Swingin' Medallions – “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love)” (1966)

She loved me so long

And she loved me so hard

I finally passed out in her front yard 

If you’re a regular reader of my wildly successful little blog, you already know that this year’s “28 Records in 28 Days” will introduce the first (and perhaps only) class of inductees into my brand-new 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” COVER RECORDS HALL OF FAME.

(I see you shiver with antici- . . . -pation!)

Simply stated, a cover record is a recording of a song that has been previously recorded by a different artist.

That definition is overly simplistic, of course.  If you don’t believe that, you need to read the 2022 book A Philosophy of Cover Songs, by Professor P. D. Magnus.  (If Magnus had read the previous 2 or 3 lines, he’d know that he should have titled the book A Philosophy of Cover Records.)

Magnus spends over 125 pages defining and discussing cover records.  “How is that possible?” you might be asking.  Read the book and you’ll become a believer – it’s an amazing piece of work.

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Magnus’s book quotes Theodore Gracyk, who had this to say about covers:

Since the 1960s, the concept of the cover . . . normally refers to a communicative act of “covering.”  The cover record or performance is a version of an existing musical work.   However, it is more than a version.  It is a version that refers back to a particular performer’s arrangement and interpretation of a particular song. 

I think it’s safe to assume that each of the artists who recorded the cover versions that I’m featuring this month were aware of the original records that they were covering.

A cover may be quite different than the original.  In fact, Magnus says that a true cover “contrasts with the original.”  I will later explain why I think the best covers contrast sharply with their respective originals.  

At the same time, a cover is clearly the same song as the original.  It’s not so different as to be something else than the original entirely. 

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Magnus points out a number of tricky questions that can arise when you’re discussing covers.

For example, the first recording of “Let It Be” to be released was Aretha Franklin’s.  The Beatles’ version was released a few months later.  

But it’s absurd to call the Beatles’ record a “cover.”  The Beatles wrote the song, recorded a demo of the song, and sent the demo to Franklin.  If anything, she was covering their record – it just so happened that her version was released to the public first.

Also, there are covers that simply imitate the original recording – audio photocopies, as it were – which are sometimes called “jackal recordings.”  (In the 1960s, there were companies that released covers that were near-perfect imitations of the originals.  The goal was to attract buyers who didn’t care that they were getting an ersatz copy as long as the copy sounded almost exactly the same as the original – at least to unsophisticated listeners – and cost a little less.)

Our newest hall of fame doesn’t include any such records.  The covers in that hall of fame are clearly distinguishable from the originals – but also recognizable as the same songs.  

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It’s interesting that most of cover recordings I’m featuring this February were recorded by artists of a different race than the artist who did the original recording.  For example, we have covers of Motown songs by Creedence Clearwater Revival and Vanilla Fudge.

That may be because I like covers that are very different from the originals, and black and white artists in the 1960s and 1970s usually had very different musical styles.

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The original version of “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love)” was recorded by Dick Holler and the Holidays in 1963.  (Holler later wrote “Abraham, Martin, and John” and co-wrote “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron.”)

I had never heard the Holidays’ recording of “Double Shot” until a few days ago.  But I’ve always loved the Swingin’ Medallions cover, which peaked at #17 on the Billboard “Hot 100” in 1966.

The two versions are not entirely dissimilar, but the Swingin’ Medallions’ cover prominently features a Farfisa organ and is much more loosey-goosey.  It sounds like it was recorded live after the band had knocked down a few cocktails.

Click here to listen to the original recording of “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love”) by Dick Holler and the Holidays.

Click here to listen to the Swingin’ Medallions’ cover of that song. 

Click here to buy that record from Amazon.

Personal Trainer – "Key of Ego" (2022)

Give me more baritone

Pass my testosterone

This year’s “28 Records in 28 Days” will introduce the first (and perhaps only) class of inductees into my brand-new 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” COVER RECORDS HALL OF FAME.

I originally named that hall of fame the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” COVER SONGS HALL OF FAME.  I’ve changed it because it recently struck me that I’ve been wrong to talk about songs on my wildly successful little blog when I’m really writing about recordings.

For the last few months, I’ve been trying to use song only when I’m talking specifically about a songwriter’s work, and use record when I’m talking about the final recording – which is most of the time.

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After all, the song is merely step #1 of a recording.  There are two other key elements of a recording: the arrangement and the performance.

What I mean by performance (step #3 of a recording) should be obvious – it refers to the actual sounds produced by everyone who sings and plays instruments on the record.  

