Music

Otis Redding, That’s How Strong My Love Is (1965)

The most famous version, and a great one:

My favorite version: The Creation, That’s How Strong My Love Is (1966). The Creation perform live on the German TV show Beat Beat Beat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDnCZ7QfO3M

The original version, nicely done by O.V. Wright, That’s How Strong My Love Is (1964).

Here is a nice version by the Rolling Stones, on the Ready Steady Go show, in 1965.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p-RS3yq8B0

Our standard: “If you are going to cover a song, rip it apart a bit and make it your own.” Otis did it, taking the song farther down the soulful road it was on. The Creation took it to a different place, making it a rock song, but still with soulful singing. The Stones version is closer to the Otis Version, with saxophone, but still Stonesy.

A great song can withstand a lot of “ripping apart.”

UPDATE:

Bryan Ferry, That’s How Strong My Love Is (1978).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yxr71scIW1E

UPDATE II

Tommy Young, That’s How Strong My Love Is (1972). She sang this song over the music track in one take. Nice.

Recently one of my all time favorite bands, The Replacements, got back together and played three shows at Riot Fest.  Of the four original members, one of the Stinson brothers is dead, their replacement guitarist Slim Dunlop has a life threatening disease, and their drummer Chris Mars is a full time artist.  So the last two Replacements, Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson, played shows to rapturous reviews by fellow Gen-X’ers.

I am just kicking myself in the rear that I didn’t go see those shows.  The Chicago show conflicted with a bunch of other things but in hindsight I could have gone off and seen them in Denver (maybe).  Now I am waiting to see if they get back together (or even record some more music) and this time I’ll be sure to go, where ever they play.

After watching some of the songs on You Tube I went to put some more replacements on my iPod while working out and realized that I only had a few snippets from their albums in my collection.  Back when I first ripped the Replacements CD’s a long time ago I only put a few songs from each CD on my computer (trying to save space) and of course the quality was low, at 64 bit.  I realized that I didn’t even have “Tim”, my favorite album, at all.

I started looking around on itunes and now I need to buy these songs for a THIRD time.  I had them all on albums, then CD’s, and now I need to buy them AGAIN, on iTunes?  Really?  And all the while I can hear Dan’s voice in my head saying that he doesn’t buy any music anymore, relying on the internet and services like Pandora / Spotify and for me at least, Sirius / XM (I have it in my car and house and started paying a bit more to stream it and play on my “Jambox” speaker through my iPod or iPhone).

In this case I knew where my old CD’s were… I gave them all (more than a thousand) to my brother, and he was ripping them in some high fidelity manner.  He looked through the stack (they were all out of order because of a flood) and found three CD’s, which I took back, and I will re-rip again and put on my iPod.  After I got home I realized that I didn’t get “Let it Be”, probably my favorite, and I don’t have all the songs on my iPod.  Oh well, I may have to buy a few here and there.

But how long before I don’t buy any music at all?  It can’t be too long.  I don’t buy too many books anymore, and I probably buy less eBooks than I used to buy of the equivalent hardcover variety.  I am consuming paid media at a fraction of the rate that I used to, and can probably see a day when I get rid of everything (I got rid of all my CD’s a while ago, so these three are the last three in my house).

Cross posted at Chicago Boyz