Scala & Kolacny Brothers -- "I Touch Myself" (2002)

You're the one who makes me feel happy
You're the sun who makes me shine
When you're around I'm always laughing
I want to make you mine

Scala & Kolacny Brothers is a Belgian girls' choir.  The Kolacny brothers are Stijn, the conductor of the choir, and Steven, who accompanies them on piano.

The brothers started the choir in 1996, with just 18 singers.  Currently, Scala consists of more than 200 young women (or girls) between the ages of 16 and 26.  While Scala initially performed classical choir music, it became famous when it became a "rock choir," performing pop and rock hits in traditional choral arrangements.

Here's a link to their website.

Scala has issued several studio CDs.  The first, titled On the Rocks, was released in 2002 and included versions of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (Nirvana), "Every Breath You Take" (the Police), and "Creep" (Radiohead).  Their recording of "Creep" was used in the trailer for The Social Network.  It is a stunning performance, and it makes the trailer pretty stunning, too.  

They've subsequently recorded songs by Coldplay, Depeche Mode, Kings of Leon, Metallica, Peter Gabriel, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, U2, and a host of European recording artists I've never heard of.  They are very good singers.  

To hear a girls' choir sing this kind of music is a somewhat unnerving experience, but they are irresistible.  Their performances reveal so much about these songs.

I don't know whose idea it was to have them record "I Touch Myself."  Maybe the Kolacny boys have a very twisted sense of humor, or maybe they don't quite get the song.  They're lucky they live in a relatively enlightened country -- I hate to think what would have happened to them in a country like Saudi Arabia or Iran.

Here's Scala performing "I Touch Myself":

Julie Driscoll with Brian Auger & the Trinity -- "Season of the Witch" (1967)

When I look out my window

So many sights to see

And when I look in my window

So many different people to be

Brian Auger, an English musician who recorded and/or toured with Rod Stewart, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, and Eric Burdon (among others), was a master of the Hammond B-3 organ.

Rock musicians often used the compact and portable Farfisa or Vox Continental organs in the sixties.  Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs used a Farfisa on "Wooly Bully," and Elton John used one on "Crocodile Rock."  A Vox Continental is featured on "96 Tears" by ? and the Mysterians, and the Strawberry Alarm Clock's "Incense and Peppermints."

The British new wave band Squeeze used a Farfisa, and even recorded a song called "Farfisa Beat."  (You can click here to listen to it.)

But the Hammond B-3 (or the C-3, which differed from the B-3 only in its "modesty" panels, which hid the organist's legs from the public eye and made it more suitable for use by a female performer, especially in churches) was what serious blues, jazz, and progressive rock musicians played.  Deep Purple, Yes, Procol Harum, Pink Floyd, Santana, Steppenwolf, Uriah Heep, Kansas, and many, many others used the B-3/C-3.

Click here to listen to perhaps the best Hammond B-3 record ever.

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The Hammond organ was an electromechanical organ that was invented in 1934 as a lower-cost alternative to wind-driven pipe organs.  Hammonds were distinguished from other similar organs by their sliding drawbars, which were mounted above the keyboards and which controlled the sound produced by increasing or decreasing the volume of  certain waveforms.

Hammonds often were played through Leslie speakers, which were electrically rotated to reproduce the Doppler effect and which created a very distinctive vibrato.

Click here to read a lengthy and somewhat technical explanation of how Hammond organs worked if you want to know more.

Hammond B-3 organ with Leslie speakers

My piano teacher owned a Hammond organ, which I played on occasion.  (I was a pianist first and foremost – I could never break myself of the habit of hitting the keys harder when I wanted the organ to play more loudly.  That doesn't work on an organ, of course.)  

The Hammond was a unique instrument, with a unique sound.  The drawbars were marked with numbers ranging from zero to 8, and sheet music arranged for the Hammond organ would have a series of numbers -- e.g., 03 5066 800 -- that told you how to set the drawbars to produce the recommended sound.  

The B-3 had four groups of nine drawbars that controlled the different keyboards, plus a few drawbars for the pedals, so there were literally millions of different drawbar combinations.

I never got familiar enough with the Hammond to have any feel for how to improvise with the drawbars to create a particular sound.  But masters of the B-3 could slide drawbars in and out while performing to change the nature of their sound to exactly what they wanted.

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Brian Auger was a master of the Hammond organ.  His first band, Steampacket, is considered by some to have been the first "supergroup" -- other members included Julie Driscoll, Rod Stewart, Long John Baldry, and Vic Briggs (a guitarist who later joined Eric Burdon and the Animals) -- but they broke up before they recorded an album.  

