Dwight’s linking of this piece on accordions got me listening to my favorite album featuring accordions, Paul Simon’s Graceland, one of the all time great albums. I was vaguely aware that a 25th Anniversary edition had come out, and poking around online I find that a documentary on the album had come out last year, all of which is available online.
If you like the album, ths documentary is well worth your time.
There’s still some Sunday left, so here’s Center of the Sun again with “Home”.
It’s taking me some time to catalog those signed Jack Vance book and do my taxes, so here’s a musical oddity: a Jordanian band covering Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” in Arabic. Enjoy!
Yet another cover, this one UK’s Stumbleine covering Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You.”
All These Fallen Trees sounds a bit more post-rock than Shoegaze, but “God Created Earth, We Created Heaven” hits a sweet mellow spot between Midsummer and Explosions in the Sky.
I saw this on John Skipp’s Facebook page, and it came up at the SDC, so despite it already having 3 million hits, here’s two guys in a pizza parlor doing the best cover of Toto’s “Africa” you’ll hear, well, probably ever.
Mike Massie seems to have done a lot of other impressive covers, like this one of U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”:
Or this one of Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb”:
And even Genesis’ “Home By The Sea”:
Indeed, it’s hard to go through this guy’s YouTube list and not find a great cover version.
Want to feel old? “Africa” came out in 1982, or 32 years ago. Go back 32 years before “Africa” and “Rock Around the Clock” was still 5 years away…
A Shoegaze cover of The Beatles’ “Across the Universe”?
Yep.
Would you believe that Japan’s Meeks has done an entire album of Shoegaze Beatles covers called Beatless?
For your Sunday dose of Shoegaze, here’s Australian shoegaze band The Dunes (sometimes spelled TheDunes) with “Post Office Rock,” another entry in the “Damn, waltz-time Shoegaze sounds really good” sweepsteaks. (See also: Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You” and Auburn Lull’s “Arc of an Outsider.”)
I really am on a Slowdive cover kick. Skies of Ember is a Filipino band, and although it says so nowhere in the title or description, this video is actually a live instrumental cover of Slowdive’s “Catch the Breeze.”
I dreamed I was in the process of buying a bank. One customer I knew was telling me she was going to sue me, even though I didn’t even own the bank yet. I think she was doing it out of spite.
Then I was riding in a car with someone I think wanted to sell some sort of service to my bank. While we drove I was worried about what level of fractional reserve the bank should have in these tough economic times. (Yes, I dreamt about fractional reserve banking; I’m just a wild and crazy guy). But then the guy driving drove up and over an unfinished overpass, despite my warning, and we landed with a crash in a closed Target parking lot at night.
I was walking along after that, and I had to go into a convenience store to use the bathroom (yes, one of those dreams), but I was worried my dog would run off while I was inside.
Inside it was more like a hotel or bank lobby, and when I went into the restroom, it was some sort of cave (more like a video game cave than a real one).
For some reason, Michael Jackson was holding a ridiculously long antique wooden rifle on me, something like 15-20 feet long, saying he wanted to die as a woman and as a defender of the Alamo. (I guess he was channeling Phil Collins here.)
The gun was so close to my face that I swept the barrel aside with my left hand while I pulled my own gun out of my pocket with my right. But I couldn’t fire it because there was a beef jerky packet stuck to it that prevented operating the trigger.
Meanwhile, Michael Jackson had turned into a friend of mine, and not only was the rifle he holding normal sized, but it turned out to be made of beef jerky packets connected together in the shape of a gun as well.
Then I woke up.