The Opening Acts

(In which I face the reality that I rarely wake up before noon on Mondays, so titling a series “Monday Morning Video Fun” was just stupid.)

Cortney Tidwell – whose musical virtue we’ve espoused here on multiple occasions – has a new video out.  It’s the third video releaed  from her latest album, Boys, which you still can’t get in the states because American record labels seem to have lost their ear for good music.  What a bunch of jagoffs.  Anyway, this came to my attention via the fine folks at the Nashville Cream blog.

El Perro Del Mar’s Sarah Assbring kinda looks like my mom if my mom had grown up in 1980’s West Berlin instead of 1950’s Havana.  Trust me – it’s an apt comparison.  Here is Ms. Assbring doing a Lou Reed cover:

Sticking with the Swedes, here’s this thing.  It’s a Swedish dude doing a cover of “Absent Friends”, one of my favorite songs by my favorite band, The Divine Comedy. This is just . . . it’s just a monstrosity.  But look how happy they are!  See how long you can fight off the urge to vomit every time there’s a shot of the singer holding a headphone up to one ear and wildly emoting with his other hand because he’s just so into it.

Jesus.

Finally, since we can’t get enough of him around here (and since there’s no way I could end this thing with the garbage that preceded it), there’s this NPR video from last year of Stephin Merritt writing and recording a song in 2 days.  It’s a really fascinating look into a sped-up version of his recording process.  Don’t let its length discourage you, it’s totally worth watching the whole thing.  Totally.

Enjoy what remains of your Monday.

Enjoy this week’s collection, which is a bit stronger than the week before. I’ll have 5 more next Sunday, and probably another 5 a week after that. Like I said last Sunday, I’m gonna keep searching around for more. If you’ve ever recorded a Magnetic Fields cover and think it warrants being part of this feature, send it my way.

To the songs:

1) Woodpigeon – You’re My Only Home
2) Superchunk – 100,000 Fireflies
3) The Divine Comedy – Love Is Lighter Than Air
4) This Is Ivy League – You And Me And The Moon
5) Bright Eyes – Papa Was A Rodeo

In other Stephin Merritt-related news, one of my least favorite bands has remixed one of my least favorite Stephin Merritt songs. Predictably, the results are beyond awful. Listen to it over at MBV if you are so inclined.

Previously:
Let’s Listen To Some Magnetic Fields Covers – Part One

On Wednesday, Chromewaves posted an article which – at the very bottom – had five songs from the fine Albertans of Woodpigeon. Two of those tracks were covers of songs by The Magnetic Fields. Both are from the 69 Love Songs album. Both also happen to be amongst my least favorite songs from that collection, so they didn’t make much of an impression on me (A for effort, though).

It did, however, get me thinking about other bands that have covered Stephin Merritt’s songs.  A quick scan of my music collection yielded a lot more songs than I expected (it helps that my favorite band – The Divine Comedy – has covered 3 songs from Get Lost, along with The Gothic Archies’ “The Dead Only Quickly”).  A further bit of internet digging yielded several more results.

I ended up with 18 songs.  Rather than bombard you with all of them at once, I’m gonna split things up and post a batch of them for the next three Sundays (or four, if I can stumble upon more).  Here’s the first bunch for your enjoyment:

1) !!! – Take Ecstasy With Me
2) The Lucksmiths – Deep See Diving Suit
3) Lush – I Have The Moon
4) The Antlers & Sharon Van Etten – Nothing Matters When We’re Dancing
5) The Divine Comedy – With Whom To Dance?

Like I said earlier, I’m gonna keep searching around for more.  If you’ve ever recorded a Magnetic Fields cover and think it warrants being part of this feature, send it my way.

After The Zookeepers sent me the 47-second song that I posted last week, it got me thinking about other songs in my music collection that were around one minute long or less. By this I meant actual, fully-formed songs – not interludes or any other type of quick album filler.  A hasty perusal of my music collection yielded the following mix.

So sit back and enjoy what is, most likely, the shortest collection of songs you will ever hear.  As usual, my criteria for themed mixes is the following:  fuck you, I’m gonna do what I want.  The result of this is that a couple songs go a couple seconds over the one minute mark.  Deal with it.

This mix is dedicated to my ex-girlfriend, who always called me The Minuteman.  I assume it’s because of my vast knowledge of the American Revolution.  Yep, that must have been the reason.

Enjoy.

1) Silver Jews – Introduction II
2) Pulsars – Wisconsin
3) Stephin Merritt – Shall We Sing A Duet
4) The Lucksmiths – $30
5) Euros Childs – Cynhaeaf
6) Pavement – I Love Perth
7) Belle And Sebastian – I Don’t Want To Play Football
8) Max Tundra – Pocket
9) Casiotone For The Painfully Alone – Happy Mother’s Day
10) Pas/Cal – Grown Men Go-Go

Know of any other worthy one-minute songs? Let me know in the comments.

Future Bible Heroes – Lonely Days (Charnock Richard Mix)

I’m guessing on some dates here, as I’m not in much of a mood for fact-checking after spending more time than expected writing about pig’s blood. If your reason for visiting this blog is to read my quality, journalistic writing instead of just to download free music, let me know and I’ll re-edit this piece to make it a better read.

Oh, and I’m assuming that you’re aware of Stephin Merritt’s various projects.

The original version of “The Dead Only Quickly” came out in 1996 on The Gothic Archies‘ fucking-ridiculously-hard-to-find-at-the-time EP, Looming In The Gloom. A couple years later, the song ended up as a B-side on The Divine Comedy’s single for “The Certainty Of Chance”. With it’s minute-long length, the song ensured that the CD single (along with its poorly-chosen A-side) would not be worth the 10 bucks that most import singles cost back then (and the other B-side was an instrumental – what the fuck, man?). Being both a massive Divine Comedy and Stephin Merritt fan, though, I had little choice. And since you can now buy a copy of the single for ONLY $299.88 at this site, maybe it wasn’t such a bad investment after all.

The Divine Comedy version was released even though frontman Neil Hannon had already recorded a version for the upcoming album by The 6ths, Hyacinths And Thistles. My guess is that Hannon (a huge Stephin Merritt fan, as his 3 prior covers of Magnetic Fields’ songs would attest) grew impatient with that album’s continuing delays, had some woodwinds lying around, and said, “Fuck it, I’ll do one myself”. I’m fairly certain this is exactly how that happened.

After seeing The Magnetic Fields perform several of the songs that ended up on Hyacinths And Thistles at a lovely show in New York in 1997, my hopes were high for the album. It ended up being a bit of a disappointment, though, as the album seemed a bit flat and underproduced. Plus, it had Marc Almond on it, which is always a bad sign. However, that album’s simple, piano-led version of “The Dead Only Quickly” has turned out to be my favorite of the three.

Here are all the versions. It should take you about three-and-a-half minutes to listen to all of them.

The Gothic Archies – The Dead Only Quickly

The Divine Comedy – The Dead Only Quickly

The 6ths (featuring Neil Hannon) – The Dead Only Quickly