Everything Is Fine

Celebrating David Lynch, born 20th January 1946, whose death was announced on Thursday, days before what would have been his 79th birthday.

 

This wasn't the Friday post I originally had in mind, and is a hastily cobbled together selection of a dozen of David Lynch songs, remixes (of and by), cover versions and mash-ups. 

 

The collection starts and ends in possibly predictable fashion, Pixies' cover of In Heaven (Lady In The Radiator Song) in 1988 making as much of an impression on my teenage mind as the opening minutes of Lynch's 1987 film Blue Velvet. 

 

And yes, I know it's a cheat including Lana Del Rey's version over Bobby Vinton's cover, which was the inspiration for the film, but the latter makes a cheeky appearance in Voicedude's contribution to the intriguing (and sadly no longer available) 2008 compilation Mashed In Plastic: The David Lynch Mash-Up Album.

I got to see nearly all of David Lynch's films on the big screen, including a re-release of Eraserhead in the early 1990s, and with the exception of Dune (1984) and Inland Empire (2006). And on the small screen, I was left with an agonising wait to complete the Twin Peaks experience, as I headed off to Australia for a year after Season 1's cliffhanger ending on BBC2. 

Edisrehtoehtnoees

 

1) In Heaven (Lady In The Radiator Song): David Lynch & Alan R Splet ft. Peter Ivers (1976)

2) This Is David Lynch: Neiltomo (2008)

3) Pinky's Dream (Trentemøller Remix): David Lynch ft. Karen O (2012)

4) Girl Panic! (Remix By David Lynch & Dean Hurley): Duran Duran (2011)

5) Fuel To Fire (David Lynch Remix): Agnes Obel (2014)

6) I Know (Jon Hopkins Remix): David Lynch (2011)

7) Velvet Dreams: Voicedude (2008)

8) The Big Dream (Moby Reversion): David Lynch ft. Mindy Jones (2014)

9) Rockin' Back Inside My Heart (Tibetan Single Mix By Greg Royal): Julee Cruise (1989)

10) Blue Velvet (Single Version) (Cover of Tony Bennett): Lana Del Rey (2012)

11) Falling (Cover of Julee Cruise): The Wedding Present (1992)

12) In Heaven (Lady In The Radiator Song) (John Peel Session) (Cover of David Lynch & Alan R Splet ft. Peter Ivers): Pixies (1988) 

 

1982: Eraserhead OST: 1

1989: Rockin' Back Inside My Heart EP: 9 

1992: Silver Shorts EP: 11

1998: Pixies At The BBC: 12

2008: Mashed In Plastic: The David Lynch Mashup Album: 2, 7

2011: Girl Panic! EP: 4 

2011: Good Day Today / I Know EP: 6

2012: Pinky's Dream EP: 3 

2012: The Paradise Edition EP: 10

2014: Aventine: 5

2014: The Big Dream Remix EP: 8

Everything Is Fine (46:33) (KF) (Mega)

Lordy, Don't Leave Me All By Myself

In This World by Moby entered the UK Top 40 on 16th November 2002 at #35, spent another week at #60 then vanished from the countdown altogether. 

 

There's a sense of irony and inevitability, matching the song's lyrical and video's narrative theme. The latter depicts a group of aliens who set off from their home planet to make contact with the denizens of planet Earth. On arrival, they discover that they are miniscule compared to the animals and humans populating the planet and as a result are completely ignored. Eventually, they give up and return home. 

 

Moby's lyrics are so sparse that they arguably cannot be considered social commentary but there is something there to interpret about our individual search for meaning and relevance in our blip of existence on this crazy spinning rock.

A close family member is very ill right now and life is being measured in units of time, which is hard to process and it's bringing some of these thoughts and feelings to the fore. 

 

This song popped up on a random shuffle and the timing has gifted the song with a fresh meaning and relevance. Back in 2002, it was just another single from 18, the follow up to Moby's ridiculously successful album Play, which was marking a slow but steady decline in his chart fortunes. 

 

In This World was one of six singles lifted from 18, but the third and last to dent the UK Top 40. It's a good song but a little too reminiscent of the music from Play to have made much of an impression at the time.

 

What Moby has always been good at though is working with a range of female singers who lift what might otherwise be quite ordinary songs to a higher level. In This World is a good example, presented here in four versions, each with a different lead and imbuing the song with their own character and resonance.

 

The post leads off with the 2002 single version, as with the original album version, credited with the voice of Jennifer Price. However, the song itself samples Lord Don't Leave Me, a 1956 song by The Famous Davis Sisters - you can listen to the original here.

 

Performed live, In This World is stripped of much of the musical accompaniment from the studio version, which added momentum but inevitably dates the song. This happened very early on, as evidenced by this performance at Glastonbury in June 2003, just over a year after 18 had been released.

 

The singer with Mony's touring band from 2000 onwards was Diane Charlemagne, a consummate vocalist who sadly passed in 2015. Simple acoustic guitar, synth and violin throughout, but it's all about the voice. Wonderful.

