Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To

A Little Classical Music There, Kids

Who ya got?

In favor of Mott: Rocks pretty damn good, and Ian Hunter is suitably snotty.

In favor of Cowboy Junkies: Sometimes, y’don’t wanna rock and y’just wanna find that confounded bridge.

WHO YA GOT?

14 Comments

  1. ritchie vanian

    The Cowboy Junkies are a snooze-fest
    Mott wins

  2. JES

    What Ritchie said. Mott FTW.

  3. Best Janes:

    1. “Rock n Roll Animal” (the into slays)
    2. “Loaded” (as originally released)
    732. “Loaded” (as re-released with the stupid coda restored, which sucks. Doug Yule was right to axe it, no matter what Lou later said)

    Doug got a raw deal. I like me some Doug.

    • JES

      Shit. “Into” = “Intro”

  4. Carlos

    Snooze fest! Oh man do NOT insult the cowboy junkies. They are amazing 3 decades 16 albums Canadian music hall of framers check it:’ the things we do to each other’ https://youtu.be/osgHswt9tI0

    And not that it matters but ol Lou R. himself said margo’s version is the best he’s ever heard around
    the time it was released.

    • MrCompletely

      If I recall right, the Cowboy Junkies origin story includes winning a live “best version of Sweet Jane” contest that was otherwise all loud punk bands

      I am still convinced that Mott the Hoople is actually a rejected name for one of the band members in the Electric Mayhem – which is actually, of course, a compliment and not one of my several previous trolling digs at this presumably fine band

      • Carlos

        A few years later, he helped form Procol Harum, whom he named after a friend’s cat (he got the spelling wrong), and is credited as the person who uttered to the band’s lyricist, Keith Reid, “she’s turned a whiter shade of pale,” planting a seed for the famous song. Later still, at Island Records, he helped form Mott the Hoople by discovering singer Ian Hunter (through a classified ad in Melody Maker). Stevens also named that group (after the title of a novel he had read during an eight-month drug-offense sentence as a guest of Her Majesty) and went on to produce three of their first four albums.
        And a music nerd special Lou Reed/Junkies tidbit: http://latentrecordings.com/cowboyjunkies/2013/10/27/lou-reed-1942-2013/
        I just finished typing when bobby just sang ‘whatever happened to sweet Jane’ – weird synchronicity.

  5. Stella Blew

    If you pick R&R Animal over Loaded you are disqualified. Doug Yule was willing to carry on and make albums without Lou Reed and still call it Velvet Underground. That’s how misguided Doug Yule was at the time.
    As for the CJ’s…some folks like to snooze with music on. However, I’m not so sure they are qualified to judge the quality of the music they’ve been snoozing through.

    The LR Take No Prisoners album has a fine Sweet Jane.

    • “Take No Prisoners” Jane better than “Rock n Roll Animal” Jane???? Ooof. Cannot buy that. Hunter/Wagner take that thing places it never went before or since . . . . .

      Moe and Sterl kept working with Doug as the VU for a good while, so if it was okay wity them, it’s okay with me. They were gone by the time of “Squeeze,” but it’s a better record than most people give it credit for, if spun with open ears. Also, Lou enlister Doug for his solo band after he (Doug) returned from UK, so if Doug was okay with Lou, he’s okay with me. It is one of the epic wrongnesses of the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame that they excluded him. See also poor Bob Welch.

    • Carlos

      I admit I appear to have missed the existence of the album even of take no prisoners, what a rant’ Streisand, patti smith- Suburbia- Wyoming?’ Wow- good for one listen anyway. I did enjoy the keyboard riff on the Mott the Hoople one.

  6. Luther Von Baconson

    Check this out. Saw it live, with all the artists, on an extremely frigid November night at the Wintergarden Theatre with my Aunt K
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O9q6lQZgoLE&list=OLAK5uy_mwpYYf11_OxjbyD6o_jOuIaJPpwRLICfs

  7. Carlos

    This is my favourite sweet Jane video live in Paris 1974. Quite the intro..,,,
    https://youtu.be/Uc26EFI1_nw

    • JES

      Hunter, Wagner, Prakash John and the great (named) Pennti Glan FTW!

      • Tor Haxson

        Indeed

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