If you’re not familiar with the term arrangement, it refers to the elaboration of the bare bones of a song – the notes the songwriter has written down on paper – through the arranger’s choices about instrumentation, tempo, and so on.  It’s step #2 of a recording.

(Actually, it’s neither)

Many people focus on the song or the performance – especially the singer’s performance.  But I’ve come to believe that it’s neither the singer nor the song that’s the most important element of a record – it’s the arrangement.

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A song is somewhat analogous to a movie script, while a recording is somewhat analogous to a finished film.  The script may provide the essential plot and tone of a movie, but the final movie also depends on the actors, and the cinematography, and the musical accompaniment, and the editing, and so on.

A good script is neither necessary nor sufficient for a good movie – although it certainly helps.  (It’s not hard to turn a good script into a bad movie.)    

Likewise, a good song doesn’t guarantee that you will end up with a good record, and it’s possible to make a good record even when the song is nothing special.  The arrangement and performance are just as important as the song.

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Now that you know what a record is, we can define what a cover record is – and that’s exactly what we’ll do in the next 2 or 3 lines.

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“Key of Ego” was released by Personal Trainer – a seven-member Dutch band – almost exactly one year ago.

Personal Trainer

Here’s what Far Out magazine said about it:

“Key of Ego” also features droll lead vocals, skittering drums, heavy bass lines, quasi-DJ scratches, and lyrics that celebrate the excitement of bubble gum.  It’s a lot to take in, and I don’t think it would be humanly possible for the band to have their collective tongues stuck further into their respective cheeks.

And yet, I kind of love this song. I had a similar experience when I first heard Wet Leg’s “Chaise Longue”: I hated it at first, got really turned off by the playful elements that I found unfunny, and got so curiously put off that I had to listen to it again just to make sure I was actually hearing this sh*t.  And then I listened to it again, and then again, and again.

I had a different experience with both “Key of Ego” and “Chaise Longue” – I loved them both the first time I heard them on Drew Carey’s “Friday Night Freak Out” show on Sirius/XM’s “Underground Garage” channel.  (That’s unusual for me.  Most of the time, it takes several listenings for a song to grow on me.)

Click here to listen to “Key of Ego.”

Click here to buy the song from Amazon.

Walker Hayes – "Fancy Like" (2021)

My girl is bangin'

She's so low maintenance

My fifth-born grandson surprised me a few weeks ago by suddenly singing “American Pie” while we were in the car.

Apparently, his dad has been crooning that classic to him as part of their bedtime ritual, and his sponge-like little brain quickly soaked up the lyrics.

When he came out with “Did you write the Book of Love/And do you have faith in God above/If the Bible tells you so,” I didn’t immediately recognize what song he was singing.  I thought it must be a song he had learned in Sunday school.

An Applebee's Oreo shake

But the penny finally dropped when he got to “Them good ol’ boys/Were drinking whiskey and rye.”  (Doh!) 

He doesn’t know every word of “American Pie,” but he knows more of the lyrics than I do.

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This week, he and his brother sang a different song in the car.

I had no idea what it was, but the boys’ parental units told me it was Walker Hayes’s 2021 country single, “Fancy Like” – which is also known as “the Applebee’s song” because it name-drops Applebee’s in the chorus.

I’m not sure if Walker Hayes was inspired by “(We’re Not) The Jet Set,” which was a 1974 hit for George Jones and Tammy Wynette.  But both songs feature working-class couples who are so in love that it doesn’t matter that they can’t afford fancy food and drink.

From “(We’re Not) The Jet Set”:

No we’re not the jet set

We're the old Chevrolet set

Our steak and martinis

Is draft beer with weenies

From “Fancy Like”:

Don’t need no Tesla to impress her

My girl is happy rollin’ on a Vespa

Yeah, we fancy like Applebee’s on a date night

Got some Bourbon Street steak with the Oreo shake

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Apparently Walker Hayes actually takes his wife to a Nashville Applebee’s on their date nights.  (I wonder where he takes his side chick?)

Not surprisingly, Applebee’s jumped on “Fancy Like” like a big dog, and created a series of TV ads featuring the song.

The restaurant chain even brought back its Oreo shake, which had been removed from its menu during the pandemic because it was "too complicated" to make. 

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Click here to listen to watch the official “Fancy Like” music video.  (I wish I had recorded my grandsons' rendition to share with you, but I didn't.)

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.

Richard and the Young Lions – "You Can Make It" (1967)

It happened before 

It can happen again 

But it ain’t happened 

Since I don’t know when 

As I previously noted, 2 or 3 lines has moved into new digs.

