Now I like a lot of Christmas Songs, but they get so overplayed, so i thought I'd share a couple of Christmas Songs that I feel should be played more often on the radio.
Every so often I do a search on Ronnie Lane to see if anything new has shown up. I was pleasantly surprised to see that someone posted a video I hadn't seen before, a full concert from 1980. Originally recorded for German music TV show Rockpalast.
Here's a link to the Rockpalast Archive that gives the set list and musicians. Rockpalast Archive
1980 was towards the end of Ronnie's performing career,( before MS stopped him from performing) but he seems in fine form, playing his songs, Faces songs, and old standards.It doesn't hurt that he has some great musicians backing him up including Ian Stewart (Rolling Stones), Henry McCullough (Wings, Grease Band), Bruce Rowland (Fairport Convention, Grease Band), and Charlie Hart and Chrissie Stewart who had played with Ronnie in Slim Chance. (Okay so did Bruce but...) Not to mention the Sax players, George and Raymond Carless.
I enjoyed watching this concert, any footage of Ronnie is good to see. I was a little disappointed that he was playing a Strat and Ovation instead of his Zemaitis, but like I said, any footage of Ronnie is good.
My favorites were a slightly revamped How Come, Debris, Kuschty Rye (with Henry McCullough playing Mandolin), and One for the Road. Also, as strange as it seems, I also like it when musicians mess up on stage, and Ronnie forgets the words in You Never Can Tell - priceless.
Enjoy!
Okay, you've probably figured out that I'm not really a fan of Pop Music... well, no ... let me rephrase that... I'm not a fan of a lot of current pop. There is some pop from the 1960s, through the 1980s that I like, but most of the new stuff just doesn't appeal to me. However, you can't really get away from it when people around you listen to it, so I hear it, and occasionally there's something I hear that I ...kinda like.
Anyway, a while back,I was reading through Talkbass.com and there was this one post that a bass player in a cover band wrote about "Ever hate a song so much you'd risk being fired?" And I was thinking of all of the times I had to play Margaritaville, which I never liked, and wondered what song someone could hate so much, that the'd risk getting fired over. Well, the song was Call me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen. I hadn't heard it, so of course looked it up.
Well, it's catchy, and the videos kinda funny, and I didn't see why a cover band would not play it. I mean that's what cover bands do...cover popular songs. Well, after that I started to hear it more, and it kinda grew on me, but then I saw this video, and well, that did it.
Maybe it's because I grew up around Philly, and The Roots are a Philly band, or maybe it's because of the instrumentation. I mean melodica, bongos, ukulele, kazoos, toy xylophone, and Questlove playing guiro with a comb...or maybe it's just the overall goofyness of this video, but I have to admit, I like this song, but I love this version! So there you have it, a guilty pleasure.
