Jeane The Smiths Troy Tate Sessions, 1983 - the original.

Jeane The Smiths Hand in Glove (Sandie Shaw version), 1984 - Sandie Shaw, a great pop singer of the 1960s whom Morrissey and Marr idolized, makes a guest apperance on this track. You can hear Morrissey doing awesome, howling, back up vocals.

Jeanne Billy Bragg The Peel Sessions, 1991, or earlier as this is a collection of performances up to that date - fast paced, straining on the high notes, but for Bragg it's surprisingly in tune. This is my favorite version, although I hated it at first listen.

Jeane Billy Bragg Reaching To The Converted, 1999 - a slow, out-of-tune-starting version. Classic Bragg, he made this song his own, all full of angst, strongly accented with his Cockney inflection. Bragg says,

The Smiths cast a long shadow over this compilation, either in the person of Johnny Marr or in the influence on my songwriting. I felt they were my comrades in a struggle to bring the focus of songwriting away from production and videos and back to good tunes and great lyrics. They stopped playing this song so I picked it up and looked after it for a while.

Jeane Billy Bragg - unknown source
As far as I can make out, this track came from the great blog, This Recording, but I can't find any tag information for it. Do any of you know? It's labeled as track 18 but that didn't help me at all. Maybe it will you. Of course it doesn't help that I've found the title spelled as both "Jeane" and "Jeanne." It sounds like an older Billy rather than a younger one, so I'm guessing it's a late 1990s or early 2000s recording. It's in a lower key, with less angst, and more resignation to the delivery. Bragg's songs become less regional sounding as he ages, and yet still he gives us a gorgeous tune.

Nope, no hidden meaning in the lyrics of this one for me. I just loved playing around with the different versions this evening and seeing how Bragg, a favorite artist of mine, took something and gradually molded it to his own style.

buy The Troy Tate Sessions... well, keep checking here, you might find one!


buy Billy Bragg from his website!

Well as my co-blogger Puppet Show last posted his confessions I guess with some behind the scenes arm twisting (oh kidding!) I'll oblige and do the same. It's true, when we were just becoming friends, I asked the Pup what his secret sins were in terms of music? What did he like to listen to that his friends would tease him for or that people generally wouldn't expect a guy like him to be into? I love knowing other people's secrets! It's interesting to know what the secrets are and also to think about what they're willing to really tell you. So here we go (and in the interest of keeping this "short") MY Top 5 musical skeleton confessions and why.


5. Tell Me Something Good mp3, Rufus: Rufus, 1973. Now once you get to know me, and especially if you realize my weirdo intra generational existence you'll understand this, but at first glance it seems odd. I'm 44, so technically I came of age in the late 70s, early 80s and was a bit young for the real age of funk music. But all my siblings were much older than me, and my brother was a huge influence on me, so Funk hit me hard. In my mind the best, most get-down-and-dance Funk is the early 70s, epitomized here by Rufus' Tell Me Something Good, with the wonderful Chaka Kahn on vocals and written by Stevie Wonder.




















4. Billy Bragg: The Peel Sessions, 1988(?). Ok, cultural whiplash, sorry! I'm obsessed with this man. It's almost shameful but I take comfort in the fact that I agree with most of his politics and his roots are in some fine punk music. So while he may have mellowed in our collective middle age, Bragg is still a great musician and an amazing lyricist. And no, he's never claimed to be a first rate vocalist so that just blows all my claims to what makes a great song, oh well! The Short Answer is so bittersweet, I love the story it tells and I love the way this version presents it so simply. Also kudos to the best opening line in any song ever! "Between Marx and Marzipan in the dictionary there was Mary..."

3.Light The Skies (Retrobyte's Classic Electrobounce Mix) mp3, Armin Van Buuren, A State Of Trance 2007 [CD1]: I was totally shocked at myself when I discovered trance music! Being an old flapper who gave up the club scene ages ago, I somehow missed all this. A friend gave me a mp3 track last year and said, what do you think of this? It was love at first listen. After hearing a lot more trance music (about 5G more!) Light The Skies is still my favorite track. (yeah, the first 20 secs or so are silent/quiet, sorry for that!)


2. Green Grass and High Tides mp3, The Outlaws: The Outlaws, 1975. Biography might help here (oh god, I'm hoping!), I spent the second half of my youth in the South, the deep South of the U.S.A., and well, we were barely removed from being hillbillies before that. So, whatever you want to call this song, be it Southern Rock, Country-Rock, or just Rock (which if you live in the South is what we called it), this is the quintessential song. Dual lead guitars, one on each stereo channel, and beautiful vocal harmonies make this a classic track of Americana. I remember hearing it on the radio a few times a day for years, they probably still play it down there. I can't help but hear this as "normal" music though I think it might sound weird to you indie fans out there.

