Tonight whilst working - yes, WORKING - I am mostly listening to the free disk from Mojo with covers of Ray Davies/The Kinks: fine wordsmithery and tracks reinterpreted.
I've also been listening to the new Word magazine compilation, which is also full of covers: there's a laid-back version of the classic Buckley Snr track "Song to the Siren", so beautifully recorded by This Mortal Coil; there's also a rather nice version of the Travelling Wilburys song "Handle with Care" that opened their first album (the original of which I loved for how it drew out George Harrison's Liverpool accent on "care" by instead singing "cur").
4 comments:
I have always liked Ray Davies and the Kinks !
Lisa recommends the "fine wordsmithery" of some group called "The Kinks". Because I trust Lisa implicitly, I went to 'Google' and drew down the first lyric in the list from a song entitled "Act Nice and Gentle":
"You don't need no fancy clothes
Where'd you get them, goodness knows?
Just show some civility.
Act nice, act nice and gentle to me.
I don't need no luxuries,
As long as you are understanding,
I'm not difficult to please.
Act nice, act nice and gentle to me.
Well I'm the kind of guy who likes
To take you as I find you
So throw away those false eyelashes and,
Act nice, act nice, baby.
Come on baby, hold my hand.
Come on baby, understand, you gotta
Act nice, act nice and gentle to me.
Act nice, act nice and gentle to me.
Come on baby, hold my hand.
Come on baby, understand, you gotta
Act nice, act nice and gentle to me.
Act nice, act nice and gentle to me."
So, eat your heart out, Cole Porter; and Johnie Mercer, take a jump!
I intended to try a few more 'lyrics' from 'The Kinks' but somehow the will-power just drained away ... so I reached for the Laphroaig instead.
Thoroughly uneccessary & pointlessly mean Kinks bashing by David Duff; I ain't a particularly huge Kinks fan but I can't imagine why anybody would be feel compelled to post such a bizarre, sour attack on their lyrics. As it happens, Ray Davies was capable of sensitive, witty, well-obsereved lyricism, but that's beside the point. Every fool knows that rock 'n' roll lyrics don't have to be Keats, they just gotta sound good; "Awopbopaloombopabopbamboom" is genius to equal anything Porter wrote.
It wasn't an attack, I was simply providing you all with an example of what Lisa called "fine wordsmithery". I thought you'd all be grateful! Honestly, there's no pleasing some people ...
But at least I got something out of this exchange. I shall treasure Lisa's neologism, "wordsmithery"; even if the full impact of Paul's literary insight, summed up in his immortal phrase,'"Awopbopaloombopabopbamboom" is genius to equal anything Porter wrote', is something I can only face with the help of yet another slug of Laphroaig.
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