Balarama Music

Originals Week: Who Loves Rock N’ Roll?

{Jun 06}

Doug1970s britney spears, joan jett, originals week, the arrows 2 Comments

Remember in 2002 when Britney Spears covered “I Love Rock N’ Roll” and everyone peed their pants screaming, “That’s Joan Jett’s song! She did it so much better!” That’s exactly why I did this Originals Week. Well, that and this final song.

The year is 1975 and the pop-rock trio The Arrows are riding high having just signed a contract to have their own weekly television show broadcast all across the United Kingdom. Little did they know that the show would stunt their musical recordings (actually stop) and lead the group to breaking up, but I’m getting off the point. They’re riding high with their new contract and having two top hits in the UK as anyone would be. Shortly afterwards, the band planned to release their fifth single “Broken Down Heart.” On that single, the band put a rockin’ anthem designed to tell everyone just how much they love their lifestyle and profession as a B-Side. Well, it didn’t take them long to fix the error and before long, radios in the UK were playing a song about putting money in a jukebox & listening to good music.

More

Originals Week: Frusciante Covered Too!

{Jun 05}

Doug1980s crazy town, frusciante friday, john frusciante, originals week, red hot chili peppers No Comments

Frusciante Friday lives on through Originals Week. Now, this entry is from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and I know you’re probably thinking, “But how could someone cover a Chili Pepper song in the past decade and people not know it was by them, especially since their hits of the 90s still dominate the radio today?” If I could see you in person, I would slap you for not only asking that question but for still listening to the radio in this day and age. Radio…that’s a good one. Anyway, it is true that a band covered a Red Hot Chili Pepper song and I would be very surprised if even one person who reads this has not heard of it…but let’s start by talking about the Chili Peppers’ song first which is actually the story of how Frusciante came into the Chili Peppers. My, my, my how I love Frusciante Fridays!

The Red Hot Chili Peppers originally consisted of Anthony Kiedis, Flea, Jack Irons, & Hillel Slovak. However, due to contractual obligations to another band, Slovak and Irons were not around for the first album and only Slovak was around for the second. However, the Chili Pepper’s third album The Uplift Mofo Party Plan (featured “Fight Like A Brave“) is where the original line-up was finally together on an album. What resulted was a clearly better representation of their funk-punk fusion than their first low-rent punk album and they’re second mostly funk album (it was produced by George Clinton: what are you going to do?). Their third album did miles better than the second as it got to 148 on the Billboard 200 as opposed to…not charting before…so there was definite cause for celebration. However, that celebration was short-lived as Kiedis & Slovak both developed horrendous heroin addictions and tragically, it took Slovak’s life. Adding a smaller, but still substantial blow to the Peppers after this was the announcement that Irons would be leaving as he thought the band would keep killing his friends and didn’t want to be part of it. So what to do, what to do? Well, by this point in 1988, Kiedis & Flea had barely scratched their musical potential and with Kiedis clean, they both decided to keep the band going. They quickly snagged up DH Peligro & DeWayne McKnight to play the guitar and drums respectively, but chemistry is very vital in bands & ultimately the lack of it here lead to their departure. As luck would have it though, Peligro knew someone who had not only passed a class on RHCP Chemistry, but was now ready to teach it.

More

Originals Week: Don’t Let Me Be Covered

{Jun 04}

Doug1960s nina simone, originals week, the animals No Comments

This next one is one of those covers you’ll really get a kick out of because not only will you be surprised it’s a cover, but you’ll also be surprised by just how much the song was changed. The year again is 1964 (I need to get out of the 60s, I know) and the blues-rock band known as The Animals was just about to wrap up a pretty successful year. After moving to London and piggybacking the success of the British Invasion, they had found themselves with newfound success after taking some old standards, folk songs, & soul hits and turning them into R&B infused sing-a-longs like the massive hit “House Of The Rising Sun.” Looking ahead to 1965, the band knew they had more ground to cover to solidify themselves in Britain’s ever-competitive music scene. Their habit of paying homage to those who inspired them and re-inventing the songs in different ways wasn’t over by a long shot so they had some ground to cover for their next single to be released at the top of the New Year. Going back to those who had already inspired them, the name Nina Simone must have come up again to those looking for new songs at EMI. After all, she had done one of the first recordings of “House Of The Rising Sun” in the 60s, even predating Bob Dylan’s version, and there was a catfight over who ultimately inspired Alan Price’s version of the song. The Animals were in luck here as were their bosses because earlier that year, Nina Simone had released her album Broadway-Blues-Ballads full of new material.

More

Originals Week: Even Europop…

{Jun 03}

Doug1960s gloria jones, originals week, soft cell No Comments

This one here is weird and probably the biggest one that you’ll say, “Really? That was a cover?” So far, we’ve done two songs that basically sounded the same and one that was just modernized really. This next one though…they are so far apart in tone, genre, and everything else that they’re barely comparable. But the newer version is still a cover.