No expense was spared in our start-of-the-art world headquarters building.  For example, we don’t have ordinary toilets – we have the Toto toilet:

If you haven’t heard of the Toto, here’s what Bon Appétit magazine had to say about it:

The Toto has a range of features you never thought your toilet needed: heated seats, a remote control bidet (with adjustments for water pressure), a lid that automatically raises when you enter the bathroom, and a deodorizer that neutralizes any unpleasant scents after your visit. In Japan, where Toto was founded, the Toto brand is the norm in many houses and businesses. 

The Toto will squirt you from the front or the rear.  I’ve only tried the rear option – I think the front option is designed for the fairer sex, although I don’t know that for sure.

The Toto control panel

I have learned one thing the hard way:  you want to adjust the temperature so it’s not too hot and not too cold.  (A shot of cold water to the nether regions is not the most pleasant experience!)  

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Richard and the Young Lions (who formed in Newark in 1965) were one-hit wonders – that is, if you can call a record that peaked at #99 on the Billboard “Hot 100” a hit.  (To be fair, “Open Up Your Door” was a #1 regional hit in Detroit, Cleveland, and Salt Lake City.)

“You Can Make It” was the group’s third and final single before disbanding.  To say it sounds somewhat similar to “Open Up Your Door” is an understatement.

Click here to listen to “You Can Make It.”

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.

Roxy Music – "Just Another High" (1975)

Maybe you’re thinking of me

Well, I don’t know, now do I?

I have big news for you, boys and girls: 2 or 3 lines is all moved into its posh new digs! 

Here’s a photo of our new start-of-the-art world headquarters building:

To attract and retain the first-class team of researchers, writers, editors, photographers, web designers, and others who produce my wildly successful little blog, you have to offer a whole host of amenities.  

For starters, there’s a luxurious club room where the staff can create while recreating – in other words, where staffers can go to goof off while pretending to be working:

We also have inviting coffee break/kitchen areas:

A employee pool is de rigueur for tech companies these days – no Silicon Valley startup would dream of getting from early stage to venture-funded stage without having a nice pool for its employees:

And while those Silicon Valley b*stards can offer much better weather than Rockville, Maryland can, they can’t offer a full-size skating rink:

While game rooms, swimming pools, and skating rinks help make 2 or 3 lines an attractive place to work, the big draw for the majority of our staffers is the chance to not only be part of my wildly successful little blog, but also learn at the feet of the man who has been called “the Elon Musk of pop music bloggers.”  (Yes, I’m talking about little ol’ moi!)

And if that’s not enough, our new building has one other very special feature that I’ll tell you about in the next 2 or 3 lines.

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Today’s featured song is the final track on the 1975 Roxy Music album, Siren.

The babe portraying the siren on the album’s cover is none than supermodel Jerry Hall:  

Jerry Hall and Bryan Ferry at
the Siren album cover shoot

While Jerry was Roxy frontman Bryan Ferry’s girlfriend at that time, she kicked Bryan to the curb soon thereafter and shacked up with Mick Jagger – by whom she whelped four children.  

In 2016, when Jerry was 60, she married media mogul Rupert Murdoch – who was 85 at the time.  Presumably Murdoch gave her beaucoup bucks when they divorced six years later.  (Another example of a man letting the little head tell the big head what to do.)

Click here to listen to “Just Another High.”

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.

Fleetwood Mac – "Oh Well (Part 1)" (1969)

Don't ask me what I think of you

I might not give the answer

That you want me to

Julian Barnes is one of the most highly regarded British novelists alive today.  He’s taken home more literary prizes than you can shake a stick at – including the uberprestigious Man Booker Prize (now simply called the Booker Prize), which he won in 2011 for The Sense of the Ending. 

Julian Barnes

I first became acquainted with Barnes about 20 years ago, when I was in the midst of a Madame Bovary obsession – Gustave Flaubert’s masterpiece, which is arguably the greatest of all 19th-century novels.  (That’s saying something given all the great novelists who were writing in that century – including Dickens, Dostoevsky, George Eliot, Henry James, Melville, Trollope, Tolstoy, Twain, and Zola, just to name a few.)

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I first read Madame Bovary in print, then listened to the book on CDs, then watched the 1991 Claude Chabrol movie adaptation (which starred Isabelle Huppert).  

I then moved on to Flaubert’s other works – including the novel Sentimental Education and Three Tales, which included a story titled “A Simple Heart.”

The main character in “A Simple Heart” was an unmarried, childless female servant who has a pet parrot.  Flaubert apparently had a stuffed parrot sitting on his desk when he was writing “A Simple Heart” – at least that’s what Julian Barnes says in his 1984 book, Flaubert’s Parrot, which is a novel about a retired English widower who becomes obsessed with Flaubert.  