Fast forward to March 2014 and a concert at The Fonda Theatre in Florida. The singer is Mindy Jones, who has frequently collaborated with Moby and here delivers a nuanced and measured performance. 

 

Last May, Moby released his 21st album, Resound NYC, revisiting songs from his back catalogue, orchestral arrangements with a range of guest vocalists. Surprisingly, the beats are back in this version which return some heft to the song, though somewhat at the expense of Marisha Wallace's otherwise sterling attempt. Not that I'd have been able to tell, but apparently that's Nicole Scherzinger providing harmony.

The Famous Davis Sisters' lead is unassailable, but for me it's the live version with Diane Charlemagne all the way.

I Got No Expectations To Pass Through Here Again

Celebrating Mark Lanegan, 25 November 1964 to 22 February 2022.

Mark Lanegan's made a couple of appearances here and I'd always intended to feature a selection from his vast body of music, though never as a posthumous tribute. But, sadly, that became an unavoidable truth on Tuesday when Mark passed on at the age of 57. Too soon, too soon.

There have been a number of excellent posts in the past few days on music blogs that I follow and admire: A Few Good Times In My Life (choice words and videos from Walter); Bagging Area (Swiss Adam's excellent 30-minute mix); and The Vinyl Villain (a stunning Imaginary Compilation Album produced in the few short hours following the news by Jonny The Friendly Lawyer). So, how to follow those?

I'm not going to pretend that I was a fan - or had even heard of - Mark Lanegan from the start. I was largely unmoved by Grunge when it dominated the early 1990s. I was largely immersed in electronica and dance music at the time, with a grudging like of Nine Inch Nails, NIrvana and other guitar-based bands, but I avoided Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, etc. by the proverbial country mile. Therefore, Screaming Trees and Queens Of The Stone Age remained firmly off my radar.

 

In 2007, I bought It's Not How Far You Fall, It's The Way You Land, the second album by Soulsavers, having enjoyed the cinematic sweep of their debut, Tough Guys Don't Dance. That album was predominantly instrumental, with a few songs written with singer Josh Haden. The follow up couldn't have been more different, with Mark Lanegan featuring on the majority of the songs and co-writing nearly half of the album. It remains one of my favourite albums, full stop.

It was not long after that I first heard Who Built The Road, a collaboration with Isobel Campbell and, as I discovered, their second album together. I swiftly bought both, as well as the third and final album, Hawk.

 

At this point, the extent of Mark Lanegan's role as serial collaborator was becoming clear: between 2007 and 2009, I also acquired another Soulsavers album (Broken), the sole album by The Gutter Twins (Lanegan & Greg Dulli) and Future Chaos by Bomb The Bass, featuring Lanegan on the excellent Black River.  

 

Mark Lanegan continued to produce music in subsequent years, including several albums in his own name &/or as Mark Lanegan Band, a mix of self-penned songs and interpretations of others' songs. In commenting on Swiss Adam's mix, fellow blogging legend Echorich commented "Only Johnny Cash sounded more world weary and worn" and he's spot on. Lanegan's rich, earthy baritone, often on the brink of cracking, is so evocative of a life lived hard, of mistakes made, of regrets and hope, of emotion deep, deep, deep into the soul. 

 

I cannot help but be moved whenever hearing Mark Lanegan's voice, but the stories he sings - whether his own or someone else's - have the power to bring me to tears. 

In the days since his passing, I've agonised over today's selection. I wanted to capture the breadth of Mark Lanegan's work, but in doing so, would leave out so many other great examples of his music, his songwriting, his ability to transform and inhabit songs so that they were never mere cover versions, his thirst for stretching himself, ever striving forward.

I've done my best not to duplicate the songs that Walter, Swiss Adam and Jonny The Friendly Lawyer chose for their tributes. There is one exception, in the opener Black River, though I've opted for an equally excellent remix instead. I've also repeated myself by including The Lonely Night, which appeared in my Photek selection back in September, for which I make no apology.

The resulting selection is almost exclusively 21st century, with one exception. There are no songs by Queens Of The Stone Age. I have only a couple of songs by Screaming Trees and I was inclined to leave them off too, but I like their cover of The Velvet Underground's What Goes On and it seemed to fit in it's particular place in the track listing.

 

There are a lot of cover versions (seven in all), taking in the Velvets, The Cure, Nancy Sinatra, Massive Attack and The Gun Club. A stunning cover of The Breaking Hands by Nick Cave and Debbie Harry has been featured elsewhere in the blogosphere, but I think Mark Lanegan and Isobel Campbell's take is right up there with it. A couple of years later, Lanegan was one of a number of artists completing Jeffrey Lee Pierce's unfinished music, producing Desire By Blue River with French singer/songwriter Bertrand Cantat. I made the difficult decision not to include Lanegan's interpretation of Brompton Oratory, even more difficult when I subsequently read Nick Cave's tribute, citing it as his "favorite ever Nick Cave cover". 

 

Hit The City featured in both Swiss Adam's and Jonny's selection, so I've opted for the other song from 2004's Bubblegum to feature a divine duet with PJ Harvey, Come To Me (not a cover of the Björk song).