I really don’t even know where to start with this one to be honest. There’s really not that much information to cover, but there also is just for the drastic upheval of the song. Where should we start? Well, the song was written by Ed Cobb, formerly one of the founding members of The Four Preps known mostly for their minor hit 26 Miles (Santa Catalina). After his career with them, he turned into a producer and songwriter responsible for some minor hits for mostly The Standells. He also wrote a few songs for an underage soul singer named Gloria Jones. Sadly, the soul singer never hit it big in America. It wasn’t until the mid-70s that she finally began to make a minor dent, but it was in the UK as part of the Northern Soul movement happening in the underground club circuit. It was here where two aspiring DJs heard the song a soulful expression of a failed relationship set to a bouncy melody that people could move and clap to that.

More

Originals Week: To Do It First Child

{Jun 02}

Doug1960s george harrison, james ray, originals week, the beatles No Comments

Up until now we’ve been dealing with songs that were mostly covered on top of each other. Aretha covered Otis two years later. The Monkees covered Neil Diamond directly after he recorded it. Why don’t we bridge the gap a bit and also discuss one of the best bands of all time, shall we?

The Beatles.

Everyone knows the story of the dynamic of the group, but this is pivotal to the point of this song so let’s discuss it again briefly and kind of haphazardly. The band was Paul and John. That’s pretty much it. Ringo was a media darling, did a good job making recognizable drumbeats part of rock music, and mostly expand the role of the drummer in the band. George Harrison pushed them into new genres and kept his lead guitar a signature sound of The Fab Four. But in the end, it was the songs that made The Beatles great and Paul & John were the driving force behind that. It’s not like they didn’t let the others try: Harrison had at least one track of his on most of The Beatles albums and Ringo eventually scored with two, one of which became a better known Beatles song. But in the end, it was the Paul & John songs that sold the records and had the critics in awe. Imagine then who had the pull in the band? If John came up with an idea for a song, do you think they would go for it? Of course! If George did? Probably not so much. Now, this is not the way it went down for them, but it’s a rough sketch to get my point across.

More

Originals Week: Who Was A Believer?

{Jun 01}

Doug1960s neil diamond, originals week, the monkees No Comments

Sorry about the late post. When I tried to post it yesterday at 6, the internet wasn’t working so I said fuck that, grabbed some cigars, and invited a friend over. Six hours later, I promptly passed out.

Let’s travel again back to 1967 but under different circumstances. A year earlier, Beatlemania was still riding high and the entertainment industry of America was looking to cash in on it in an original manner. The best thought they would come up with would ultimately the same formula that made the New Kids On The Block, Backstreet Boys, and N*SYNC so famous in the latter part of the century: just create a band. So in essence, the American entertainment industry created the American version of the Beatles complete with misspelling: The Monkees. Their show was a hit and their popularity took off as Hollywood crafted each of their identities and the best in music wrote their songs for them including one man who was on the rise in the late 60s: Neil Diamond.

The Monkees were on shaky ground going into the last month of 1966. Their first single, “Last Train To Clarksville,” had performed very well on the Billboard and had good reactions, but the relation to the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer” was far too much (especially considering the songwriter got the idea while listening to the song) and the fact that The Monkees were subtly protesting the Vietnam War which didn’t make their record or television producers overly thrilled since they were supposed to be the bubblegum pop Beatles of America, not the social conscience version. So what to do, what to do? Well, a love song is always a good way to establish yourself as that pop group and guarantee that not only will women flock over your looks, but also what you say.

More

Originals Week: Feminist Movement’s Landmark Song

{May 31}

Doug1960s aretha franklin, originals week, otis redding No Comments

So I thought I’d start a type of theme for this week to kind of spruce things up and make it interesting again. So I present:

Originals Week!

Ok, that doesn’t explain much so let me try to decipher it for you. You ever hear a cover of a song that is pretty good, maybe even better than the original, but it becomes so good that people forget that someone else did it…or don’t even know. A good example would be of Tina Turner’s “Proud Mary.” A lot of people know that Creedence Clearwater Revival did it first, but hers has become far more well-known and recognizable so that a lot of people don’t even know that CCR did it first or did it at all. Shinedown’s version of “Simple Man” is another example of this especially since in the world of ignorant radio today, kids are going to grow up knowing nothing about the far superior original with its killer guitar.

But Originals Week will be showing you the original versions of most songs. The good thing about me being a music geek in this sense is that all seven songs I pick for the week are going to be songs that you didn’t even know about. They will be original versions of songs that you know so well and have never even thought of being a cover. It’s always interesting when people look at my iTunes, see a song, say something like “I love the original Guns N Roses version,” and then find out that Bob Dylan predates them by a decade or so. I will say that for a lot of these songs, I actually do think the cover and more famous version is better, but it’s always interesting to see the original and it gives you an even bigger respect for the artist responsible for the cover for being able to do it in a new and imaginative way. Let’s kick it off with something that’s going to shock everyone.

More