Showing posts with label Galaxie 500. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Galaxie 500. Show all posts

Saturday, 18 December 2021

Listen The Snow Is Falling

Cover version of the month #72

Galaxie 500 cover Yoko Ono & The Plastic Ono Band

Released as the b-side to John Lennon's Happy Xmas (War Is Over), Yoko Ono's Listen, The Snow Is Falling, a gentle lullaby, with Lennon's Plastic Ono Band backing. 

Beginning with Ono singing childlike, gently, almost like a lullaby, the song then develops with Yoko singing beautifully over music that wouldn't be out of place on The Beatles Abbey Road or Lennon's Imagine album.

Yoko allegendly criticised keyboard/organ player Nicky Hopkins by saying something classically Ono-esque - "Play as if the snow is melting from your fingertips, not that banging."

Ono has also said of the song - "The first pop song I ever wrote was Listen, the Snow Is Falling. I did that before John and I got together. Then, when we got together, I made it into a real pop song. When you hear the original, you couldn't pick out why it was a pop song."

Galazie 500, no strangers to my cover version of the month blog having previously featured with their stunning versions of New Order's Ceremony and George Harrison's Isn't It A Pity?, covered Ono on their 1990 album This Is Our Music with Naomi Yang on lead vocals.

Yang's vocals are very Ono-like, but at 2-minutes 40 seconds the song receives the unmistakable stamp of Galaxie 500. The guitars are raw and soulful, like a cross between Neil Young and Crazy Horse and The Velvet Underground. For a full glorious 5-minutes! Raw and soulful, I love the guitar sounds Galaxie 500 create. 

Things slow down to a couple of chords and Misunderstood style feedback going on, then things build and become beautifully crazy and hazy again, music to get lost in. A sublime choice of cover, Galaxie 500 have such great taste.

Yoko Ono - Listen The Snow Is Falling

Galaxie 500 - Listen The Snow Is Falling

I've added the song to my cover versions playlist or search for Everything Flows Cool Cover Versions on Spotify. 

You'll find a list of all previous songs to feature on the blog and links to them below the lyrics to Yoko's Listen, The Snow Is Falling.

Snow is falling everywhere

Snow is falling all the time

All the time


Listen, the snow is falling all the time

Listen, the snow is falling everywhere

Between Empire State Building

And between Trafalgur Square

Listen, the snow is falling all the time


Listen, the snow is falling all the time

Listen, the snow is falling everywhere

Between your bed and mine

Between your head an my mind

Listen, the snow is falling all the time

Between Tokyo and Paris

Between London and Dallas

Between your love and mine

Listen, the snow is falling everywhere


Snow drift, snow fall, snow fluff

Listen, listen, listen baby, listen

Previous covers of the month

13. Hurt
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Friday, 14 May 2021

Isn't It A Pity


Cover version of the month #67 - Galaxie 500 cover George Harrison

I bought Galaxie 500's second album On Fire from Missing Records on Oswald Street in the early - mid 90's. At a guess I would say 1993/4.

Missing Records was a regular haunt of mine. I'd soak up interviews and reviews in the NME and Melody Maker and then head into Missing, often buying records on the strength of a review, occasionally I might have heard something on the Evening Session or John Peel's show.

From memory, it might have been a school friend Grant Mitchell who turned me on to Galaxie 500. We would regularly exchange mixtapes and Grant was developing an incredible knowledge and passion for American independent guitar bands. I'm pretty sure he put a couple of Galaxie 500 songs on a tape for me.


On Fire is an album I fell for instantly. It contained so much of what I was looking for as a teenager, mainly that the band looked and sounded super cool.

Listening back to it now, all these years down the line, it is an album that contains a lot of honesty. In the playing, lyrics, delivery, production and in their choice of cover versions.

I featured Galaxie 500's cover of New Order's Ceremony way back in January 2017 as #21 in this feature. Now it is the turn of their take on George Harrison's Isn't It A Pity.

The opening chords sound raw and almost beautifully amateurish, similar to sounds I was making with my first electric guitar in my parents garage. 

Harrison's poetic lyrics take on a new kind of emotional rawness when sung by Dean Wareham as he strains soulfully over glorious warm guitars that are reminiscent of The Velvet Underground at times, of Neil Young at others.

This cover version really melts my heart. The rhythm guitar remains tenderly fragile but steady throughout, then at times the lead guitar just lets rip, while Damon Krukowski hammers his drums and Naomi Yang on bass keeps it all together.

Wareham sings and wrings his heart out in the closing what a pity refrain, and he does a pretty similar job with his guitar. This is a song and performance that moves me every time I hear it.

Isn't It A Pity was originally released on George Harrison's epic 1970 album All Things Must Pass, also as a b-side to My Sweet Lord, Stretched to 4-minutes, Harrison pours himself into the song with what I consider to be his most soulful and emotional vocal on the album.

