Hello, It's Me (Again) -- Artists Cover Themselves

I thought of writing about this as I was listening to The Move's B-side to "California Man," "Do Ya." Of course, it became more familiar when it was a single five years later by Electric Light Orchestra. In and of itself, not a surprise. Plenty of covers, like remakes of movies, become far more famous than their original incarnations. Even those of us who know often forget there were two versions of The Maltese Falcon before Humphrey Bogart's, because the others just pass out of the public conscious, even when they might be preferred by many who see or hear them (which isn't the case there, barring some random dissenters, but the point remains).

The Move

 

Electric Light Orchestra

We Are the Followers, We Are the Trusted Fuel, They Are Unstable and the Exception to the Rule

In naming this blog, I thought I ought to find a phrase that was not too long or complicated somewhere in music, quite probably something I could tweak in the usual fashion to make it fit and hold some kind of reference for people to chuckle at, or perhaps just nod knowingly. In the end, I know one person who knew immediately where I derived it from, and probably only the one. Two possible exceptions, but generally I picked something obscure--not my first thought, but it seemed most appropriate all the same. My object in music is to dig out the gold, the bright spots and the curiosities and interesting things, rather than to spend my time shaking my head at the volumes of dirt and sneering at how much it's alike or how dry and easily crumbled it is, or, well, anything so negative. Finding it and finding it interesting was and is my primary goal when it comes to music.

The title of this blog is a reference to the "single" (such as it is) from a small Brooklyn, NY band's third album: "The Gold We're Digging" from Parts & Labor's Mapmaker. Sadly, just a few days ago, they broke up on their tenth anniversary. It was an interesting run--to say the least--but not an unexpectedly shortened one. It's not the sort of music that happily jumps up along next to many others, and a few changes in approach and line-up didn't serve to help this along. That album, though, is one I'd sincerely have to call a "desert island disc," and I hate those lists. I consistently referred to it, without hesitation, as the best album in the year of its release (2007).

Parts & Labor were dropped in my lap by someone whose name is likely to meander in and out of this blog, my former manager during my stint at a Borders, Gerald. He handed me a nicely replicated burnt copy of the album, saying only, "Here, music to melt your brain," with a lopsided smile and, in retrospect, some measure of mischievousness, I think.

Melt my brain? What could that mean? Well...take a look. Here's the video for the very song that this blog is titled after: