Sleep with the enemy, and betray both sides

[venta]

It's Friday, and it's about 3 o'clock. It's time to go underneath the covers (with the lights out).

I always recommend listening to a cover version without knowing what or who it is, so click on the link and don't look at your media player too carefully...

Link to cover version expired.

Black Box Recorder covering Up Town, Top Ranking, originally by Althea & Donna.

I have to admit, I'm mostly only in it for the fun of hearing someone with Sarah Nixey's cut-glass, upper-class accent voice trying to say "and ting" with conviction. Attempting to fake a Jamaican accent would have been disastrous; accentuating the BBC-ness of her voice and saying the worlds straight works brilliantly.

Many cover versions are deliberately jokey. They know they're messing about with style, and playing out of their own genre, and they invite you to laugh along. I love this for its utter, deadly seriousness, as if reading the lyrics of an upbeat reggae classic over a vaguely ambient background were a matter of deeply scholarly musicianship and cultural significance. I think it's the most po-faced cover I've ever heard.

This version of Up Town, Top Ranking appears as an album track on England Made Me, which is a very fine record in its own right. I saw the recently-reconstituted Black Box Recorder live last year, and they were great. I do hope rumours of a new album come to fruition.

Incidentally, if people like playing the guessing game, would they prefer that I take the track info out so media players can't display name/artist ?

Comments

[zotz]

Ah yes. Very fine. I remember horrifying a workmate with it a while back (but I know he liked it really).

I didn't know they were at it again. I have the Christmas single, but I hadn't realised there was anything more.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yup, they did a few shows last year. Wikipedia, he say (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_box_recorder) "It has also been confirmed that the band will record a new album in 2009." - but as far as I'm aware there hasn't been one released.

Incidentally, I don't know what's happened to Luke Haines. I saw him doing a show just before Christmas and he was positively jovial. Larking about on stage, cracking jokes, bantering with hecklers, not obviously despising being on stage... I think he's on drugs.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Did I ever tell you about when the Auteurs played Oxford, what was then (I think) the Venue? 1994ish I guess. It was a great performance, but during a quiet number towards the end (can't remember which song) a heckler standing near me yelled "You sad git!" at Haines. Who directed him, and the audience in general, a look of pure fury, but carried on playing and singing, and finished the set. But they didn't come out for an encore. And I don't think he ever played Oxford again, at least not while I was looking.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Now that is more like what I'd expect!

I think Luke Haines (solo) has played Oxford in recent years - at the O2 Academy Oxford (né The Zodiac, né The Venue). Possibly he realised that he'd struck almost every UK town from the list and had to reinstate some :)

[zotz]

Either that or he's been replaced by an imposter.

In theory I'm getting a copy of his book for Christmas, but this depends on my sister finding a copy, and obviously she's quite busy. I did enjoy reading Louise Wener's review, but maybe not for the reasons she hoped.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I've certainly heard good things about the book, and it's vaguely on my list of things to keep an eye out for. I have to admit I found the concept of Lousie Wener reviewing it funny before the page had even loaded :)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I also have England Made Me, very fine is quite right. Really I think they have a pretty high standard over all their stuff (if you like that sort of thing [which I do]).

Good to hear they're going to be playing again, I'll keep an eye out.

And: yes, take the track info out, go on.

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

Utter, deadly seriousness, you say?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear.

I must dig out my old VHS recordinds of that :)

[metame.livejournal.com]

Know and like the cover (and that whole album), never knowingly heard the original 'til now. The topsy-turvy world of going straight from tiny villages to the mid-Nineties

[ulfilias.livejournal.com]

Quite slow but very interesting....I rather like it !