Casting about for new music to listen to I came across the Phenomenauts, and the description sounded all right (something like "pop-punk with some synths"), and sure enough, they're pretty fun (and unlike so many pop-punk bands, they don't sound like whiny teenagers).  The track list for their album, For All Mankind, lists "Make a Circuit With Me" as track 4.  Could it be the Polecats' song from way back in the 80s?, I wondered.  It is!  The Phenomenauts have made a small change to the classic chorus of "I need a diode, cathode, electrode, overload, generator, oscillator -- Make a circuit with me": they've replaced "electrode" with "nematode" (roundworm?!) for some reason.  And otherwise they've cranked up the speed, volume, and guitar distortion and made the song fit right into the musical landscape of today.  Here is the Polecats' original rockabilly-robotica video, followed by a stream of the Phenomenauts' version:

The Polecats-Make a circuit with me

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Back in December I posted Moondog's "Bird's Lament," one of those tunes that is so natural it feels like you've known it forever, even the first time you hear it:

03 Bird's Lament

Moondog

Listening to Quantic Soul Orchestra's Pushin' On this evening, "Bird's Lament" came out of the speakers, but over a deep funk breakbeat and titled "Get A Move On"--

09 - get a move on

The Quantic Soul Orchestra

A quick google shows that this is actually a cover of Mr Scruff's "Get A Move On," which is itself a cover of "Bird's Lament."  Wheels within wheels...

Mr. Scruff 'Get A Move On' Music Video

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What could be as unlikely as a disco/southern rock cover of a Yardbirds song?  How about an 80s electro cover of a Bad Company song?  I've been wanting to hear Jenny Burton's cover of "Rock Steady" again since the 80s, but I've never managed to connect with a copy of the record, or even an mp3, until now.  In an era when even CD reissues seem anachronistic, Wounded Bird Records of Guilderland, New York, keeps plugging away at it.  Thanks to them, Jenny Burton's 1984 album In Black and White is finally available on CD, and I got me one.  What I didn't know back then, because all I had by her were singles with no liner notes, is that the instrumental tracks on the album were created entirely by John Robie.  Robie arguably did more than anyone else to define the electro-boogie sound of the 80s through his work as a synth programmer for several influential Tommy Boy groups: Soulsonic Force, the Jonzun Crew, and Planet Patrol.  (He did a killer remix of Cabaret Voltaire's "Yashar," too, which may have had some influence on their shift to dance music.)  In Black and White continues his trademark sound, dubbed together from an arsenal of electronic instruments listed in the credits: Roland TR 808, Multi-Moog, Prophet 5, Sequential Circuits Poly-Sequencer, EMU Systems Emulator Digital Synthesizer, Roland Juno 60, and Yamaha CP 70, plus Yamaha acoustic piano, Fender Stratocaster, and Gibson SG Custom.  Put that all together with a powerful female singer and you get the most unique Bad Company cover ever on a major label:

01-Rock Steady

Jenny Burton

(Edited for length.)  "Rock Steady" was overshadowed by the big hit from the album, "Remember What You Like."  That's fitting since it's a better song for her, but "Rock Steady" has terrific novelty value.  Jenny Burton is still singing, but she's left the electro style behind for a more mature R&B/gospel focus.  Sigh.

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A few days ago Jeff was looking for an unlikely cover of a disco song; that reminded me of something I came across last year, a disco cover of an unlikely song.  Yardbirds disco, anyone?  If that's not weird enough, the chorus turns into southern rock!  (At around 2:20)--

Chilly - For Your Love (1978)

The recorded version is actually twelve minutes long, and it is strangely mesmerizing; I listened to all twelve minutes of it without being able to stop it.  More than once, too.  Solid Goldberger has the whole track here.

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Several weeks ago I wrote about Iggy Pop and Peter Murphy sounding nearly the same; just yesterday I discovered the live radio performances that Peter Murphy and Trent Reznor gave during the joint Nine Inch Nails/Bauhaus tour of 2006.  Lo and behold, they did an Iggy Pop cover:

Night Clubbing - Trent Reznor, Jeordie White, Peter Murphy

And to pile on the coincidences, Trent released a new Nine Inch Nails album today (The Slip), for free!

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Item 1: Mrs. Veneer buys Ryuichi Sakamoto's CD of solo piano pieces, BTTB.  It's quite beautiful and Sakamoto mostly avoids the New Age clichés that plague so many piano CDs.  Some of the pieces are obvious homages to classical works, such as "Opus," which evokes the Gymnopédies of Erik Satie:

04 Opus

Ryuichi Sakamoto

♫ Erik Satie - Gymnopédie No.1 [piano] ♫

Item 2: I learn from Wiel's Time Capsule that Mark Stewart is preparing a new album (his first of new material since 1995!) and tour, and that he has a new video out:

05 Stranger

Mark Stewart

Connection 2: I've heard some of those lyrics before: "Somewhere, there is a place for us".  They're from "Somewhere," from West Side Story.  David Sylvian recorded a version of that for a TIAA-CREF commercial:

Somewhere (Orchestral Commercial Version)

David Sylvian

Connection 3: Sylvian and Sakamoto's collaborative song "Forbidden Colours," from the movie Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, is perhaps the best-known song by either of them in the US:

Sylvian & Sakamoto - Forbidden Colours

Connection 4: Hey, Mark Stewart did two versions of "Forbidden Colours" on that very same album!  Here's the dub version:

07 Forbidden Dub

Mark Stewart

It's all connected!