Auger then formed the band Trinity, which had some success in the UK but didn't get much attention in the US.  Trinity's biggest English hit was a psychedelic version of Bob Dylan's "This Wheel's On Fire."

Click here to listen to a later recording of that song by Driscoll (who is now known as Julie Tippetts), which was used as the theme song for the BBC comedy series Absolutely Fabulous.

The Driscoll/Auger version of "Season of the Witch" may be my personal favorite.  But I have to admit that my judgment may be unduly influenced by the absolutely fabulous film of Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger and the rest of the Trinity performing the song.  Click here to watch it.

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Alan Price -- "I Put A Spell On You" (1966)

You better stop the things that you do

I ain't lyin'

The Animals

Alan Price appears to have been the brains behind the Animals, which was originally named the Alan Price Rhythm and Blues Combo.  His brilliant organ work is the most distinctive aspect of the Animals' biggest hit, "House of the Rising Sun."

But Price left the Animals in 1965.  Why he did so is not entirely clear to me.  He has complained that the band's record producer, Mickie Most, was attempting to "homogenize" and "sweeten" the band's music to make it more accessible for the mass market.  He also has said that the Animals "were a separate and dissonant group" in 1965 -- not "mates." 

Price also hated to fly.  Perhaps it was not entirely coincidental that he told the Animals he was leaving the band the same day they were scheduled to fly to Sweden to tour.

Here's a link to a fascinating -- and rather bizarre -- 1995 interview with Price.

"I Put A Spell On You" was a 1966 UK hit for the band Price formed after leaving the Animals -- the Alan Price Set. 

Here's a picture of the cover of the French version of "I Put A Spell On You" -- a 4-song, 7-inch, 45-rpm record. Anyone have any idea what that big outdoor sculpture is?

Price covered a bunch of Randy Newman songs at a time when Newman was essentially unknown.  He and Georgie Fame had a big hit in 1971 with a song called "Rosetta."  It sounds like a cross between the Kinks (Price looks quite a bit like Ray Davies) and Ray Stevens.  

In 1973, Price wrote the score for the movie O Lucky Man!, an allegorical movie that seems to have been inspired by Voltaire's Candide.  The film featured Malcolm McDowell, who had starred in Clockwork Orange.  (McDowell's girlfriend is portrayed by a very young Helen Mirren.  This photo shows them together in a scene from the movie.)  I remember seeing O Lucky Man! when I was in college, and I don't think I was able to make heads or tails of it. 

Here's the opening credit sequence, which features Price's title song:

Here's the Alan Price Set's version of "I Put A Spell On You."  Price sings the first verse to an almost Bach-like organ accompaniment.  After that, the drums and the horns kick in.

After Price left the Animals, they released a somewhat Hawkins-esque version of "I Put A Spell On You" on the Animalisms album.

Here's a link to use to order Alan Price's cover of "I Put A Spell On You" from iTunes:

Here's a link to use if you prefer Amazon:

Judy Collins -- "Suzanne" (1966)

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river

You can hear the boats go by

You can spend the night beside her

And you know that she's half crazy

But that's why you want to be there

And she feeds you tea and oranges

That come all the way from China

And just when you mean to tell her

That you have no love to give her

Then she gets you on her wavelength

And she lets the river answer

That you've always been her lover

Here's an excerpt from an interview with Suzanne Verdal, the friend of Leonard Cohen's who is the subject of "Suzanne":

Suzanne Verdal

Leonard was a friend of my husband, Armand.  We were all hanging at the same places in Montreal -- Le Bistro, Le Vieux Moulin, which was the place to dance to jazz.  Black turtle-neck sweaters, smoke, beatniks and poets -- it was that bohemian atmosphere in the 60's.  Leonard spent hours at the Bistro.  He was quite a bit older than me but he saw me emerging as a schoolgirl, working three jobs to subsidize my dance classes.

By 1965 I had separated from Armand and was living with our little girl.  Leonard would come over and I would serve him jasmine tea with mandarin oranges, and light a candle.  It sounds like a seance, but obviously Leonard retained those images, too.  I was living in a crooked house, so old with mahogany and stained glass.  I loved the smell of the river and the freight trains and boats.  Out of my window was total romance. Leonard was a mentor to me.  We would walk together and we didn't even have to talk.  The sound of his boots and my heels was weird, like synchronicity in our footsteps.  He felt it, I felt it and we got such a rush just grinning at each other.



Cohen and Collins

We were never lovers of the flesh but on a very deep level we were.  I had the opportunity more than once but I respected his work and what he stood for so much, I didn't want to spoil it.  Also, Leonard is an incredibly sexual man!  He's very attractive to women and I didn't want to be just one of the crowd.