1. The Sky is Crying mp3, Steveie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble: The Sky Is Crying, 1990. How can I live in Chicago and not be a blues fan? I actually came to this city long ago, from the South and the transition was made so much easier because of the Blues. There's nothing like standing on the corner, waiting for a bus, in the cold and rainy early Sunday morning with Stevie Ray wailing out The Sky is Crying. Nothing like it.

It's all good stuff that I listen to, it's just not the kind of music that you might expect ;) Although as this blog takes shape, I'm beginning to realize that even I don't know what to expect on these pages!

P.S. Welcome Elbows readers :)

buy Rufus
buy Billy Bragg
buy State of Trance 2007
buy The Outlaws
buy Stevie Ray Vaughn

August, 1993:

• For the first time, the public is allowed inside Buckingham Palace.
• Ong Teng Cheong becomes the first President of Singapore elected by the population.
• New York Yankees 4, Cleveland Indians 0, at Cleveland Stadium
• 6 months earlier the World Trade Center was bombed for the first time "when a car bomb was detonated below Tower One of the World Trade Center in New York City"
• Ace of Base was gearing up for their debut The Sign
• I Can't Help Falling In Love - UB40 - was the #1 song on Billboard's top 100
• Bjork's Debut er, debuts...still one of my favorite albums and I bought it when it first hit the shelves of my local record shop
• ditto with Violent Femmes, Add It Up (1981-1993)
  
• ditto with Queen Latifa, Black Reign, ( I didn't buy this one, but Meatpocket had this one in her arsenal, at the time I felt she was trying too hard, lol)
  
• a Tart and Meatpocket spend 4 hours in a bookstore discussing whether or not we should spend our futures together, at which point the shopclerk poked his head in and said, "oh just kiss her already and get it over with!"
  

So yeah, that's the origins of a 15-year-and-counting collaboration, folks. To say I wooed her with music is an understatement. I downright tested her with tunes, like in that scene in Diner where Levinson has his character Steve subject Elise, his fiance, to a football quiz before the marriage. I trained my little Meatpocket to recognize my music, to trace the transition from punk to post-punk to grunge. I quizzed her on the difference between The Violent Femmes, The Ramones, and The Smiths. The poor little Madonna fan didn't have a chance, really.

But I had to know if she could tolerate and come to love it/me, ya see. Would she be welcome in my world? I'm not ashamed to name my insecurities, I worried about it! There were real barriers between us, like the barriers between men and women in Levinson's Diner.

And well, music was my litmus test. She came from a world where life looked pretty easy: a happy family, loads of opportunities, well-traveled, well-educated, well-bred. In a word, she has very upper-class tastes and she came by them honestly. Luckily my sweetie had a bit of a working-class fetish.

We drove for hours in the countryside at night, just listening to music -- my music. Cassette after cassette was popped into the car player. I threw all the raw, basic, hard-edged and meaningful stuff I had at the time, asking with false bravado if she was sure she didn't mind the volume being up so high. Within a few days a mixtape appeared on my doorstep, love songs: Bonnie Raitt, Sweet Honey In The Rock, Aretha Franklin, Queen Latifa, Billy Holiday, Simon and Garfunkle, etc. Over the years, I learned to soften the edges on my soul with her love and her music, to let people in quicker, and deeper. She learned to not try so hard with mine, and just shake her booty to whatever beat she liked, deep down. Over the years we've learned to merge. We're still learning, it's a process.

If you want advice on how to make it to 15 years and keep going strong, how to be even better than when you first met, do two things:

1. Don't insist on being alike or having something in common, that's just bullshit.
2. Marry a woman who wants to be called Meatpocket and has the sex drive of a "working girl" with the breeding of a princess ;)

photo credit: jan_et_


Here's basically what I wooed my girl with back in '93, forgive me for the Mellencamp, it was 15 years ago, ok!? But they're all exactly not the kind of music a girl like Meatpocket was listening to at the time, I assure you.

So, welcome to the first ever Tart mixtape :) I'll give em to ya one by one and then zipped just in case you would like a single download :).... and uh yeah, if you do wish to listen to the whole thing, the order matters.

Add It Up, Violent Femmes, Add It Up (1981-1993) buy it
Pink Houses, John Mellencamp, Uh Huh buy it
Lola, The Kinks, Lola versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One buy it
Whole Lotta Love, Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin II buy it
Crazy On You, Heart, Dream Boat Annie buy it
Anarchy In The U.K, Sex Pistols, Never Mind The Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols buy it
Wargasm, Bricks Are Heavy buy it
Sex Type Thing, Stone Temple Pilots, Core buy it
Bad Reputation, Joan Jett, Bad Reputation, buy it
It's Different For Girls, Joe Jackson, I'm The Man buy it
I Love You, Steve Miller Band, Anthology buy it
Blue Sky, Allman Brothers, Allman Brothers - A Decade of hits 1969-1979 buy it
There Is a Light That Never Goes Out, The Smiths, The Queen Is Dead, buy it
The Milkman of Human Kindness, Billy Bragg, Back To Basics, buy it
anniversary.zip