Remarkably, Isn't it A Pity had been around since the days of Revolver! Rejected for Sgt Peppers, Harrison then hoped to record it for The White Album before representing it during the Let It Be sessions. This is pretty staggering! Perhaps it wasn't completed until after the demise of The Beatles. 

The production is remarkably different. This is Phil Spector working with a Beatles style budget, there are strings, there is multiple percussion, loads of rhythm guitars, a choir, multiple pianos playing at the same time ... possibly Spector's biggest ever wall of sound. It might not create the ferocious glorious racket of River Deep Mountain High, but Harrison & Spector (co-producing) create one of the most beautiful songs Harrison wrote and released ... and he wrote some gems!

Not one single second of the 7-minutes 10 seconds of Isn't It A Pity is wasted. Harrison pours his heart out in the lyrics and his voice is racked with emotion, like he is genuinely pondering some of the questions he is asking in song, the very moment he is singing them.

some things take so long, but how do I explain

when not too many people

can see we're all the same?

and because of all their tears

their eyes can't hope to see

the beauty that surrounds them

isn't it a pity?

The song is extended with Harrison repeatedly singing and stating what a pity, his guitar sings, there is a choir, everything has built to this point and it just keeps going, everything sounds so perfect, the arrangement is simply stunning.

Harrison and Spector weren't finished. There is a second version later on the album, slower, the band feeling things out in a jam at the start, the bass central to the sound, Harrison's voice strains beautifully when he sings and because of all their tears, the backing vocals are angelic and then at 2-minutes 19 seconds the song is lifted to the heavens - I can imagine The Polyphonic Spree might have fallen in love with this section. 

The original lyrics for Isn't It A Pity

Isn't It A Pity is songwriting, musicianship and performance at it's very best. Galaxie 500 were brave to take it on and deserve huge credit for their own stunning version.

Speaking of stuning versions. Nina Simone recorded a spine tingling 11-minute version! You can check it below or on my cover version of the month playlist on Spotify. (Everything Flows - cool cover versions).

You'll find links to all previous cover version of the month blogs below.

Previous covers of the month

13. Hurt




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Sunday, 22 January 2017

Ceremony

Cover version of the month #21
Galaxie 500 cover New Order


Ceremony, the debut release by New Order, was a (kind of) cover version. The song was written by Ian Curtis and performed live by Joy Division and there is also a studio version that was recorded only 4-days before his death. However all 3 known recordings of Joy Division playing Ceremony have partially audible vocals.


New Order's version was released in early 1981, less than a year after Curtis' death. I have just finished reading Peter Hook's excellent Substance autobiography and he talks of how the band just didn't know how to react to Curtis' suicide, they didn't know how to grieve and they didn't know what to do. So, Sumner, Hook and Morris did the only thing they knew.... they met up and played music. Unable to decide on a singer (eventually landing at Sumner at default after a number of shows with all 3 taking on vocals), they also struggled with a  band name, thankfully choosing New Order over some bizarre suggestions by manager Rob Gretton.

New Order then rerecorded and rereleased Ceremony in the same year, due to the addition of Gillian Gilbert to the band.

Both versions are raw and full of urgency; the bass and guitar riff entwined with each other and Stephen Morris keeps the drums and percussion going throughout. Sumner's guitar is a delight - his playful style with New Order ensures he is one of my favourite guitarists.

Galaxie 500 are a band I discovered via Nirvana. I remember buying their On Fire album from Missing Records on Oswald Street. The album not only contains this excellent cover version of Ceremony, but also one of George Harrison's Isn't It A Pity.


Galaxie 500  recognise the beauty of Ceremony and add on an extra 90 seconds to the New Order version. They start with the guitar riff in all its raw glory, slowly coaxing in some light high hats and the second riff. The vocals are strained and sound all the better for it, the drums sound primitive in comparison to Stephen Morris' work with New Order, the bass is low in the mix, unlike Hook's mighty bass for New Order.


The build to the concluding Watching forever... segment is glorious - sounding fragile and soulful at the same time before the band get lost in guitars and drums for the final 90 seconds.

It is a cracking cover version that remains true to the original in many ways, but stretches it out and plays on the strength of the riffs, melody and lyrics.

This is why events unnerve me
They find it all, a different story
Notice whom for wheels are turning
Turn again and turn towards this time

All she asks the strength to hold me
Then again the same old story
World will travel, oh so quickly
Travel first and lean towards this time

Oh I'll break them down, no mercy shown
Heaven knows it's got to be this time
Watching her, these things she said
The times she cried
Too frail to wake this time

Oh I'll break them down, no mercy shown
Heaven knows it's got to be this time
Avenues all lined with trees
Picture me and then you start watching
Watching forever, forever
Watching love grow, forever
Letting me know, forever

Previous covers of the month


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