There Was Really Only One

The Rifles, "Local Boy" - God, if only I had a time machine; this song would make a way better second-post song for "Area" than whatever I actually posted for it. The thing about mod-punk-pop is that a lot of the time, it can end up getting either a little too shamelessly sunny or a little too in love with itself - which is fine, of course (I'm sure a thousand people said the same kinds of things about garage rock with smoke signals or carrier pigeons or whatever lonely obsessive dorks used to distract themselves from the cutlery drawer back in the sixties), but it doesn't say much with regards to the staying power of most of the stuff. Of course, I've only had the Rifles' "Local Boy" for about an hour, so I'm a little wary of bold statements about 2025, but what an hour it's been; literally every second I've had since I clicked on Piccadilly's thirty-second clip has been devoted to either (a) finding this motherfucking song, or (b) playing that motherfucking song AGAIN. I mean, yes it's a pretty conventional song, and no this isn't exactly a new kind of fulmination coming from me, but fuck it - all I can do is hope that they wouldn't be bashing on those drums or hopping you up on That Motherfucking Riff if they didn't want people embarassing themselves all over the internet. The Rifles have an album scheduled for next spring; if there's another song on it half as crack-esque as "Local Boy", I can guarantee you that you'll be hearing more about them. (Click here to buy the "Local Boy" single from Rough Trade)

Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, "Don't Leave Me This Way" (A Tom Moulton mix) (15 mb file) -
Because Jen works with cooler people than I ever did (that's right, Am***can Ap***el employees - you are officially cooler than people who work for IHOP's tech support division), her office made palindrome mix CDs (six covers and the six originals arranged in mirroring order) to play today; needless to say, I couldn't help throwing one together just for fun. I decided to put this right smack in the middle of the mix, mostly because it's the kind of world-erasingly long song that lets you cap off a section of a mix and start something new, but it sure doesn't hurt that it's TEN FUCKING MINUTES of unadulterated Philly International fireworks to boot. I'm sure everyone's aware of "Don't Leave Me This Way" - not that you'd want to duck Thelma Houston's super-classic cover, of course - so the song itself might not take you by surprise, but the execution sure will; the first time I went through this song's seven-minute breakdown, I remember thinking about how it never really paid off like it should (seriously, the payoff is maybe thirty seconds long), but since then I've learned to love Arthur Russell's disco aimlessness, and now I have as much fun soaking in the warmth of those keys and getting gradually wound up by those horns as I do with Thelma's showstopping version. That's not to say this song hasn't been steeped in melodrama for weeks, of course; to answer the crucial question, yes this version keeps those unfuckwithable "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH"s, and the Harold Melvin factor should pretty much be self-evident (to say nothing of the Tom Moulton factor). Think of it as an analogue to the Thin White Duke mix of "Mr. Brightside", I guess - it's not an unnecessary radical reconstruction, just a lot more of a really great song than you'll normally get. (Click here to buy Philadelphia Classics, a really really great compilation of full Tom Moulton mixes of Philly International songs, from Amazon.com)

And just for shits and giggles, the tracklisting for the mix I sent to Jen (with slight cheating, but I'll take any opportunity to make a mix sound better that Soft Cell can afford me):

1. The Flying Picketts, "Only You"
2. The Arcade Fire, "Born On A Train" (live on KCRW)
3. Soft Cell, "Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go?"
4. The Slits, "I Heard It Through The Grapevine"
5. Thelma Houston, "Don't Leave Me This Way"
6. Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, "Don't Leave Me This Way" (A Tom Moulton mix)
7. Marvin Gaye, "I Heard It Through The Grapevine"
8. Gloria Jones, "Tainted Love"
9. The Supremes, "Where Did Our Love Go?"
10. The Magnetic Fields, "Born On A Train"
11. Yaz, "Only You"