Good evening, Kibitzers! Since side pocket had somewhere else to be this evening, I am appearing for him today and he will be with you on Tuesday. (He assured me that he would tell remembrance about this swap, so she would not again accuse us of being “out of control”. Hope he remembered!)
So, browsing through my disembodied heap of digital music, I picked up a thread that seems like a diary theme (just what I needed for a Sunday night when it’s already almost 7 pm here and I have not yet twitched in the direction of making dinner). Now and then, there is a pop song that’s performed by somebody so ridiculous that no one but a 12-year-old girl ::raises hand:: would be caught dead listening to it. And yet, the song is later rescued from contact-ridiculousness by dint of being covered by a musician with considerably more credibility. I have a couple of examples.
The first of these is a 1969 song “originally recorded by The Archies, a band formed by a group of fictional teenagers in the television cartoon series The Archie Show”. I will not embed The Archies’ performance of Sugar Sugar; watch if you like.
The song, however, gained a new and more respectable life in the hands of Wilson Pickett, and then of Bob Marley and the Wailers (among others) — both of these versions are what’s on my playlist now, since I am 50 years past being a 12-year-old girl.
Then there’s my boys, The Monkees, pictured up top. I believe they were a better band than they got credit for at the time, but there’s no question that they were cast to play a dopey pop group in a TV sitcom and that’s who they played. I’m sure you know they were initially not allowed by the network even to play their own instruments, even though it had expressly cast musicians in the roles. This pissed them off mightily, and they ultimately wrested their identity as a musical group from NBC. Indeed, there’s a probably-apocryphal story about the previous song:
The song is said to have been earlier offered to The Monkees, although songwriter Jeff Barry denies this. Don Kirshner has said that Mike Nesmith put his fist through the wall of the Beverly Hills Hotel refusing to do "Sugar, Sugar".
Since NBC was buying their material, The Monkees sang some potentially respectable stuff, and it’s been variously reclaimed by a number of musicians. Take a Giant Step (Monkees version here) has attracted quite a few covers. I like this slow one by Taj Mahal (studio version here; this live one’s from just this March); he and Ry Cooder also did a more upbeat version with the Rising Sons.
And here’s the song’s demo by its composer:
So? Does anything come to mind along these lines? Do you protest my maligning of The Archies? Or do you just have something else to say, in which case, go right ahead!
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by and tell us about your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper. Newcomers may notice that many who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but we welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well. |