Once I discovered Flaubert’s Parrot, of course I had to read it. 

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Flaubert’s Parrot is a very odd duck.  It’s mostly fiction, but also includes quite a bit of biographical information about Flaubert and a fair amount of literary criticism to boot.  (The penultimate chapter takes the form of a faux college essay exam on the material presented in the previous chapters of the book.)

Whether the stuffed parrot really existed or is a fragment of Barnes’s imagination is something I’m not sure about.

Barnes’s most recent novel, Elizabeth Finch, is just as odd as Flaubert’s Parrot. 

Its first third of the book is about the narrator’s obsession with the titular character, a spinster English professor who was a great influence on him.  The next part is a biographical essay about Julian the Apostate, the last non-Christian Roman emperor, who ruled for less than two years before dying in the Battle of Samarra in 363.

I haven’t read the final third of the book yet, but I hope Barnes explains what the hell all the Julian the Apostate stuff is about.

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Early in the book, a fellow student of the narrator’s named Linda asks him for advice.  Specifically, Linda asks him if she should ask the professor for advice concerning her love life.  The narrator finds Linda’s idea somewhat bizarre – Elizabeth Finch is a somewhat forbidding presence, and has never uttered a word about her own relationships or said anything else that would make a reasonable person conclude she would be open to dispensing advice about relationships to one of her students – but he doesn’t tell her so:

Linda came to seek my advice. . . . But I soon realized that Linda didn’t really want my input; or rather, she wanted my input as long as it coincided with what she’d already decided to do.  Some people are like that; perhaps most.  So, to make her feel better, I shifted my position and approved her intention.

I think most people are like that.  I’m probably like that – are you like that?

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I first featured “Oh Well (Part 1)” in 2020.  The lines from that song quoted above are the Madame Flaubert of rock lyrics – I can’t think of better ones.

Click here to listen to “Oh Well (Part 1).” 

Click here to buy the song from Amazon.

Kinks – "Something Better Beginning" (1965)

I held your hand and I sighed 

Is this the start of another heart break? 

Or something better beginning? 

This is the first 2 or 3 lines post of the new year, which is going to be full of change for me.

I’m hoping that today marks something better beginning for me.  But when you make a big change in your life, you never know how it will turn out.  

As the old Russian proverb says, “Maybe rain, maybe snow – maybe yes, maybe no.”

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It is simply inconceivable to me that anyone who loves movies would say that Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles – a 1975 film directed by the late Chantal Akerman when she was only 25 years old – was the greatest film of all time.  But that’s exactly what 1639 film critics, programmers, curators, archivists and academics recently did when they voted it to the #1 spot on the British Film Institute’s “100 Greatest Films of All Time” list. 

I don’t mind that the movie is slow-paced and almost entirely devoid of action.  I became interested in Jeanne and her life, as mundane and banal as it seemed.  (I think people are inherently interesting – even people who are unremarkable and “lead lives of quiet desperation,” to quote Thoreau.)

And I give credit to the director for coming up with the idea of making a very long movie showing a woman going through her daily routine in what often feels like real time.  

But Jeanne Dielman is better characterized as a concept for a movie rather than a movie.  It eschews so many of the creative elements that come together to make a movie a great movie.

There are no camera movements – the camera is entirely stationary throughout the course of a shot –  and the editing is rudimentary at best.  There’s no music in the movie, and virtually no dialogue – I’m guessing that you could fit all the lines uttered by the actors in Jeanne Dielman on ten pages.

Jeanne Dielman preparing veal cutlets

Click here to watch a four-and-a-half-minute scene of the movie’s titular character preparing veal cutlets for dinner.  It’s quite representative of the movie as a whole: there are no words or music . . . no camera movement or editing . . . just four and a half minutes of a middle-aged woman prepping veal cutlets.

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As I pointed out in the previous post, the first of the three days depicted in Jeanne Dielman are uneventful.

The second day doesn’t go quite as smoothly – Jeanne’s usual routine is disrupted a bit.  Here’s how writer-director Jayne Loader summarized the action of the second hour of the film:

If the first day is a usual day when everything goes smoothly, we see that the second day throws Jeanne slightly off balance. Because a client stays longer than usual, Jeanne burns the potatoes that were cooking on the stove.  With her hair slightly mussed, she wanders from room to room with the pot of burned potatoes, wondering what to do with them. 

It is a powerful moment in the film, the first time we have ever seen her lose her composure or perform an action that is not completely efficient. 

