A Music Blog For People Who Like Music, Blogs & Music Blogs
The Gloria Jones Challenge is our ongoing examination of the many, many, many covers of Jones’ classic Northern Soul jam “Tainted Love” – to see how they stack up compared to the original.
Today’s challenger is the blog-o-sphere favorite My Brightest Diamond. Let’s see how she does with the GJC.
There’s been a lot of buzz around our homebase of Bloomington about a student made rap song/video boasting of Indiana University’s dominance in the Big Ten (which has twelve teams because apparently math is not a competitive sport and therefore irrelevant). The creators have been written up in the student paper and the local paper and the video itself has been the topic of many a facebook posting. This got us thinking. There has to be other examples of this sort of thing for other schools right?
Oh yes. So, so many. We decided to limit ourselves to the Big Ten because we do have lives outside of this blog that we like to try to get to from time to time. So now, for your education and enjoyment – tribute songs and videos from the Big Ten and the grade we give each one. As they run the gamut from slick and well produced to charmingly lo-fi to the kind of trainwreck one can only attribute to the folly of youth; there’s probably something in here for everyone.
Today we talk to Samantha Crain about life at home, touring on your own terms and getting your heart broken by NPR correspondents.
Last Friday we went to see our friends Murder by Death perform at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater for the 25th Anniversary of Live From Bloomington. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s an annual music event that raises money and food for the homeless in our community. It’s a great event put on by the Union Board of Indiana University, and we wish them another 25 years of giving back via sweet rock and roll. We also thank them for giving us the experience of hearing one of the most touching and beautiful songs we’ve heard in a long time during the opening act’s set. It takes some explaining, but the song is worth it so we hope you keep reading.
photo by Crystal Scanlon
2011 seems to be our year to keep thinking up awesome new segments, or at least hacky titles for fairly obvious segments we should have had all along. This one falls in the latter, but you’ll still enjoy it.
Our new weekly segment is Talk Thursday To Me and it’s where we sit down and chat with one of our rock and roll friends. Launching the series is the always entertaining Matt Armstrong from Murder by Death, as we discuss playing grabass with your bandmates, exploding vans and their upcoming tour.
A few days ago a friend asked for some suggestions of good Shudder to Think songs to play for an indie dance party. Great question, since the hurky jerky angular rhythms of the band would offer a dance challenge that the highest level of Dance Dance Revolution couldn’t touch. We weren’t much help on the dance front, but it did remind us of how amazing the band was, and so we went a YouTubing and stumbled across this little bit of awesome.
Several videos (shot by the band) of the recording process of their seminal album Pony Express Record. Now, if you’re not a fan of the band, these videos aren’t going to be any more interesting to you than a stranger’s vacation photos – but for those devotees of the genius of Pony Express Record it’s fascinating. Fascinating and criminally under-viewed. When we found these each vid only had about 300 views. Criminal! Criminal we say! So check it out and see the making of a modern classic.
It’s important to stretch before administering a beat down.We’re introducing a new segment today, one to decide once and for all whose version of a classic song is the greatest of them all. The song “Tainted Love” was written by Ed Cobb and originally recorded in 1964 by the Queen of Northern Soul, Ms. Gloria Jones.
We love the original and feel it’s a shame that some of the cover versions are far more well known than Jones’ original. And thus, the Gloria Jones Challenge was born. Every week we will be taking a cover of “Tainted Love” and putting it head to head against the original to decide if it’s improved on the song or just disrespected the awesomeness with it’s weak sauce.
Our first challenger gives the song the Glee treatment. We’ve included that sentence to solely drive more visitors to our blog. We’re shameless and we admit it.
