Not a day goes by when someone doesn’t stop me on the street to ask me how highly I rate Breeders Cannonball 12″. True story. Now it can be really inconvenient if I’m late for work, or I’m out with one, or more, of my bitchez at lunchtime, but I suppose it’s just the flipside of the fame, fortune and general acclaim you get from reviewing your own record collection nightly. As long as they don’t get too up in my face I’m always civil, although I don’t autograph LPs for anyone anymore*. But, that as it is, it’s one of my favourite 12″s, easy.
Does anyone in the world not know ‘Cannonball’? if not, brace yourself you’re in for a treat, it’s also one of my favourite videos too:
To my mind music just doesn’t get much better than this, really. What drives the song for me is just a perfect, off-kilter sense of rhythm and percussion, step forward Mr Jim MacPherson who plays this one to perfection, also take a bow Josephine Wiggs for that bass riff. Couple it all with a perfect combination of restraint and release and Boom! Perfection, like a more groovy, lighter fingered and hearted Pixies – Kim Deal took the QuietQuietLOUDLOUDLOUDQuiet formula with her when she recorded this beauty. I think it’s also only fair to say that my great big huge alt-rock crush on Kelley Deal may be influencing my feelings about the song too. Whenever I hear it, I’m immediately slammed straight back to 1993, well all the good bits of that year anyway.
B-sides? you got ’em. ‘Cro-Aloha’ which is a demo version of ‘No Aloha’ from Last Splash (which I’ve never quite got around to buying), it’s a better version too, this ode to non-domesticity really benefits from less clarity and more fuzziness. ‘900’ is a really slow-building moody track, the beginning of which cops a trick, or two from ‘Scarborough Fair’, Josephine Wiggs really comes to the fore on this one with her vocals too.
Best of all though and not a million miles behind the title track is the Breeders’ unlikely cover of Aerosmith’s ‘Lord of The Thighs’. The original from Get Your Wings, has become one of my all-time favourite ‘Smith tunes funky, dark and a bit predatory, a bit of a precursor musically to ‘Walk This Way’ for me. But I digress, this ‘Lord of The Thighs’ is quite faithful musically, albeit a darn sight looser in places, but the absolute clincher is Josephine Wiggs’ spoken vocal on top, her fairly plummy English tones somehow giving this track real twist and menace,
You must have come here to find me
You’ve got the look in your eyes
Although you really don’t mind it
I am the Lord Of Your Thighs
I love a good creative cover, when someone takes a track and does something interesting with it, rather than just regurgitating it and this ticks those boxes for me. I think another sign of a really good cover is that it makes you want to hear the original again straight after, which is what I’ve done over and over tonight – played them both in a loop.
I’m happy. This is fun.
295 Down.
P.S – I aspire to one day owning a Kelley Deal scarf, knitting is a big part of what she does these days: http://store.kelleydeal.com/
*they just end up on eBay at inflated prices, really annoying when you think you’re just signing it for someone’s sick kid, or granny.