It's that time of year and, once again, there is a definite slew of Christmas-themed records vying for our attention from all the latest and greatest singers and bands out there.
With that in mind I've ignored the whole lot of them and gone back almost a decade to enjoy 2003's release from Goto80 - a Swedish chiptune musician who works primarily with the Commodore 64 computer (my own personal favourite). Although listed as a 2005 release in his discography, Goto80's cover of Wham!'s 'Last Christmas' was included on the 2003 compilation 'The 8bits of Christmas' from 8bitpeoples, a collection of eight Christmas songs created by artists on a variety of different classic machines (NES, GameBoy, Spectrum, VIC20, etc.).
I've chosen to highlight Goto80's song because it not only gets my nostalgic juices flowing for the Commodore 64, and I also happen to quite like the Wham! original anyway, but because it's a pretty good cover version within the chosen medium. Naturally - considering the limitations of the equipment used - there are no vocals, but the tune progresses nicely from a relatively simple interpretation of the chorus before introducing different elements to vary and fill out the sound. The verses are mostly ignored, but I think that was the right decision to take in this case where voice cannot be included.
All in all, this is an enjoyable and festive song from a highly regarded composer within the chiptune scene and well worth a listen by anyone with a hankering for something a little retro.
Texas duo Zelliack are striving to inject a little soul into our downtrodden lives. Their name might be a little unoriginal and cliched in its source (a portmanteau of the pair's forenames: Zack Ordway and Elliot Coleman) but their music takes jazz's relaxed approach to structure and combines it with a unique concoction of smooth guitar grooves, melodic acrobatics, and vocal playfulness to ensure that what we hear is anything but hackneyed.
There's always a worry that anything experimental might just push our boundaries a little too much; but whilst Zelliack definitely seem to enjoy writing themselves out of any genre-defining pigeon-holes (soul? r&b? progressive rock? jazz?... they cover a lot of ground), they are also very careful to ensure that no second on their EP is superfluous.
Zack's work with the instruments is hard to fault. Whether we are being beautifully sedated in some of the quieter moments or pumped up during the busiest sections, every strum and slap seems to have been chosen with a cunning precision. This guy knows what he's doing, and he's doing it well.
Equally, Elliot shows off his vocal range to glorious effect and does so with no arrogance: it's satisfying to hear him belt out several higher-pitched lines on one song, and then flow flawlessly through his lower range. In fact, some of the key points on the EP are those that push and pull us through pitch and tempo - a flurry of words and beats here, a focussed pause there.
Lyrically there is a charming lack of brevity in Zelliack's words that, importantly, steers well clear of pretentiousness. It seems that they want to say as much as possible in each song and - whilst metaphor and imagery isn't used particularly often - their directness gives the music an honesty which fits perfectly.
This debut EP is full and gratifying, with Zack and Elliot complementing each other in a way that resembles the best moments of Tears For Fear's Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, and with a smooth style that's been profoundly absent until now.
Since the release of Noir Tone in February this year, Zelliack have kept us interested with the release of a further track ("Smoove") as well as covering Michael Jackson's "Baby Be Mine". I hope to hear a great deal more from them in 2013.
Okay, so... just had a big surprise. My intention was to write about this song with reference to certain moments it reminds me of. Yep, just a little nostalgia-spree again. In the moments before writing the first words, I took a look at the Wikipedia page for it just to check the date it was released. Had a little surprise from the first paragraph.
This is a COVER VERSION?!
In all the years that I have loved this song, I assumed that it was written by (or, at the very least, for) Annie Lennox. Turns out that it was originally written and sung by a group from the 1980's called The Lover Speaks, who gained a recording contract with a little help from Lennox's Eurythmics band mate Dave Stewart. The group also toured with The Eurythmics. I can only assume that Annie Lennox heard it enough times to decide she wanted a go at it.
The original version is very mid-80's in all the ways I love and adore in so many songs. I hear similarities to Simple Minds, as well as power-ballad groups like Cutting Crew and Mister Mister. If it had been on one of the Weetabix cassettes that I mentioned in a previous post, and therefore I'd have spent my early years listening to it repeatedly, I'm sure I would have been eagerly spouting facts about the original when Annie Lennox released her cover.
But it wasn't. And I'm not.
I prefer Lennox's version by miles. I always struggle to answer the question, "What's your favourite song?" but this is certainly somewhere on the long list. The introduction alone (a single synth chord before the 'Do be do be's) makes me feel excited for the rest of the song and, as a whole, the song feels a little darker and honest in her version. The mid-section features talk of monsters and sounds of laughing (giving me those 'moment shivers' I talked about in a previous post) . It's... weird, yes, somewhat ethereal, but entirely fitting with the rest of the song.
"I used to have demons, in my room at night. Desire, despair, desire, so many monsters."
And, oh!, one of Annie's final calls of 'You' that hits that higher note: it completes the song for me, somehow.
How on earth do you describe what makes you love a song so much? Lyrically, I have never found it particularly easy to translate and understand yet I've always managed to feel like there's some kind of story going on. The feeling the song gives me is that of fallen relationships, and a difficulty in finding a way to move on.
