TONIGHTS OXYMORON: A WORKING CONGRESS

I don't know about you, but to me "My Little Red Book" has always been a Love song, as in by Love (not a lower case love song). It had meat on it. I never bothered to see who wrote it. My first exposure to it was on the original Nuggets garage compilation that Lenny Kaye put together back in the seventies. Back then Nuggets was two LPs, later expanded to a 4 CD box set in the eighties, and later joined by Nuggets II (international garage rock) and then Children of Nuggets (eighties revivalist bands). It was a fucking cottage industry once Rhino got wise to it. Then there were Pebbles compilations, Back From the Grave compilations. The shit got deep. Where was I? Oh yeah, so, given that my first exposure was that long ago, I'm not all that embarrassed to admit that I never knew it was a Burt Bacharach song. No clue. Love made it sound so tough, it never occurred to me. After running into a post at Aquarium Drunkard, I went looking. Their post had a Hammond dominated version by Robert Walter's 20th Congress. Walter (above) was somewhere in the middle of that whole Greboy All-Stars mob, which I've always had a soft spot for. T'was a time when Greyboy's All-Stars and the B-Side Players were gigging all over locally (this was the nineties) and it was a very cool scene. A break from all of the post-punk, alternative and in-your-face stuff. Who was that guy, the sax player who ended up taking over Bobby Keys's spot on a Stones tour a few years back? Oh yeah, Karl Denson, he was in one of those bands as well. The music these guys were making was somewhat smart, if only because it wasn't dumb. They appealed to your books/film side, art that didn't have to be trashy to be cool. Anyway, here's some versions of "My Little Red Book". Dig the Other Half's version. (Love who?) You can do a search for stuff by the other people I'm too lazy to search for. I'm interactive, dad, just the first step of you getting lost.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
Robert Walters 20th Congress - My Little Red Book mp3 at Aquarium Drunkard Go there to get it. Three other covers as well.
Love - My Little Red Book (streaming) at YouTube
Burt Bacharach (Tony Middleton: vocals) - My Little Red Book (streaming) at YouTube
The Other Half - My Little Red Book mp3 at Garage Hangover TOUGH! This one is a keeper!