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April 09, 2008
Retrohump: Dreaming About Eleanor Bron...
Yo La Tengo - "Tom Courtenay"
(live @ Waterfront Records, Sydney Australia, 1998)
I think the main reason "Tom Courtenay" is my favorite of all Yo La Tengo songs is the uncomfortably familiar fan boy longing in Ira Kaplan's nasal voice. I don't think it's too presumptuous to guess that many readers in our blog's hypothetical demographic might also relate to a song about wasting hours pining after glamorous images of women whose charm zeniths are frozen on celluloid filmed in decades past. This clip, which is horrifyingly now a decade old itself, takes away that bond of identification. Georgia Hubley's unassuming lilt conjures a much sweeter image of a starstruck girl living her life in magazines. The stripped down arrangement reduces some of the original's masculine guitar wank as well. It's a lovely rendition, but you can't compete with nostalgic projection now, can you?
Stanley Moon - "Love Me" / Drimble Wedge & the Vegetations - "Bedazzled"
(from the original 1967 version of Bedazzled)
Another man who spent too much time thinking about Eleanor Bron was Stanley Moon, Dudley Moore's character in the 1967 film Bedazzled. Those of you unfortunate souls who stumbled across the 2000 Brendan Fraser remake know that the basic storyline is of a man attempting to win the object of his affections by navigating through 7 ill-fated wishes given to him by the devil in exchange for his immortal soul. In this amazing clip, Stanley has wished himself a pop-star to woo Bron's era-appropriate hysterical teenage fan. The music, written by the versatile Moore himself, is a drolly hilarious distillation of the fickle affections of young girls in any time period. Stanley's needy Tom Jones croon "Love Me" is no match for the aloofness of Peter Cook's exquisitely named devil-in-diguise Drimble Wedge. Clueless young turks reading this take note: "I'm not available" is more intriguing than "love me" every time.
What's more interesting to me is how cool the Vegetations sound outside the bounds of the movie's joke. The disaffected deadpan spoken word reminds me immediately of Kraftwerk, the alternation between frozen call and psychedelic lady response conjures a Lee Hazlewood duet, and the dripping irony could have come from the in-cheek tongues of early 90's slackers. You'll notice that the best line ("you fill me with inertia") was brazenly stolen by the Long Blondes. An mp3 below for the fellow impressed.
Dudley Moore & Peter Cook - "Bedazzled"
Posted by Jeff Klingman at April 9, 2008 12:45 PM
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Comments
I'm not sure why I find that Bedazzled song hilarious....
Posted by: Kelli Douglas at April 9, 2008 02:41 PM
I've been a sucker for "Bedazzled" ever since I heard it on WFMU, free-form radio, back in the late '80s. I even have a cassette to prove it. As for YLT, it's a sweet version but I have to give the nod to the original--which I agree is one of their best songs ever, guitar wankery or not. I'd say. Electr-O-Pura is my favorite album of theirs. "From a Motel 6" and "Pablo and Andrea" are stunning.
Posted by: david at April 9, 2008 02:54 PM
oops. from a motel 6 wasn't from that album. sue me. One last point: Ira Kaplan and Lenny Kravitz have the most unrocking names in rock.
Posted by: david at April 9, 2008 02:56 PM
