A week or two ago I mentioned a new reissue of Lee Perry's "Africa's Blood" LP and shared a terrific cover of The Temptations' "My Girl." The vibe of the whole record is truly wonderful and while I'd much prefer sharing something that may tempt the non-reggae fans to explore the record further, it is this track, "Dreamland" that has been bugging me.
Listen to it. It starts out typically enough, with a lovely rhythm and a simple chord sequence. But then something goes very wrong at the 18 second mark, when the first line of the melody kicks in.
My questions:
Did no one hear this at Trojan Records?
Was the wrong key intentional to imply the organ player was in "dreamland?"
Is this a charming error or a big time boner?
Maybe I am obsessing a bit, but it really fascinates me.
By the way, "Africa's Blood" is a beautiful record, this hiccup notwithstanding.
ALSO....
On March 26th, Ace Records is releasing a 2 CD set, "Jon Savage's 1972-1976: All Our Times Have Come." It is a "guided tour through five years of rock in its many variants: power pop, pub rock, glam, krautrock, punk etc – reflecting the fertility of the time," so the press release says. My friend Lesley pieced together a Spotify playlist of most of what was Spotifiable, and while the whole thing plays really well, with my kind of segues like Little Feat into The Move or Mott The Hoople into Big Star, it is the track by a Dutch band called Smyle, that I keep going back to.
The song, "She Means A Lot To Me" is stuck on the b-side of the band's first of only four singles, "It's Gonna Be Alright," an a-side written by Golden Earring's George Kooymans.
The song itself doesn't offer much lyrically, as you will find out. But I am absolutely hooked on everything else, the Badfinger/Big Star vibe, the riff that just won't quit and the George Harrison guitar lines.
I love when this happens.
The Jon Savage compilation, if you're interested, can be preordred over here.
Lesley's Spotify Playlist can be listened to below.
And dat's dat for a holiday Monday, a weird off-key reggae keyboard line and a Dutch b-side.
What have you got?
7 comments:
maybe i'm nuts but it doesn't sound off key to me, it sounds fine.
Anon,
OK, I won't say you are nuts, but that first line of the melody is absolutely wrong! It may sound fine in a "that was intentionally weird" way, but I don't believe that it was intentional.
I hear it. It definitely sounds off-key.
My weirdness for a Monday: I have a Plex server with all my digital music in it -- probably 90K+ songs. I have it set play music randomly on shuffle while I WFH (or do other things when I just want to hear some random music.)
Out of 90K songs -- starting the shuffle 3 times last week started with the same song -- which never happens: Jewel's highly-amusing non-LP song "Gods Gift To Women". I'm hoping that's not the universe sending a commentary on me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDhQLjEzuos
Sal
I thought you would like that Smyle track!
Lesley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jfoScCnjRY
The Nils Lofgren album 1+1 had completely left my radar. It was one of my favorite albums in that era. Also Flamin Groovies of that era were on fire with Teenage Head.
Well, "Scratch" is certifiably crazy. It sounds wrong/right to me.
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