2018 Remnants

I finally acquired the last couple of albums from 2018 that I had not heard before my deadline.  One of those ended up making this top 5 list, and the other was awful.

5.  Heart of Gold (Neil Young cover) – Charles Bradley

Charles bradley reminds me a lot of James Brown.  The difference is, Bradley didn’t achieve fame until later in life.  I first heard him on a Nevermind 20th anniversary compilation called “Newermind”.  He covered “Stay Away” in much the same cadence as he’s doing in this song.  Bradley died of stomach cancer in late 2017, but this is from an album of previously unreleased material that came out in 2018.

/

 

4.  Round Too Long-  Robbie Fulks and Linda Gail Lewis

Robbie Fulks came out of nowhere to have my favorite remnant song of 2016, “America is a hard religion”.  This is a more fun song, talking about how they feel like they’ve been around forever, seen it all, and how the young upstarts don’t even know how good things are.

3.  Racists (acoustic)-  Anti-flag

I thought this song was spot-on when I first heard it, but it seems even more timely now in light of recent current events.

2.  1950-  King Princess

I’m so glad I worked so hard to find this song.  I heard of it on some end of year list and I’d never heard of the song nor the artist.  It’s a song about being absolutely head over heals in love with somebody but them not returning the affection.  The fact that the artist is also singing about LGBTQ relationships from a bygone era makes it all the more interesting.

1.  One (U2/Metallica cover)-  Chris Cornell

Last hear, a career retrospective was released, featuring some of Cornell’s work from every era of his career.  This is from his solo era, when he went on an acoustic tour and ultimately released several of those songs as an album.  “One” was previously unreleased.  When I first heard the song come through my headphones, I was thinking “oh, wow, he’s covering U2”, but then the lyrics come in and they’re the words from the Metallica song of the same name.  Later, I watched a video and he also said that the third most popular song with that title was by Three Dog Night…

“Blew” EP

With the exception of the nigh-impossible to find “Love Buzz” single, I have just completed my Nirvana vinyl collection.  I found a copy of the 1989 “Blew” EP on ebay.co.uk with a buy it now option.  This came just hours after I lost a bidding war on ebay.de.  The price ended up being about the same, shipping and handling included, and I didn’t have to sweat out the days of waiting to bid.

I’m excited to get my copy in the mail.  I now have every 12″ vinyl released by Nirvana from Bleach through Unplugged in New York.  Plus the “Sliver” and “Pennyroyal Tea” singles and the No Alternative compilation.

The NIN, Lil Nas X connection

So, I ready the other day in the June issue of Rolling Stone that the main beat for the smash hit “Old Town Road” was taken from an unauthorized Nine Inch Nails banjo sample.  Being a big NIN fan, it got me thinking…”what song”?

Turns out it’s 34 Ghosts 4, which was released on the instrumental album Ghosts and distributed under creative commons.  However, creative commons does not mean that anybody can take the music and use it to make their own money off of it.

So, the person who took the beat may be in legal jeopardy, Lil Nas X recently signed to Columbia records, and NIN may want to be recovering some royalties from the track, and in the mean time, it has made Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross producers on the biggest hit of summer 2019.

The relevant loop comes in right around the 1:00 mark of the track:

For those of you who may not know, the track “Old Town Road” began it’s climb to the top of the charts after it was kicked off the Billboard Country Singles charts for “not having any of the hallmarks of the genre”.  It then got picked up by “top 40” radio and has been at the #1 position on the singles charts for 12 straight weeks.  It also got a boost when Billy Ray Cyrus (now more commonly known as “Miley’s dad”) agreed to sing a verse on a remix and record a music video.

It would not surprise me if this song won a bunch of awards at next years Grammy’s, if for no other reason than it is pretty much unclassifiable.

Unknown Pleasures

Dear Che-rist, how have I not heard this album before!

 

I was at Seattle punk record shop Singles Going Steady last week and picked it up, thinking I already had it on itunes.  Apparenlty, I only had the greatest hits, but this album is fan-effing-tastic.