The first instalment of what will be an occasional series. It’s going to be a lazy series in that it won’t involve any new writing and instead will delve back into the TVV vaults where I’ll have picked out what I think is one of the more interesting postings from yesteryear. It’ll always be from quite a while back and will feature a singer or band whose appearances aren’t one of the regulars. The main idea being that those readers who are relatively new to the blog get to, hopefully, enjoy something they would otherwise have probably missed, while those of you who have been coming here a long time can just sigh as you see how the quality of writing has diminished with each passing year. Let’s begin by taking a trip back to 21 May 2015.
Brian over at Linear Track Lives!* is one of the most consistently inventive and entertaining bloggers out there. He is currently in the middle of a rundown of his Top 100 songs from the 90s, and he’s already delivered some cracking surprises, including this at #58:-
“There is something about the way frontman Kurt Wagner delivers words in that Tennessee drawl that takes me back to listening to my relatives spinning yarns at reunions back in the sticks of Illinois as a youngin’. Everything was just a little slower and a little simpler. Even when Wagner’s tales are filled with melancholy, I still find the music comforting. Perhaps I also like Lambchop because I think this would have been a group my father and I might have actually agreed on.
As for today’s pick, this is the second and last song on the countdown with the dreaded f-dash-dash-dash word (as Ralphie would say) in the title. If you only know Lambchop’s more recent work, you might find the tempo of this one quite surprising. “Your Fucking Sunny Day” most assuredly doesn’t sound like it was sung from a rocking chair. It comes from the band’s third album, ‘Thriller.’ That’s a little self-deprecating humor from a group that produced two earlier albums with few sales to show for it. On the off-chance this song might have received some airplay, there was a clean version called “Your Sucking Funny Day,” which is a smile, but I don’t think Merge or anyone else needed to worry too much about such things.”
mp3 : Lambchop – Your Fucking Sunny Day
It’s also one of my favourite Lambchop songs. I’m particularly fond of the LP Nixon which was released in 2000 and is packed with great tunes, with this being the track that would be edited back by a minute and released as a single. The album version is superior:-
mp3 : Lambchop – Up With People
Two years later the band followed up Nixon with Is A Woman with initial copies of the CD having a bonus disc that included a hugely inspired and genius cover version:-
mp3 : Lambchop – This Corrosion
For those of you who may not be familiar with the original, well, it is considered by many to be THE greatest goth anthem of all time. All 11 minutes of it. Get those shoulders shaking:-
mp3 : Sisters of Mercy – This Corrosion
And finally, the Lambchop take on a punk classic:-
mp3 : Lambchop – (Get A) Grip (On Yourself)
Enjoy y’all.
JC
* Brian’s blog has been on a hiatus since August 2021. I used to have links to a whole bundle of old blogs, but these were lost a while back when the widget used within the TVV sidebar stopped being supported by WordPress. Linear Track Lives! is still accessible and, should you have a few hours to spare, is well worth a visit for a delve into the 1,612 posts published between 2009 and 2021. Click here.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 