The other day, Julia Phillips nominated me to post 5 songs in 5 days and I RUDELY ignored it (sorry Julia!)....well here we are a few days later, and Im finally attempting to do the thing with the thing! Ive decided to go for all time favourites rather than stuff that I might happen to be listening to now. The first one is by Mercury Rev (Who are named after Freddie Mercury and a man called Trevor, really!). I first heard this song on new years eve 98/99. It had been out for a couple of months, I was 14 and Emily Jones, understandably pretty pleased with its existence, was playing parts of the album in the living room. Having at that point only listened, albeit quite incessantly, to four bands (The Beatles, The Animals, The Kinks and Talking Heads), it made my mind explode with majestic glory! This song comes from a very magical/shit point in the bands career. They werent making any cash, they had no management and they were certain that they were going to split up, so they went nuts and did an album full of stuff that *they* wanted to do, regardless of how it might be received. As it happened, it spawned 3 UK Top 40 singles. Trivia fact: The album features the sax of The Bands Garth Hudson and the drums of The Bands Levon Helm....I think one of them might have shared a hair dresser with Levon Helm so they just went and asked him! Mr Helm recorded his drums on Opus 40 during a snowstorm. Second trivia fact, from an interview with Lead Singer John Donahue: It was Amy Helm, Levon’s daughter, who whistled on the outro of “Opus 40”. She gained a certain whistling fame from this and went on to whistle on a burger chain TV ad which, she claimed, made her hundreds of thousands of dollars. This song isnt Opus 40 though; Its Tonite it Shows. Last fact: The album was mastered onto 35mm magnetic film.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 21:39:24 +0000
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