great record and featuring one of the best songs of the year, The Last Cigarette.

And here's Space Cowboy, from 1992's Urban Urbane, a delicious pop rush:

Bullroarer...

A bit of a departure from the usual pop stuff on here, but I've found that people who have good taste don't tend to limit themselves stylistically.  A few hours ago it popped into my head to see if the first Bullroarer 7" was online.  A record I loved on its release in 1997and bought extra copies of to give to my friends, who needed to hear it. We were all in Boston, MA then and seeing them play was inspiring.  They created this wonderful, rampant, psychedelic ROCK, tapping into primal energy and soaring with visions.  Tom Hohmann is one of the most precise, powerhouses of a drummer you could ever wish to hear.  I remember him telling me that the first time he ever played drums was tripping on the day Kurt Cobain died, he broke 2 plastic rods off a multiple plant hanger and sat down at his buddy's drum kit.  And Colin Langenus once had 3 people screech as high and loud as they could in order to demonstrate what the ringing was like in his ears.  They made a highly original beautiful noise and you can download their entire discography for free.

Two live clips from a gig in Boston, May 1998:

The Real Tuesday Weld...

My interview with Stephen Coates of The Real Tuesday Weld is now up on godisinthetvzine.  I'm very pleased with it.  One of my favourite songwriters, he's written more than his fair share of timeless pop classics.  I've mentioned Dreaming Of You and Daisies before, but here's a few more:


The Ugly & The Beautiful, one of my all-time faves.  Just a wonderful song, really.  Starts about 1:38 in:




The heartwrenching Over The Hillsides (live at Corsica Studios, 25th September 2008):




The life-affirming, dancing-past-the-dawn whimsy of The Show Must Go On:




And I just found this video for their version of Brazil, which was a pleasant surprise on the 2008 tour: