W♥M (Archive)

W♥M199: Black Box Recorder

W♥M199 (16 mins) Read More Black Box Recorder Black Box Recorder is John Moore, Sarah Nixey (vocals) and Luke Haines. Luke Haines is originally from the Auteurs (does anyone remember them?), and he's brilliant …

It's solo-vu for W♥M Radio #199 because it's the calm before the #200 storm (which is being recorded this Saturday, hopefully).

This episode is dedicated to Black Box Recorder.

I followed BBR mainly because I was a big fan of The Auteurs' Luke Haines. I love anything that he was doing, so of course, I love BBR.

The trio was made up of Luke Haines, singer Sarah Nixey, and John Moore (formerly of The Jesus and Mary Chain).

I didn't know this until just now, but apparently Moore and Nixey were married between 2001 and 2006. By 2010, the band officially split with their goodbye release two-track single, Final Statement.

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Archive of this show at archive.org. More information on podomatic.com

vu () ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ podcast.weheartmusic.com ♥ twitter.com/weheartmusic

The Auteurs

The Auteurs: Lenny Valentino Read More The Auteurs Luke Haines… I met and interview him during The Auteurs' "Now I'm a Cowboy" tour and have been following his career ever since. .....

For some reason, The Auteurs were never really associated with Britpop, at least not in the same ways when you mention Blur or Oasis or Elastica. The Auteurs seemed to not want anything to do with that short-lived movement, maybe it's because singer/songwriter Luke Haines wanted the band to have a serious tone.

I first heard the Auteurs when MTV's 120 Minutes played "Show Girl" in 1993. I loved it, who could forget that opening line, "I took a show girl for a bride/Thought my life would be right/Took her bowling, got her high." At this time, I was working at the KFSR radio station and would play songs from their debut album, New Wave.

Luke Haines would progressively get darker and darker by the third album, After Murder Park. It was such a dark direction, that he even re-formed into a different "terrorist" band called Baader Meinhof. I eventually tracked down their final album, How I Learned to Love the Bootboys, which was harder to come by because it was never officially released in the U.S.

Anyway, Mel and I got to meet & interview Luke Haines on July 15, 1994, at Slim's in San Francisco. It was during soundcheck and we recorded an interview for KFSR. I got Luke and his then-girlfriend, Alice Readman, to sign my New Wave and Now I'm a Cowboy CDs, but I couldn't find the other guys in the band. I probably didn't try too hard because, let's be honest, I didn't know who they were. Haines noted that New Wave on the Caroline Record (this was the domestic release), was quite rare. He reckoned under a 1,000 were pressed for the U.S. market because the label didn't believe the Auteurs had a presence in the States.

The Slim's show was part of the Auteurs' Now I'm a Cowboy U.S. tour (which I'm pretty certain was one of their very few live appearance - apparently Haines hated the stress of touring that he crippled himself to avoid touring for After Murder Park). As far as I know, this was The Auteurs' only U.S. tour.

As for the Slim's show, I barely remember it, in fact, I didn't even know that The Rosemarys and Slide opened up (this is according to the flyer that I've saved all this time). Perhaps we only showed up when The Auteurs came on to the very small stage. I know they did "Show Girl" (of course), and "Lenny Valentino." I remembered that the turn out wasn't so good (according to the San Francisco Chronicle, "the band played to half a house"), but it didn't matter because it was such a nice, intimate setting to see The Auteurs.

Now I'm a Cowboy album autographed by Luke Haines and Alice Readman at Slim's, San Francisco (07/15/94)

vu () ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ podcast.weheartmusic.com ♥ twitter.com/weheartmusic ♥ +W♥M

Seasons in the Sun

Jacques Brel - Le Moribond (Seasons in the Sun) Jacques Brel   Terry Jacks - Season In The Sun Terry Jacks �

"Seasons in the Sun" is one of those songs that is massively popular in Asia, especially where I'm from originally in Vietnam. I found out that the song is actually a 1961 Belgian French song called "Le Moribond" (The Dying Man) by folk singer Jacques Brel.

Brel lived in Belgium and moved to Paris in the 70s, and most of his body of work (from 1954 to 1977), was mostly composed and sung exclusively in French.

The song was translated into English and recorded as a song by Rod McKuen, which sounds kind of like Leonard Nimoy's acting/singing... especially at the end, where it gets a little exaggerated. I found the recording on imeem, so hopefully the embedding feature will work out.

Prior to Terry Jacks hit recording, there were several attempts by The Kingston Trio (1963) and The Fortunes (1968), and Pearls Before Swine (1970), but none of them ever got as popular as Jacks' version in 1974.

A couple of notes, about the Fortunes, they are still active (and playing live) and have the "Seasons in the Sun" song available for download on their website, although from listening to it, it sounds like, perhaps it's a re-recording(?). Anyway, some tour dates:

05/24/08 California Cliffs, Great Yarmouth.
06/06/08 Keswick Rugby Club, Cumbria
06/08/08 Whitby Pavillion
06/13/08 Memorial Social Center, Wickhambrook, Newmarket.
06/28/08 Theatre on the Steps, Bridgnorth, Shropshire
07/05/08 Spa Pavilion, Felixstowe
07/13/08 Pavilion Theatre, Cromer
07/19/08 Alvaston Hall, Nantwich (Warners)
07/25/08 Purley Chase Golf Club. Nr Nuneaton.
07/26/08 Artrix Theater Bromsgrove
07/31/08 Canterbury (CUTG)

More tour dates on thefortunes.co.uk

So the story behind the #1 hit song by Canadian singer Terry Jacks, was that Jacks had proposed to The Beach Boys to record "Seasons in the Sun", but The Beach Boys abandoned the project. Jacks decided to record and release the song himself, and to this day have sold over six million copies.

The main difference in Jacks' version and previous versions, was that his version is a little happier, including removing the 'cheating wife' part.

Speaking of happy, Westlife's version is ... let's just say quite interesting. Their singing and upbeat song doesn't really carry across the message of a dying man. At all. Still the song did well for them, although it was eventually left off their Greatest Hits CD in 2002, possibly due to licensing/royalities rights.

A vast contrast to Westlife's poppy version is from Nirvana, who seems to stumble through the song. It's also interesting to note that you see Kurt Cobain playing the drums, instead of Dave Grohl (who looks like he's playing bass in the video).

Also interesting to note is that the song is vastly popular with punk bands such as Bad Religion, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes and Blink 182.

I am including a few other covers below, my favorite is Black Box Recorder, who I've previously mentioned. Their version sounds like a French film soundtrack :).

The Fortunes - Seasons In The Sun

Me First And The Gimme Gimmes - Seasons In The Sun

Black Box Recorder - Seasons in the Sun

Westlife - Seasons In The Sun

Nirvana - Seasons In The Sun

Links: www.weheartmusic.com

Too Much Joy - Seasons In The Sun (Album Version)

Papi Chulo wrote: Tue, May 20, 2008 at 7:04 PM

Don't forget the awesome version by Too Much Joy (click the Play link next to the track on that page. You can listen to 25 tracks per month free on Rhapsody). They were one of my favorites back in the day, and they still do the best version that I've ever heard. Even better live.

 

 

The Auteurs - Car Crazy

 

 

The Auteurs - Car Crazy

The Auteurs

 

I thought I was leaving for Chicago on Friday, but I guess we're leaving tomorrow morning. I haven't even thought about packing yet, but I'm a pretty light packer.

So, a while back, I thought about making a mix-CD of nothing but driving, fast driving, or car songs. It ended up being too depressing because a lot of those songs were about car crashes! Such as "Motorcrash", "Traffic Accident", "Crash" (The Primitives), and "Girl Singing in the Wreckage".

Anyroad, for our road trip this weekend, I thought I'd leave you with some Luke Haines car songs. Luke Haines has been around forever, I met and interview him during The Auteurs' "Now I'm a Cowboy" tour and have been following his career ever since. He joined in Black Box Recorder, which had some minor success. He's currently a solo artist (I believe he's still doing random gigs in England & Ireland).

 

 

Black Box Recorder - The Art Of Driving

So! The two fitting songs are "Car Crazy", which has a very slow country-western feel to it. The lyrics seems to suggest that the narrator was trying to get a snog from the girl, but she denied him and took over the driving. And apparently she was a bad driver, running red lights and ignoring the law.

"The Art of Driving" is not really a song. It's more of a dialogue between Sarah Nixey and John Moore. The song is from the Facts of Life album, but I'm going to include a youtube video. If you want the mpeg video, it's available as a bonus file from their The Worst of Black Box Recorder album.

Well, off to Chicago we go! I don't know what kind of internet access I will have, but expect this to be my last entry until Monday.

vu Links: deeden.co.uk/auteurs (fan website)

Black Box Recorder - Brutality

Black Box Recorder - Brutality

Black Box Recorder

Black Box Recorder is John Moore, Sarah Nixey (vocals) and Luke Haines.

Luke Haines is originally from the Auteurs (does anyone remember them?), and he's brilliant.  I met Luke a while back when I interviewed them for my radio show.

I recommend "The worst of Black Box Recorder" if you're just getting into them, as it is their greatest hits CD (it also comes with some bonus MOV videos).... which I'm sure are all on youtube.

More on the Auteurs later on.