Slang Editorial :: Never Underestimate The Value Of A Holla'

Monday, April 13, 2009
For The Love of Rod: Some OCD Addendums

When heroes collide...

Well, I realized immediately after posting that Rod really deserves a longer and more involved post contextualizing my love for him, his contributions to music, why I chose everything I did and didn't. Something of the "malignant tumor growth" size level. But. It took me a year to get that mix out and I knew I needed to seize the moment while the door was open, so c'est la vie.

However, now that i've kvetched that out of my system, here's some follow-up notes.

First of all, perhaps I should have called the mix The Best of Rod Stewart (and the Faces), including the parans to denote specifically that the mix is, if you didn't realize already, Rod-centric. The Faces were an AMAZING band, but there was no way I could give them and Rod their due at the same time and have it fit on one disc. More importantly, they're just two different--albeit overlapping--stories. And the Faces story has been told well enough by others to give me reason to focus just on Rod.

Next, I want to mention the Jeff Beck Group again, who are actually the reason I ever came to love Rod in the first place. I had always thought Rod was just a silly fop, knowing him only for the aforementioned 70s fiascos like "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" and the late 80s/early 90s schmaltzbuckets of "Broken Arrow" and, most egregiously, the emoti-crass Bryan Adams-Sting collabo "All for Love" (aka "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You Pt. II"). However, my mom and dad were always stands for Rod, lamenting the day of "Maggie May", and on a more d/l tip, the first Jeff Beck Group record, Truth, which my dad had on vinyl. When I got a record player for my 13th birthday, I finally pulled out Truth and was shocked at both the rather Led Zeppelin-esque sounds and the non-shittiness of Rod.

"He... likes... rock. and. roll?" As a canonical track from the GDead covers catalogue, I instantly dug "Morning Dew", and "Shape of Things" and "You Shook Me" were great too. I loved this record, for sure, and have definitely over the years stood up for it to folks, parroting even the same argument from my folks that was the easy answer to prove Rod's true-rockness. And so, as I began imagining this mix in my head, I naturally was psyched about the Jeff Beck tracks i'd be able to throw on that even Rod fans may likely have never heard before. But when it came down to putting it together, I came to the sad conclusion: there is a not a single Jeff Beck song featuring Rod that I like as much as any of the twenty songs I chose for my Rod mix; and, in fact, the JBG songs don't even stand ahead of a great many more Rod tracks that I didn't include. I ultimately came to the conclusion that any Jeff Beck song I included would be for entirely historical purposes... and I therefore decided to pass. And I feel good about it, but just for fun, here's some Jeff Beck featuring Rod:

Listen: Jeff Beck Group, "You Shook Me" from Truth

There are a few other pre-Faces/solo early songs I left off as well, and I feel equally comfortable with their exclusions for the same reasons, except one: a track called "In A Broken Dream" by the mysterious Aussie group Python Lee Jackson. You should read that link if you want to learn more about this group and their curious background, but they recorded three songs with Rod, two of which are, as far as I can tell, more or less impossible to find. The latter though, "In A Broken Dream" is a fucking stone-cold 60s classic, in that dated Creedence kind of way (rather than the timeless Stones kind of way). I wanted to include it, I really did, for the fact that it's both great AND is pretty unknown--but in the end I passed because it just sounds so different that I couldn't really make it fit with everything else (an additional argument for the exclusion of the JBG material). However, here it is for you now:

Listen: Python Lee Jackson, "In a Broken Dream (f. Rod Stewart)"

Also, as I mentioned, some might view it as criminal that I didn't use the original version of "Maggie May". Well, fuck you. But, I understand nonetheless, and so here it is now:

Listen: Rod Stewart, "Maggie May" from Every Picture Tells a Story

Finally, as I mentioned in my caveat, there are still a few more Rod tracks it killed me to leave out: "Mama You Been On My Mind", "Too Bad", "I Know I'm Losing You". But people, please, a man has to make choices somewhere, right? I recommend tracking down these and every other Faces and pre-74 Rod you can get your hands on (NB: IGNORE SMILER AS IT IS SHITE). However, I do feel the need to at least give you my aforementioned first love "You Wear It Well". Oddly enough my happy connections to this song involve memories of the Hamptons***, lobster, and an ex-girlfriend, but whatever. Love is love.

Listen: Rod Stewart, "You Wear It Well", from Never A Dull Moment###

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And that is that on Rod Stewart.

love,

Jeffrey

NOTES:

*** -- "Hipster cred check": that was literally the only time I ever visited the Hamptons. I swear.

###--Which both Paul Westerberg and I rank among our fave records of all time.

Labels: late arrivals, loved sounds, mp3, music, ROD

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 4/13/2009 06:45:00 PM 0 comments

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