The original version, personally, just doesn't sound quite so heartfelt. The passion and audible pain that exists in Lennox's cover just isn't present when I hear The Lover Speaks. I apologise to all the fans of the original, and I'm sure they would scream in protest at my disregard for it. Sorry.
Aside from the pure beauty of the song itself when Lennox sings it, her version also reminds me of a couple of things. The first is going to a youth club as an eleven(ish)-year-old, and the song playing on a stereo in the main hall. Somebody went to skip it (probably preferring to find something a little more upbeat and party-appropriate), and asked if anybody minded. I piped up that, yes, I minded. In remembering this specific event, I also end up recalling other moments from spending time at that club: notably having a huge crush on a girl there, and all the silly little feelings that went with that.
Secondly, this song also reminds me of when my sister went and bought me a copy of Lennox's album Medusa. I had bought the single of No More "I Love You's" and played it incessantly, so my sister clearly thought I'd enjoy the rest of the album. So, yep, she bought it for me. And my response when she was about to hand it to me?
"Why did you buy me that? I didn't ask for it, did I?!"
Wow, I was a real brat :)
Needless to say, it was about a decade later when I actually bought the album for myself since, understandably, my sister decided not to give me the gift.
As a final note, this song has given me one extra pleasing surprise today. I was humming it whilst wandering the house and in walked my girlfriend, back from work. She heard me, and began to sing the 'Do be do be do do do... a-aaa' vocals. I very quickly learnt that she loves this song, and loves Annie Lennox. Musical connections like this are important to me, so it makes me very happy indeed.
"Ah, music! A magic beyond all we do here" -JK Rowling (Harry Potter & The Philosopher's Stone)
A friend of mine over at Reverberations and PlugInMusic reminded me of this song a week ago. Not that I'd forgotten about it as such, I just hadn't listened to it recently. The main reason for this is almost certainly because I've not been using my iPod lately - opting for the radio instead (a topic to write about later) - and I invariably end up listening to this song when I shuffle my way through my collection. I usually hit upon it by chance, or when noticing Pulp as I scroll down through the list of artists, and then end up playing it several times in a row (also a topic to write about later).
I don't know when I first heard Disco 2000. My guess is that I probably was aware of it when it first hit the airwaves because I don't feel as though I arrived at it particularly late, but I think I've embraced it a lot more in the last ten years. As with pretty much everything I've talked about in previous posts, there is a certain amount of nostalgia in this song. However, rather than it reminding me of a particular moment of my life, the song instead seems to make me long for something to be specifically nostalgic about. There's a lot in the song that I do connect with and/or remember connecting with (unrequited love and affection, teenage jealousy, lost friendship, etc.), but I cannot say that I've ever felt as though I will one day meet up with somebody I was once very close with and have some rekindling of desire. And that's not just because I'm happily with someone now, anyway. I just don't have that kind of personal history; at least not to the full extent that the song discusses.
"Let's all meet up in the year 2000 Won't it be strange when we're all fully grown Be there, 2'o'clock, by the fountain down the road."
I don't have a crush I've been clinging onto for years, waiting to see them once again. I never chuckled to myself how things might be so very different in the future. And, because I went to a single-sex school for most of my teenage years, there wasn't much opportunity for me to be enraged by my friends fooling around with the girl I longed for in school... there were no girls.
So how can I get nostalgic about something when it doesn't seem as though I can relate to it?
"Deborah do you recall? Your house was very small, with woodchip on the wall. When I came around to call, You never noticed me at all."
I guess it's... hmm... empathetic nostalgia, perhaps? I can understand what Jarvis Cocker is singing about, even if the specifics don't match my own past, and I can get wistful about 'Deborah' even though she doesn't exist to me.
Sure, it's not totally unrelated. There are some links. I've liked people that have thought nothing of me, and I've watched people become close to a girl I've desired. But I guess I feel as though Disco 2000 succeeds in getting me to remember things that, actually, never happened. I may as well have fallen for 'Deborah' when I was at school because I feel that angst as I sing along.
Incidentally, none of the above is why my friend mentioned the song. She just wanted to know what 'woodchip' was. In the process of explaining, she asked whether I had heard Nick Cave's version of the song. I hadn't, even though it turns out I own it.
It's quite a different sound. I'm a big fan of taking a fast-paced song and trying to slow it down (hence trying to do a couple myself), and that is what Cave has done with the song. It's a nice enough version in my opinion, and he's typically nonchalant in his vocals, but I guess I just don't get the same feeling from it - and I miss that. I don't really get any feeling at all from it. It is, as I say, "nice enough".
Keane (a favourite band of mine) also did a cover of Disco 2000, and played it safe with a straight cover. I like Keane, their version sounds good, but still... I just don't feel the same way about it. Without Jarvis, I guess I just don't get the same kick out of the song.
So, Pulp all the way for Disco 2000.
Final thought: Apparently most of the song was based on true events except, according to Cocker, "The only bit that isn't true is the woodchip wallpaper".
"You are the music while the music lasts" -T.S.Eliot