 

Mark Lanegan's work with Isobel Campbell inevitably makes several appearances, though only one selection from their three albums. Aside from the aforementioned Who Built The Road and The Breaking Hands, I've included a song from 2004's Time Is Just The Same EP, a solo release credited to simply 'Isobel' and featuring - I'm guessing - her first co-write with Lanegan on the second track. The start of a beautiful partnership.

 

I've also featured a trio of Soulsavers songs, two of them from the second album, two of them cover versions. The selection closes with No Expectations, a version of The Rolling Stones' 1968 song that sends a shiver down my spine whenever I hear it, and a perfect example of Mark Lanegan's ability to take a song and surpass the original. 

 

I was listening to this selection whilst writing this post and found that I constantly had to stop what I was doing and listen, just listen.

 

That's the brilliance of Mark Lanegan. Thank you.

 

1) Black River (Gui Borrato Remix): Bomb The Bass ft. Mark Lanegan (2008)

2) What Goes On (Cover of The Velvet Underground): Screaming Trees (1991)

3) Desire By Blue River: Mark Lanegan & Bertrand Cantat (2014)

4) The Wild People (Alastair Galbraith Remix): Mark Lanegan Band (2015)

5) The Lonely Night (Photek Remix By Rupert Parkes): Moby ft. Mark Lanegan & Mindy Jones (2013)

6) Cold Molly (Roman Remains Remix By The Duke Spirit): Mark Lanegan & Duke Garwood (2013)

7) The Breaking Hands (Cover of The Gun Club): Mark Lanegan & Isobel Campbell (2012)

8) Ghosts Of You And Me: Soulsavers ft. Mark Lanegan (2007)

9) Why Does My Head Hurt So?: Isobel Campbell ft. Mark Lanegan (2004)

10) Close To Me (Cover of The Cure): The Separate ft. Mark Lanegan (2012)

11) You Will Miss Me When I Burn (Cover of Palace Brothers): Soulsavers ft. Mark Lanegan & Rosa Agostino (2009)

12) You Only Live Twice (Cover of Nancy Sinatra): Mark Lanegan (2013)

13) Who Built The Road: Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan (2008)

14) Live With Me (Cover of Massive Attack): The Twilight Singers ft. Mark Lanegan (2006)

15) Come To Me: Mark Lanegan Band ft. PJ Harvey (2004)

16) All Misery / Flowers: The Gutter Twins (2008)

17) No Expectations (Cover of The Rolling Stones): Soulsavers ft. Mark Lanegan (2007)

I Got No Expectations To Pass Through Here Again (1:10:43)

Been Tryin' Hard Not To Get Into Trouble

Listening to 4 Hero's remix of Nuyorican Soul sidestepped me into Photek's remix of 4 Hero and so to today's selection. Rupert Parkes began releasing music under numerous aliases in the early 1990s, Photek emerging in 1994 and being the most enduring of these, still in use today. Part of the hideously named genre, intelligent drum and bass, like his contemporaries Roni Size, LTJ Bukem and Goldie, what really appealed to me was the complex rhythms and jazz inflections. As a nod to the latter, a track on Photek's debut album, KJZ, was an acronym for Kirk's Jazz. By the start of the 21st Century, Photek's sound had taken a turn into house and techno, though as this selection highlights, there is an identity and character linking all of Photek's music. I've lost track in the last few years, and I have read that Parkes has subsequently produced music for films, TV and games, his last album release being the soundtrack to EA Games' Need For Speed in 2016.

 

For this selection, I've focused solely on Photek's remixes for other artists. It's great to listen to these in one go, personal favourites being Loose by Therapy?, Destiny by Zero 7, I Miss You by Björk and the one that started this all, Star Chasers by 4 Hero. The remix of Paul Simon was a welcome return in 2018 and one of the few redeeming tracks on the otherwise questionable Graceland: The Remixes album. I hadn't heard Photek's remix of The Faint in 5 years and it struck how well it would sit in a mixtape next to songs from John Grant's latest album, Boy From Michigan, particularly The Rusty Bull or Your Portfolio. And how else to end but with Single by Everything But The Girl? The original version is sublime; Photek's remix provides a similar shiver down the spine. Twenty five years old and still sounding like it could be out right now.

1) The Lonely Night (Photek Remix): Moby ft. Mark Lanegan & Mindy Jones (2013)

2) Destiny (Photek Remix): Zero 7 ft. Sia & Sophie Barker (2001)

3) Alien (Photek Remix): Lamb (1999)

4) Total Job (Remixed By Photek): The Faint (2003)

5) Loose (Photek Remix): Therapy? (1995)

6) Ride (Photek B21 Edit): Lana Del Rey (2012)

7) Lie Down In Darkness (Photek Remix): Moby (2011)

8) All Around The World Or The Myth Of Fingerprints (Photek Remix): Paul Simon (2018)

9) I Miss You (Photek Mix): Björk (1996)

10) Star Chasers (Photek Remix): 4 Hero (1998)

11) Single (Photek Remix): Everything But The Girl (1996)

Been Tryin' Hard Not To Get Into Trouble (57:51)