Because Jeanne has no potatoes left in the house, she must go again to market.  Dinner is late.  And although she is quick to reassert the family routine by forcing her son to take their nightly walk around the block, although he would prefer to read, [her son] Sylvan destroys her day further by embarrassing questions and confessions about sex. 

Jeanne Dielman peeling potatoes

If you weren’t paying close attention, day three might not seem much different than day two.  But the wheels have come completely off the bus.  From Jayne Loader’s review:

The third day is even more disrupted.  Jeanne fails to button her robe completely and gets shoe polish on her cuff while polishing Sylvan's shoes.  Both precision and efficiency are eroded.  She moves in and out of rooms turning their lights on and off as she goes, with no idea of what to do once in them.  

She arrives too early at the post office and grocery and is unable to locate a button for Sylvan's coat at the several shops she visits.  She washes her dishes over and over and kneads a meatloaf interminably.  When her coffee tastes strange, she throws it out and makes a new pot but finds she cannot drink even that.  

At the restaurant where she usually goes after shopping, her usual waitress has already gotten off, and a stranger occupies her favorite seat.  It is an older, business-like woman with short hair and no makeup who smokes and is engrossed in her work.  Traditional, feminine Jeanne is literally displaced by a new kind of woman.  

At the shops Jeanne makes an attempt to talk to the sales people about her family.  Previously she had been pleasantly formal to them.  She even tries for the first time to play with the baby she sits for, but it cries whenever she picks it up. 

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About three hours into the movie, things really fall apart.

Jeanne welcomes a paying customer into her bedroom on each of the first two days of the movie, but we don’t her undressing or having sex with those men.  (You see her spread a towel on her bed each time – in hopes of preventing a wet spot on the coverlet? – and you see her accept payment from the men as they are leaving.  But that’s it.)

But on the third day, the audience is admitted to the bedroom to see Jeanne’s client on top of her, engaged in what Alex in A Clockwork Orange called “the old in-out.”

(SPOILER ALERT!  I’m about to reveal exactly what happens at the end of Jeanne Dielman!) 

Jeanne doesn’t look happy during her rogering – she throws her head from side to side and grimaces.  But eventually you figure out that her expressions are not indications that she is disgusted by her client, but rather that she is becoming sexually excited to the point of having a powerful orgasm – despite his utter lack of interest in satisfying her.

Jeanne Dielman nearing “la petite mort”

The scene showing her gradually approaching an orgasmic state and then finally achieving it is astonishing.  At first, the depiction of her having intercourse with her once-a-week client couldn’t be more mechanical.  I assumed she was gritting her teeth and counting the minutes until her partner finished his business and left, but I was very, very wrong.

A few minutes after they finish, we see Jeanne sitting at her dressing table while her paramour is resting in her bed.  Suddenly, she grabs a pair of scissors and stabs him in the neck until he is dead.

*     *     *     *     *

I don’t know what to make of that scene.   

I probably would have ended the movie when Jeanne achieved her utterly unexpected orgasm.  Delphine Seyrig – the actress who portrays Jeanne – turns in an acting tour de force in that scene.  And the fact that Jeanne somehow achieves an orgasm in spite of the circumstances gives the viewer plenty to ponder.

Instead, the director has Jeanne inexplicably commit an act of shocking violence.  

I didn’t buy it.

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Jeanne Dielman is an interesting and original movie.  But it is not the greatest film of all time – no way, no how.

Its ascension to the #1 spot on the BFI is mostly attributable to the fact that the BFI invited hundreds of woke new voters to participate in this year’s “Greatest Films” poll, as legendary writer/director Paul Schrader has pointed out:

The sudden appearance of Jeanne Dielman in the number one slot undermines the poll's credibility. It feels off, as if someone had put their thumb on the scale. . . . By expanding the voting community and the point system this year’s poll reflects not a historical continuum but a politically correct rejiggering.  Ackerman’s film is a favorite of mine, a great film, a landmark film but its unexpected number one rating does it no favors.  Jeanne Dielman will from this time forward be remembered not only as an important film in cinema history but also as a landmark of distorted woke reappraisal.

One British critic confirmed Schrader’s theory when he explained his vote for Jeanne Dielman in these words: “It’s high time a woman won.”

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“Something Better Beginning” is the final track on the Kinks’ second album, Kinda Kinks, which was released in 1965.

Like most of the better Kinks’ songs, “Something Better Beginning” was written by Ray Davies, who was a much more thoughtful lyricist than Lennon or McCartney.  

Click here to listen to “Something Better Beginning.”

Click here to buy the recording from Amazon.