Laying In A Field Of Tall Grass

Given that I won't do another one of these for about 2 weeks or so (next Friday, I'll be up in Wisconsin without computer access, as my sister is getting married a week from tomorrow), I'll post two songs from the same band, and it's a band that you all know, and you've probably heard the tunes as least once before, but most likely you have never heard the original album versions, but instead the single versions that are almost always on the radio.

War is a band that many probably best know for the song Low Rider, but they had several other quality tunes (at the very least), including two I'll include here.

Spill the Wine was War's first hit and it was done during Eric Burdon's time with the band. I'm sure he wishes that he would not have left the band. It was certainly an odd song (still is) and it being such a big hit can only be explained by the fact that it was a song from '71, where an-obvious-drug trip recap would be loved by a huge throng of people who are fans of drug trips. At least it's very catchy and now you can listen to the full album version; the radio version is almost a minute shorter and a full verse is cut out.

War-Spill The Wine (8.95 MB, 256Kbits/second)

http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/12/28/1667157/WAR%20-%20Spill%20The%20Wine.mp3

The second song is The Cisco Kid, which I did not know until recently was based upon a literary character. All that I knew was that the tune was groovy! It's like how I was familiar with Iron Man, the Sabbath song long before I even heard of the comic book; hey, I don't read comics. Sorry! Anyway, this album version of the song is about 30 seconds longer, and includes longer instrumental sections.

War-The Cisco Kid (4.01 MB, 128Kbits/second)

http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/12/28/1667157/War%20-The%20Cisco%20Kid.mp3

Like I said, I'll be back in about 2 weeks time. Hopefully y'all liked hearing two classic songs from a classic band.

G-L-O-R-I-A

One band that I have not talked about on this blog ever is a great American band known as The Doors. Even though they only were together for a few years before Jim Morrison passed away due to circumstances still uncertain as to this day in Paris in 1971, they put out some great albums and had many great songs. Here's a song from them that you may not have heard of before, but it's a cover of a tune that you probably have heard on an oldies or classic rock radio station in the past.

It is the tune Gloria, originally by Van Morrison and the band Them. You also may have heard the most famous cover of the tune, which was from the band Shadows of Knight. However, The Doors recorded the song also. Many of the lyrics are different, but It was on a live album and yet it was a soundcheck so it's not a live track; it just wasn't recorded in a studio. It was originally on an earlier live album but it was combined with other stuff into the In Concert album.

Now, note that this version of the song is censored. There's a longer version of the tune that edits out some lyrics that you could NOT have on an album in 1971; I presume the longer version is from a bootleg album. You can listen to the longer version here in a YouTube video. It's a very catchy tune and if you like The Doors and haven't heard this from them before, then please download away.

The Doors-Gloria (5.78 MB, 128Kbits/second)

http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/12/28/1667157/The%20Doors%20-%20Gloria.mp3

As usual for me now, I'll be back a week from tonight.

A Stratocaster With A Whammy Bar

First off, with my last upload on this page, I forgot one important detail... why that particular song had meaning for me. I first heard it on my dorm room floor at ISU, as a pal had it on his computer. Well, the reason why that pal enjoyed it was that apparently, on a Chicago radio station at the time, they'd play the same songs on a schedule every morning. Yeah, I don't get it either. Anyhow, Tangerine Speedo was a tune that was on that setlist. Now you know.

Here is something that I was recently inspired to do-out of the blue-even though for awhile now I sometimes am inspired to look for a few of his tunes. I'm talking about the one of a kind musican (or hell, one of a kind person) known as Frank Zappa; thankfully Wikipedia has up a rather extensive biography on his life and his many accomplishments.

What inspired me to bring him up here was the awesome videogame known as Audio Surf. Sure, you have to download a service (free) just to play it, and while the demo is free, the full version is 10 bucks… it's well worth the money. It's a blast. Anyway, it turns out that the most interesting tunes to play on Audio Surf is Zappa songs, as his songs are usually complex so it makes for an interesting time; I know that quite a few Audio Surf users think the same way.

Anyway, up until recently I didn't know much about Zappa except that his idea of naming children is rather frightening and that he was extremely prolific. Aside from Valley Girl I wasn't even familiar with too many of his songs aside from the time I saw Baby Snakes on DVD (it was for rent at a very liberal videostore I used to go to back when I went to college in Illinois) and enjoyed the quirky but cool tunes that strange flick had.

Well, since then I've become more knowledgeable and realized that while not everything Zappa did was to my tastes (let's not even talk about Trout Mask Replica again, which he produced; I mean, let's just not), a lot of it was pretty cool and appealed to my quirky tastes.

Picking out just one song for this is very difficult as there's no really one tune that defines him, he was so experimental and did so many different styles. So, I'll instead pick a song that will probably appeal to the most people who read this. It's the title song to the rock opera album known as Joe's Garage. Usually, "rock opera" and other similar concept albums has me running to the hills to avoid it, but from the songs I've heard from this (I probably should just end up buying it from the store. I wouldn't mind giving money at all to the Zappa estate) it's something that's pretty cool, if a little profane at times.

The title track is all about a garage band that starts to have fame, and it's very catchy. This is the full album version rather than the single version that is more commonly found online. The mysterious voiceover is from The Central Scrutinizer, the figure that enforces laws in a dystopian future, including the banning of music altogether.

Given some of the stuff that's happened since this album was released in 1979 (such as how terrible the economy and many other things have been in the U.S. as of late… let's not talk about gas prices either; also, there's the frightening reality of music censorship, a huge topic in the 80's and since then it's been everpresent, being predicted; last but not least, the mocking of Scientology, a controversial topic that became much more so in recent years), the album has added meaning now.

Frank Zappa-Joe's Garage (5.64 MB, 128Kbits/second)

http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/12/28/1667157/Frank%20Zappa%20-%20Joe%27s%20Garage%20%281%29.mp3

As usual (for now), my next song will be up a week from today.