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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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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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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The Spiderman theme is fine as a jingle, but I've never thought of it as an actual cop-show theme.  Until today, that is, when I found Norwegian electro duo Ugress's groovy remake:

Ugress-SpiderEyes(Spider-ManTheme)

Ugress

That's definitive; I doubt you'll ever hear a better version of that song.  Who are Ugress and what are they all about?  Rather than trying to paraphrase I'll just paste in the statement from their MySpace page:

Ugress is mad sound professor Gisle Martens Meyer and his groovetight percussive assistant, The Igor.

With a sexy crew of guest vocalists and instrumentalists, Ugress bloom with references to the last decades of pop, film and cult culture.

Symptoms of exposure include subtle drift towards the dancefloor, uncontrollable rhythmical movements, hightened auditive pleasure and a out-of-reality experience reported as "being part of an epic film".

On stage an überhybrid mash-feist of mad professorizing, cloned musicians, steampunk instruments and multiple synchronized video projections keep your eyes, ears and consciousness glued to an escapist reality of multiple dimensions.

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Belgian electro-rock band Goose put out their album Bring It On in 2006, but I'm just getting around to it.  Not surprisingly, they sound like Belgian electro-rock band Soulwax, who sound like the older Belgian electro-rock band The Weathermen.  Also not surprisingly, they appear to be Soulwax proteges, or buddies at least. That's okay, it's all gooood.  The first track on Bring It On is "Black Gloves," which is one of two songs stuck in my head this week.  I envision it as the soundtrack to a robot hot tub orgy, but video director Steve Glashier saw battling kustom dumpster-karts instead:

Goose - Black Gloves - Dir: Steve Glashier

Now that's how to do an instrumental--keep it moving!  Unfortunately they add vocals to most of the songs on the album, which kind of ruins the proto-techno effect, but it's growing on me.

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Protest music can come from the unlikeliest places.  German DJ and recording artist Malente came up with the supremely catchy "Open Secret" last year, which turns out to be quite a relevant protest song as well.  The lyrics are clever, offering ironic support for government's lust for ever-increasing search and surveillance powers (all for our "security," of course) and culminating in the chorus of

All the things I do, the things I say
Are an open secret, that's okay
Tell me how to funk, and I'll obey
'Cause I'm an open secret anyway

That's right, if you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to worry about.  That's the theory.  It's refreshing to find incisive political commentary in a music genre (electronic breaks) littered with lyrics like "Breakbeat suckers, we're the real motherfuckers" (Cirrus) and the like.  So "big ups" to Malente, or whatever we're supposed to give people these days to show appreciation.  (Kudos?  Props?  Two snaps up in a circle?  High-five?  Chest thump?  "Yee-ha!"?  Any ideas?)  (Not that I don't like Cirrus, in spite of the idiotic lyrics.  That's guilty pleasure #422 or thereabouts.)

Malente on MySpace

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