A new album from singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams is always a cause for celebration, and she will be releasing the double album Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone on September 30. Below is “East Side of Town” from the new album.
The song sounds great, with lyrics influenced by the recent problems with the economy: “You wanna see what it means to be down / Then why don’t you come over to the east side of town?”
The album features a range of talented musicians, including guitarist Bill Frisell. A No Depressionreview calls the upcoming album the best one from Williams in more than a decade, while the Village Voice calls it “the best work of Lucinda Williams’s career.” After hearing “East Side of Town,” I can see where they might be right about the album. I can’t wait.
What is your favorite Lucinda Williams album? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Last night, The Replacements appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and performed the song “Alex Chilton” from their classic album Pleased To Meet Me (1987). The band features featuring founding members Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson with Josh Freese (drums) and David Minehan (guitar).
The Replacements, who recently launched a reunion tour, have not toured since 1991 so it was cool to see the great band playing together again. The performance on NBC on a show hosted by a Saturday Night Live alum is especially sweet considering that the band had been banned from the network’s Saturday Night Live show in 1986 after appearing drunk and destroying a dressing room.
Reportedly, Fallon’s late-night show had been working for nearly a year to get “The Mats” to appear. [2024 Update: Unfortunately, the video is currently not available.]
The song “Alex Chilton” is a tribute to the leader of the band Big Star. To listen to a whole concert from the reunited Replacements, check out this story.
What is your favorite song by The Replacements? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Huffington Post recently interviewed actor Ray Liotta and brought up the classic tracking shot into the Copacabana. In the long shot director Martin Scorsese followed Liotta (playing Henry Hill) and actress Lorraine Bracco (playing Karen Friedman) as they enter and go through the nightclub to their seats.
In the interview by Ricky Camilleri, Liotta talks about how smoothly everything went and his memories of making Goodfellas. [2024 Update: Unfortunately, the video of the interview is no longer available.]
Liotta, of course, is giving the actor’s perspective, so of course he did not see all of the work that went into making everything so perfect. Cinematographer Michael Ballhaus has recounted how it took many days to set up the lighting, more days to shoot it, and more days to put together the edit.
If you want to see the scene again. check it out below. As “Then He Kissed Me” by the Crystals plays in the background, the long shot reveals Hill opening up a new world to his girlfriend Friedman. It remains one of the great scenes in cinema history.
For more of the Liotta interview head over to HuffPost Live. What is your favorite part of the famous Copa scene from Goodfellas? Leave your two cents in the comments.
On September 7, 1936, Charles Harden Holley was born in Lubbock, Texas. Through various circumstances, though, young Charles would drop the “e” in his last name and become known as “Buddy Holly.”
Regarding the first name, after the baby was born, the family soon began calling the child “Buddy.” And the name stuck.
Regarding the spelling of his last name, while young Buddy was a rising musician, Decca Records mistakenly spelled his last name as “Holly.” The singer decided to keep the new spelling, thus completing the final piece of the name of one of the greatest rock and roll talents in history.
The Original Release of “Peggy Sue Got Married”
In a previous post, Chimesfreedom examined the circumstances of Buddy Holly’s death, but the world did not hear some of his great songs until after his death. For example, “Peggy Sue Got Married,” was released after he died at the young age of 22 on February 3, 1959.
A little more than five months after Holly’s death, Coral Records on July 20, 1959 released “Peggy Sue Got Married.” It appeared as a B-side to Buddy Holly’s “Crying, Waiting, Hoping.”
“Peggy Sue Got Married” was a the sequel to Holly’s hit “Peggy Sue.” The original hit was named after the girlfriend of Crickets drummer Jerry Allison.
You probably have heard this recording of the sequel song. The recording of “Peggy Sue Got Married” that most of us know features backup vocals and instrumentals recorded in June 1959 after Holly’s death.
The Version Buddy Holly Knew (as a Demo)
Because Buddy Holly had died in February of 1959, however, he never heard this version that we know so well.
The record company created the record using a demo that Holly had recorded himself. The demo features Holly with his guitar in his New York apartment in December 1958 before Holly left for his final tour. Below, you may hear the recorded version that Holly knew below.
I love the song in both versions, despite the fact that the original release was not completely the work of Holly. I have always wondered what Holly might have done with the finished product of the song, although the record company did try to stay true to his “sound.”
The Crickets Version
Buddy Holly’s band, The Crickets, later made their own version of the song. They sped up the song in their recording, which features David Box on vocals.
The Crickets version is not bad, but of course it pales in comparison to the Holly versions. Check it out.
The Tribute Version with The Hollies and Holly
Finally, for a 1993 Buddy Holly tribute album, Not Fade Away: Remembering Buddy Holly, the English rock group The Hollies re-recorded “Peggy Sue Got Married.” Instead of adding new vocals, though, they used Buddy Holly’s original vocals.
While some may be critical of the re-use of Holly’s vocals, remember that the original record did the same thing. And what better tribute than a re-working of the song by a band that named itself after Buddy Holly? Check it out.
Rarely has one set of vocals created so many versions. And that is not even mentioning that the song also inspired a 1986 movie of the same name. The movie Peggy Sue Got Married used the demo version of the song over the opening.
In case you are wondering about whether the real “Peggy Sue” got married, the original “Peggy Sue” song helped Jerry Allison get back together with his girlfriend who had inspired the song’s name. And Peggy Sue Gerron did get married to Allison.
But, unlike like Holly’s song, the marriage did not last, as Peggy Sue and Jerry divorced in 1967 after eight years of marriage.
What is your favorite version of “Peggy Sue Got Married”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
In 2013, while everyone was dancing to Pharrell Williams’s song “Happy” from Despicable Me 2 (2013), another artist quietly released a song with the same name. Singer-songwriter John Fullbright’s “Happy” may not be quite as upbeat and instantly memorable as Williams’s song of the same name, but it is an outstanding song you should check out.
This “Happy” begins with just Fullbright and an acoustic guitar, and while he struggles to find happiness, you sense that happiness is not so easy to find.
Tonight I’d rather think of you, and try to close my eyes, and I’ll just wonder what’s so bad about happy?
“Happy” appeared on the album Songs (2013), an album that got great reviews. The Okahoma=born Fullbright brings an honesty to his songwriting, so it is not surprising that he counts Townes Van Zandt as one of his influences. We have featured a few of Fullbright’s songs in other Chimesfreedom posts, and we expect we will be inspired to do so again. But for now, we are just whistling his song, “Happy.”
What do you think of Fullbright’s “Happy”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
(1987). The band features featuring founding members Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson with Josh Freese (drums) and David Minehan (guitar).
, the English rock group 
(2013), an album that got