After he sang, he graciously noted that he did not deserve all the credit for his reinterpretation because he took much of it from the band Quietdrive. If you’re not familiar with the group, the band is an alt-rock group from Minneapolis that formed in 2002 and has released several albums. Here is their interpretation of “Time After Time,” which was in the soundtrack for the 2006 film, John Tucker Must Die.
“Time After Time” is one of those songs that seems like it has been around forever and lends itself well to covers. I suspect most people are like me and prefer Lauper’s original above all others. I was fortunate to see her perform the song in a small club in Cleveland before “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” took her to superstar status. While she will always be most associated with “Girls,” it is “Time After Time” that probably will always be covered by other artists. Some of the versions of the song are by Eva Cassidy, Matchbox Twenty, and Sarah Mclachlan. One of my favorite interpretations is by Miles Davis.
“Time After Time” is timeless.
What is your favorite version of “Time After Time”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Happy April Fool’s Day. Today, we consider the prank played by Train’s song, “Hey, Soul Sister,” where upon hearing the title you expect the song to be some type of soul song. Train’s joke is revealed from the moment you hear the strumming of the ukelele and you soon realize instead that “Hey, Soul Sister” is a boy band song. And a darn good one at that.
I liked Train since they released their first self-titled album in 1998. And when they later released “Drops of Jupiter” in 2001 on the album of the same name, I loved the song even as it was played endlessly on the radio. But then I did not hear about them for years, and suddenly there was this big hit I saw referenced several times before I actually heard it, “Hey, Soul Sister” from Save Me, San Francisco (2009).
According to Wikipedia, “it is the 8th most downloaded song in history, the most downloaded song of all time for Columbia Records, the top-selling song on iTunes in 2010.” Eighth in history? And I realize that it may not be fair to compare songs that were not released for the first time in the age of the Internet, but if it is the most downloaded song of all time for Columbia, it has been downloaded more times than Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run.” It was huge.
While “Hey, Soul Sister” is a good song, I must admit I never understood why it became such a gigantic hit for Train. According to Train lead singer Patrick Monahan, who co-wrote the song, he was inspired by imagining what it would be like to attend Burning Man, a party in the desert with naked people running around. But for some reason, I doubt they listen to “Mr. Mister” at Burning Man, so I do not know what he was thinking. Here’s the acoustic ukelele-only version.
Monahan has an excellent voice, and you cannot help but sing along, but it seems odd that a man of Monahan’s age (40 the year the song was released) sings the cheesy line, “You’re so gangsta, I’m so thug.” Yet, the line works when someone young sings the song, as a young man might be so naive — and sincere — to make such a silly claim to the object of his affection. The rest of the lyrics fit better for a naive young singer too.
You gave my life direction, a game show love connection we can’t deny; I’m so obsessed, my heart is bound to beat right out my untrimmed chest; I believe in you, like a virgin, you’re Madonna, and I’m always gonna wanna blow your mind.
“My untrimmed chest”?
That is why the song works so much better as a boy band song, and why I never particularly “got” the song until I heard it performed by singers on Glee on one of the few episodes of the TV show I have seen. While I am not a fan of of the boy band era of music, I am not so snooty that I can resist a good pop song. And if you are going to do a boy band song, it should be left to the boy bands. And the song works much better for Darren Criss and the Warblers, who make the hit song their own on Glee.
Which version do you like? Is there any soul in “Hey, Soul Sister”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Last Friday, Bruce Springsteen dug his song “American Skin (41 Shots)” from Live In New York City (2000) out of the vault in Tampa, Florida. Without any comment from Springsteen, the reason for the song eventually became clear to the crowd. Although it was written about New York police shooting the unarmed Amadou Diallo in February 1999, the refrain about getting killed just for living in your “American Skin” resonated in Florida, where this February the 17-year-old unarmed Trayvon Martin was killed.
While everyone is still sorting out what happened in the incident, both liberal and conservative commentators have been doing a lot of yelling. While one may debate whether Springsteen’s decision to bring back “41 Shots” helps with the debate or just adds more confusion to the developing story, when Nils Lofgren’s electric guitar kicks in after the 3-minute mark, there is no question. Even more than the refrain, the building tension and screaming guitars say that despite all of the rhetoric on both sides, it’s a damn tragedy.
Legendary musician and banjo player Earl Scruggs passed away this morning at the age of 88. Even if you were not listening to bluegrass at the time and were a kid watching television, you still knew Flatt & Scruggs, as I did every week when I watched The Beverly Hillbillies and they played their instruments on “The Ballad of Jed Clampett” to open the show (with Jerry Scoggins singing on the version used on the show).
During his great career, Scruggs played with a number of famous artists, including Bob Dylan, the Byrds, Ravi Shankar, King Curtis, Elton John, and many others. The actor, comedian, and banjo-player Steve Martin wrote about Scruggs in The New Yorker earlier this year, “Few players have changed the way we hear an instrument the way Earl has.” Below is a clip from 2006 where Martin joins Scruggs to play “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” on The Late Show with David Letterman.
Scruggs started with Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys in 1945, but then left with Lester Flatt to form the Foggy Mountain Boys, which later became known just as Flatt & Scruggs through the 1950s and 1960s. Scruggs also was one of the few country or bluegrass artists who spoke out publicly against the war in Viet Nam, appearing at the 1969 US Vietnam Moratorium in Washington, DC. Below is Flatt & Scruggs playing “Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms.”
Flatt passed away in 1979. Here’s hoping somewhere the two are making some sweet music again. RIP.
This month is the anniversary of Uncle Tupelo’s album March 16-20, 1992, which for some strange reason is the only album in my collection where I remember the exact date it was made. The album, which was produced by R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, was recorded on the dates in the title, featuring both original songs and traditional songs.
This third album from Uncle Tupelo reflected the band’s frustrations with its record label, so the band decided to record music they wanted to record without regard for popular tastes. Below is Uncle Tupelo performing one of the traditional songs on the album, “Moonshiner” in Columbia, Missouri on November 13, 1992.
The CD also featured the Louvin Brothers classic, “Atomic Power.” Here is Uncle Tupelo performing the song on April 30, 1994 in St. Louis, Missouri at their second-to-last show together.
The first song on the album, “Grindstone,” is one of my favorites of the CD. I could not find a live Uncle Tupelo performance of the song. But after Uncle Tupelo broke up, Jay Farrar, who wrote “Grindstone,” performed it with his new band, Son Volt in Minneapolis on October 16, 1995. Check it out below.
Uncle Tupelo was at the forefront of the alt-country/Americana music scene in the 1990s. And the title of their first album, named after a Carter Family song, gave the name to the leading magazine of the genre, No Depression. But after March 16-20, 1992, the band released only one more CD, Anodyne (1993).
After the band’s final album, Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy dissolved the band in 1994 to go on to create more music with new bands, including fantastic work with Son Volt and Wilco, respectively.
But those five days in March on this date all those years ago, they created one of the albums that defined their permanent place in music history.
What is your favorite Uncle Tupelo song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
(2000) out of the vault in Tampa, Florida. Without any comment from Springsteen, the reason for the song eventually became clear to the crowd. Although it was written about New York police shooting the unarmed Amadou Diallo in February 1999, the refrain about getting killed just for living in your “American Skin” resonated in Florida, where this February the 17-year-old unarmed 