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I have previously written about my dear friend, the late Mark Harp.  Mark's band Null Set brought postpunk to Baltimore; when another band called Null Set, from another city, put out a record, Mark's Null Set changed their name to Cabal.  The singer for Null Set and Cabal was Bill Dawson; after Cabal broke up, he teamed up with George Hagegeorge to form Black Pete and play guitar-charged industrial music in the vein of Ministry and Skinny Puppy.  They put out one twelve-inch in 1989, recruited an apparently substance-addled young glam-metal dude as their "bassist" (though it was speculated that his real role was to get into fights and thereby gain "cred" for the band), and folded shortly thereafter.  I missed my window for getting a copy of the record back then, but thanks to the Internet and GEMM, the window is open again.  I found a copy and ordered it (from a dealer with multiple copies), and it arrived yesterday.  The A-side is a cover of Mountain's "Mississippi Queen"--

Black Pete - Mississippi Queen

Black Pete

Coincidentally, on the same day, Ministry released their supposedly final album, Cover Up, a collection of covers of classic rock tunes, one of which is... can you guess?  That's right, "Mississippi Queen"--

02 - Laibach - Sympathy For The Devil (Dem Teufel Zugeneigt)

Laibach

That last part of this version (one of eight they recorded) has the best bass-drum workout since Steam's 1969 hit and perennial stadium favorite "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye"--

Finally, wouldn't it be funny to refer to Laibach as Audioslav?

Let_it_be3

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Of course everyone knows that "On the Road Again" is a blues standard made famous by Canned Heat in 1968:

But I didn't know that in the 80s; my first encounter with it was on synth band (or what in retrospect is referred to as "minimal wave") Schleimer K's debut album from 1981:

A5 - on the road again

Schleimer K

I love the stuttering kick drum in this version, you won't hear that beat anywhere else.  Probably.  The organ noodling by Dominique Brethes is also nice.  What does it say about me that my favorite song on this album turned out to be an old blues cover?  Obviously my musical tastes were not as esoteric as I once thought they were.  I'm fine with that now, but it was a rather embarrassing bit of self-discovery when I finally heard the Canned Heat song for the first time.  (And even that is a cover of sorts, based on a much older song by Floyd Jones, which in turn is based on an even older song.  I lack the fortitude to track down the whole provenance.)  This Schleimer K album is one of the many I sold during the 90s, thinking I would never listen to it again, so why keep it?  Ten years later my life is completely different, and I do want to revisit the music I used to like, and thanks to Mutant Sounds and Phoenix Hairpins I can.  And I still like it!

Finally, since every song reminds me of another song, I'll mention that Schleimer K singer Michael Wolfen's offhand, half-spoken vocal style was used extensively by Nik Fiend on Alien Sex Fiend's second (and best) album, Acid Bath.  The atmospheric quality and midtempo beat of "Breakdown And Cry (Lay Down and Die...Goodbye) make it a good pairing with "On the Road Again"--

06 - Breakdown and cry (Lay down and lie - goodbye)

Alien Sex Fiend

Some other time I'll relate how Alien Sex Fiend almost played in Adelphi, Maryland.

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I bought Shawn Lee's new Christmas album (subtitled "Funky Treats from Santa's Bag) under his Ping Pong Orchestra moniker, and as expected it is one groovy treat.  Here's his version of "Do You Hear What I Hear," a la Deodato:

04 - Do You Hear What I Hear

Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra

And here's a Deodato lagniappe:

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Here starts at last my Crooners thread, and I will state right here at the beginning that no songs posted will contain the MMc Factor.  In this case MMc stands not for Microsoft Management Console, but Michael McDonald.  Just as there are certain flavors I can't stand (wintergreen), and certain smells (whatever the key scent in scented toilet paper is), and certain textures (eggplant), so are there sounds I don't like, and one of them is Michael McDonald's voice.  That is the sound I call the MMc Factor.  Other singers have it, too, and that has prevented me from liking music that I would have enjoyed otherwise.  XTC is a prime example; I have a hard time getting past Andy Partridge's MMc Factor.

So with that out of the way I'll segue from Sheffield into Crooners with a Sheffield crooner, John Stuart.  Richard Hawley is currently riding a wave of popularity in the UK as the "Sheffield Sinatra," but in 1987 he played guitar behind velvet-voiced ex-Chakk singer John Stuart on Stuart's only solo single, a cover of Seals and Crofts' "Summer Breeze."  You will never hear a lusher version:

John Stuart - Summer Breeze

John Stuart & The Heavenly Music Corporation

(There's that unmistakable Designers Republic graphic style again.)  Rounding out the backing band, billed as The Heavenly Music Corporation, are Dee Boyle (drums, also from Chakk), Darrell de Silva (sax), Jon Quarmby (keyboards), Justin Bennett (percussion), and Heather Allen (backing vocals), with production by Rob Gordon. 
Alas, that was all from The Heavenly Music Corporation as such.  Stuart would go on to be a member of the Lovebirds (with Hawley) and Magic Bullets.  He now lives in Barcelona and continues making lovely music as one-half of Forgetting, and on his own as, once again, The Heavenly Music Corporation.  (Hooray again for MySpace!)

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