I love the Cowboy Junkies, but I’ve never been able to decipher half their words. I had to go listen to the Fogarty version to figure it out. It’s very nice too, but very different. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5gHZZz4fCw This is a great gospel version, by the Swan Silvertones. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvL1DG4wlHU And man no instruments either.
Sometimes, you’re better off dead
There’s a gun in your hand, and it’s pointed at your head
You think you’re mad, too unstable,
kicking in chairs and knocking down tables
In a restaurant, in a West End town
Call the police, there’s a madman around
Running down
Underground
To a dive bar
In a West End town
The 90s were pretty great.
Yes, that was on my London playlist when I was there last fall. Along with London Calling, London Town (obviously), A Day in the Life, Who Are You, Waterloo Sunset and a boatload of other Kinks songs. It’s a great location to do a playlist for!
@coterie #81, the 90s had some pretty great music, but “West End Girls” was released in 1984…
→ the joke →
my head, too
Re: “Working on a Building”. I love that Swan Silvertones track, which I had never heard before, but it’s a different song than the Cowboy Junkies one. The Cowboy Junkies and John Fogarty (whose version I don’t love) were doing the same song, and here is Bill Monroe doing that one, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zkyf3viJ5U I chose Cowboy Junkies because of the trance-like working quality they bring to it, but Monroe’s voice is a marvel.
YouTube had a really old BB King version of the song the Swan Silvertones did. Obviously, the two songs probably share an original source, and similar structure, but they differ so much in melody and lyrics that they aren’t the same song anymore.
CJ/Fogarty/Monroe: If I was a drunkard, tell you what I’d do / I would quit my drinking and work on that building, too / I’m working on a building, it’s a Holy Ghost building / For my Lord, for my Lord
Swan Slivertones/King: When you see me singing / You know I’m working on a building / I’m holding up the bloodstained standard of the Lord / And I’ll never get tired / Working on that building / I’m going up to Heaven / To get my reward
It may be cheating a bit, but I’m gonna go with the 10 year period spanning 1965 to 1975. Gives me the best of rock and roll, folk/protest, and all of my favorite artists (Joni Mitchell, the Dead, the Airplane, the Stones, Simon and Garfunkel, Carole King, etc., etc.) in their prime. Plus Woodstock. Not sure what I’d do if you pinned me down and made me pick the 60s or the 70s.
@Pizzagirl : For Prague, you might look for stuff by Plastic People of the Universe, a Czech group formed during the Prague Spring as a Velvet Underground cover band that over the next 20 years became something of a focal point for resistance to the government and its Soviet patrons. Their music was featured in Tom Stoppard’s Rock ‘n’ Roll.
But the best songs for Prague may come from Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni, both of which achieved their first success there.
I will; thanks.
@coterie: Not ashamed to say that I still don’t get it. Sorry.
The joke went completely over my head, too – unless the poster is using the song as a particularly bad example of 80’s music or something.
Over my (60s pigtails/70s Farrah-cut/80s big hair/90s Jennifer Aniston cut) head as well. I think the OP might want to explain the joke.
@dfbdfb no biggie. I was trying to say that West End Girls was a tacky song in a tacky era, in my opinion. Lyrically, it’s a silly, shallow, “white” attempt at rap. The 90s was a much better time for music, the thousands was a slight decline. Not to say I don’t enjoy 80s music, I just think it’s not as good as 90s in a critical sense.
@nottelling that’s a valid interpretation
That’s interesting. I don’t think I ever thought of “West End Girls” as a rap song. I thought of it as a pretty typical mid-eighties synth-pop dance song, with a little bit of a gangster theme. I’d put in maybe with Culture Club or Frankie Goes to Hollywood or sounds like that – I don’t think of it as a rap song.
It is funny, I was used to hearing how the 60’s was a time when there was still room to experiment, that the record companies hadn’t managed to turn music into this packaged, homogenized product (which was sort of true on the radio, until the early 1970’s FM radio was sort of a play thing, compared to the top 40 formats that dominated AM radio. )
Yet I got to thinking about that, and I really wonder, as much as the record companies produce pop level pap, packaged stars and such, it seems like they never have been able to contain the beast. The 60’s produced some great bands (Moody Blues, still my Heart) but there also was a lot of crap (the Archies, anyone, or the early 60’s ballad crap?),the60’s also produced one of the greatest flowerings in music IMO, the music that came out of Motown (Holland, Holland and Dozier were probably the greatest songwriters of all time). The 70’s produced generic AOR , like Jethro Tull running its songs by focus groups or gasp Debby Boone singing “you light up my life”, but it also produced some unique groups, Prog Rock (yeah, Jan Wenner, stick it), and then later on came Punk Rock to turn it on its head, 70’s R and B was interesting (I won’t mention disco, sorry, refuse to acknowledge it)…the 80’s had a lot of MTV bands that were all about videos and programmed music, but also produced Michael Jackson, who was unique, so some good music came out of there, and obviously Rap and Hip Hop were being created in the late 70’s and 80’s, that later became mainstream.; In more recent times, you also have indy rock and groups who kind of transcend labels.
Yeah, there is crap out there, a lot of the top 100 stuff is packaged pop artists living off auto tune, but it also has produced someone like Adele who unlike a certain 80’s figure far too many ideolize, has real talent.
My favorite time is probably late 60’s and the 70’s, but a lot of that was because that was when I became aware of music, that ranged from the acid rock of the late 60’s (Airplane, Grateful dead) to the progressive bands like Yes, The Moody Blues and others that played with mixing classical forms with rock, and bands like Chicago and ELO the Critics loved to make fun of along with the ‘rock snobs’, but turned out some great music IMO. But music didn’t stop then, and while record companies have always stank, there are always people out to make their music as they want to, and always will be:). And of course, the early 70’s has some magic to it because of the movie “Almost Famous”, the music in it and also a look at it from eyes not all that much older than my own:)
80’s! Just took S16 to see Hall and Oates and the GoGos this summer.
70’s Rock! Free Bird, anyone?
Oh, and 80’s pop is pretty good. The entire country watched when Thriller premiered.
Whitney Houston did not have “real talent”? (post 94) I have to disagree. She had a troubled life later in her career, but I loved her singing then and looking back now. Is she the wrongly idolized 80’s figure musicprnt was referring to?
I think I am skeptical of any person that defines “good” music. Good for what? Good to whom? Amii Stewart’s “Knock on Wood” is good for dancing. Beethoven’s 5th is not.But who would say that wasn’t a good piece of music? The 5 Man Electrical Band did what seemed like a good protest song in '70(though looking back we now see how hypocritical it was).
I prefer to use terms referring to songs I like, or songs that were popular, because while what I like is limited to my opinion, popular can be quantified by record sales. What is “good” is not so easily proven.
Oh, don’t worry, younghoss. There is a lot of posturing on CC when it comes to music cred. One only need to read the thread discussing Lady Gaga’s stellar performance of Julie Andrews music at the Grammys some time ago for the pretentiousness to surface 
By golly, I think you’re right, PG.