I left Montreal for the states in '68 and when I came back people said, "Have you heard the song Leonard's written about you?"  In my wildest dreams I didn't know it would be huge.  I felt flattered, but I also felt there was an invasion of privacy.  After that, things changed course.  I stayed true to the 60's.  He became this big pop icon and was not accessible any more.  It hurt.  The song is bittersweet for me.  Sometimes I'll be in a restaurant and hear it and I'll be overcome.

There's a book called "The Girl in the Song" that tells the stories of the women who were the subjects of 50 famous songs, including "Suzanne":

Verdal seems to have fallen on hard times.  A few years ago, she was essentially homeless.  Here's a link to a blog about her -- no entries since 2008, however.

Here's Judy Collins singing "Suzanne":




Here's a link you can use to buy the song from iTunes:




Here's a link to use if you prefer Amazon:

The Clash -- "I Fought The Law" (1979)

I needed money 'cause I had none

I fought the law and the law won

I fought the law and the law won

"I Fought The Law" fits the Clash to a "T."  The singer of that song is a guy who went up against the powers that be and got kicked in the you-know-whats as a result.  He's not apologetic that he broke the law, but there's no false bravado here either.  He knew from the beginning that the whole thing would probably end badly -- and when it did, he didn't act like a little bitch.

The Clash's version of "I Fought The Law" is everything a cover version should be.  It's different, but still captures the essential spirit of the song.  It's not better the the Bobby Fuller Four's version, and it's not worse.  You can certainly prefer one over the other as a matter of personal taste, but I don't think you can say one is a more valid interpretation than the other one.



The Clash: attitude to spare



This recording appeared on a Clash EP that was released in the UK in May 1979.  It was included on the Clash's eponymous US album, which was released a couple of months later.  

The Clash had been released in the UK two years earlier, but the group's record company didn't think it was sufficiently "radio-friendly" for the US, so it wasn't released in the states (with several songs that were not on the UK version of the album, and vice versa) until a year after the band's second UK album, Give 'Em Enough Rope, had gone on sale in American record stores.

In case you didn't know it, the Clash is a GREAT band -- perhaps the best of their era, and certainly one of the best of all time.  Rolling Stone magazine gave their 1980 double album, London Calling, the 8th spot on their list of the 500 greatest albums of all time in 2003.  I can't really argue with them.

Here's "I Fought The Law" by the Clash:

Here's a link you can use to buy the song on iTunes:

Here's a link you can use to buy it on Amazon:

Camera Club -- "Video Killed the Radio Star" (1979)

They took the credit for your second symphony.

Rewritten by machine on new technology,

And now I understand the problems you can see . . .

Video killed the radio star

Video killed the radio star

Bruce Woolley was the singer-songwriter behind the short-lived "New Wave" band, Camera Club, which was the first band to release a version of "Video Killed The Radio Star."  The Camera Club's version of the song was a hit in Canada, but the Buggles' version was much more successful.

Woolley co-wrote the song (and other songs) with Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes, who were the Buggles, but he was never officially a member of that band.  According to Horn, Woolley is primarily responsible for the music, while Horn wrote most of the lyrics.

Here is Camera Club's "Video Killed The Radio Star":

Gladys Knight & the Pips -- "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" (1967)

I bet you're wond'ring how I knew

'Bout your plans to make me blue 

With some other girl you knew before

Between the two of us girls 

You know I love you more

It took me by surprise I must say

When I found out yesterday

I heard it through the grapevine

Gladys Knight & the Pips recorded "Grapevine" (with the lyrics rewritten to make the song suitable for a female singer rather than a male) in June 1967.

Gordy didn't think much of their recording either, and Motown didn't do much to support it.  But the single reached #1 on the Billboard R&B chart in November of that year and remained at #1 for six weeks.  It almost made it to the top spot on the Pop chart as well, but peaked at #2 (behind only the Monkees' "Daydream Believer").

Give Norman Whitfield credit.  He still believed in the Marvin Gaye "Grapevine," and pushed Gordy to release it as well.  The song was added to a Gaye album that came out in September 1968, but was not released as a single until so many radio DJs started playing it that Gordy finally relented.

Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" outsold all previously released Motown singles.  It stayed at #1 on both the Billboard Pop and R&B charts for seven consecutive weeks in late 1968 and early 1969.  

I wonder if Berry Gordy ever said to  Norman Whitfield, "You were right and I was wrong."  Probably not.

The Gladys Knight version of the song is fine, but I don't think the performance was a particularly convincing interpretation of the song.  Gaye's record, by contrast, is perfect.  Whitfield dug deep into his ball of producer's tricks, and he hit the ball way out of the park.

Here's Gladys Knight & the Pips lip-synching to "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" on Soul Train:

Here's a link to Amazon: