Stockholm Take Two – The Boss of Sweden?

Last week we scoured a concert series poster from Stockholm and came up with a Stevie Ray Vaughn tribute singer/player covering Stevie Ray’s version of Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile” – a song that Jimi Hendrix himself played in Stockholm in 1969. This week, more covers by acts on this poster trace back to Bruce Springsteen in 1979.

Abalone Dots is a trio of three Swedish women who play bluegrass and country tunes. Last year in a TV performance, the band covered Bruce Springsteen’s “The River” from his 1980 album of the same name. Abalone Dots delivered an abbreviated version, but they sang the lyrics straight up: getting Mary pregnant, working construction and all. Bravo ladies! The band has been a quartet at times, and if you’d like to hear them get their bluegrass on, check out “The Ballad of Lee McKay”.

Believe it or not, another artist on this same poster covered “The River” on a TV show last year too! Micke Rickfors is The Boss’ contemporary, born in December 1948. Though mostly a solo artist throughout his career, Rickfors was a member of The Hollies in the early ’70’s, replacing their original lead singer Allan Clarke. After you watch Micke perform another abbreviated version of “The River”, you can check out his work with The Hollies on “Magic Woman Touch”.

It’s not clear why the Swedes have such affection for “The River”, but while the song never charted as a single in the U.S. it was the biggest hit up to that time for Bruce in both Sweden and Norway. Here is Bruce playing the whole song at the “No Nukes” concert in 1979, a few months before the album was released. The Swedes leave out the break with perhaps the best line in the song, “Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true, or is it something worse …”

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A Guitar Thread Beginning and Ending in Stockholm – Jimi to Stevie Ray to Chris.

A friend just returned from a trip to Stockholm and sent a photo of this poster featuring upcoming acts for, as best we can tell, a series of boat cruises around Stockholm Harbor. Thanks, Rainer!

The first act to catch our eye was “Chris Hiatt Band (US), Stevie Ray Vaughn Comes Alive”. A solid singer and guitarist (check out this video that starts off with a couple of original compositions), Chris usually plays with his band in and around Daytona Beach, Florida. Somewhere along the line his more than faint resemblance to Stevie Ray Vaughn was noticed, as was his ability to throw down a pretty fair imitation of Stevie Ray both as a singer and guitarist. Over the years Hiatt’s tribute concerts to Stevie Ray have become popular in Sweden where he is about to complete his 16th tour.

Here is Chris, dressed a la mode, covering Stevie Ray covering Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile”. Check out the behind the back playing at 7:30. As good as Chris is, certainly check out the real McCoy in an amazing Austin City Limits performance (and if you want to see Stevie Ray play behind his back, watch this video beginning at about 3:20).

Here’s an interesting coincidence: the YouTube video with the most views of Jimi himself playing Voodoo Chile is from a 1969 concert in … Stockholm!

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New Music from Spoon, Neon Trees and The New Pornographers

In a couple of weeks Spoon will release their 8th album “They Want My Soul”. Their last three albums reached #1 or #2 on Billboard’s Top Independent Albums chart. Here’s a live performance of “Rent I Pay”.

A few weeks after Spoon’s album shows up, The New Pornographers will release “Brill Bruisers”. The album is on Matador Records which coincidentally was Spoon’s first label. Here’s the video for the title track. If you “CLICK HERE TO PAINT IT YOURSELF” on the video, a window will pop up where you can – paint it yourself! Try it!!

Back in April, Neon Trees issued their third album “Pop Psychology”. The band got its big break when the Killers asked them to join their 2008 North American tour. The Killer’s drummer had once played in a band with Neon Trees’ bassist Branden Campbell. Here’s a performance of the albums’s first track “Love in the 21st Century”, and in case you’ve forgotten it here is a link to Neon Trees’ first big hit “Animal”.

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Time for Some Fun with Hayseed Dixie, Duck Sauce and The Kinks

Last weekend we were turned on to Hayseed Dixie (drawl it “ACDC”), a bluegrass band dedicated to rock and roll covers. The video for their version of AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” features clips from “The Wild One” starring Marlon Brando. If you like the band, check out their covers of The Cars’ “My Best Friend’s Girl”, and especially Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Priceless. Thanks, Paul!

Duck Sauce, the DJ duo of American Armand Van Helden and Canadian A-Trak, released their first full-length album “Quack” in April. It includes new tracks and previously released singles. The video for “It’s You” is a lot of fun, as are the videos for their earlier hits “aNYway” and “Barbra Streisand”.

To cap off the fun video theme, we’ll pay our respects to Ray Davies who celebrated his 70th birthday a few weeks ago. In the early days of video the Kinks put out this one for “Come Dancing”, a single which later appeared on the 1983 album “State of Confusion”. To illustrate the power of MTV, “Come Dancing” became one of the Kinks’ highest charting singles in the U.S. almost 20 years after “You Really Got Me” got things started.

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YouTube Just Got Even Better with Music Vault

Yesterday, Music Vault began the process of uploading thousands of concert videos to YouTube. Search for “Music Vault” on YouTube to see a link to the new channel. Thank you Bill Sagan!

[ Dear Readers, we’ve noticed that three of the links on this post have gone dead. In fact, for reasons unknown to us, it is hard to search the offerings of the Music Vault channel on YouTube. We’ll update you if we figure out why. In the meantime, while the Music Vault channel is still worth checking out, it is hard to search. HarryDJ ]

Music Vault, which has its own website that launched only a couple of months ago, is part of Sagan’s on-line music empire that includes the subscription concert audio archives of Concert Vault, rock & roll memorabilia website Wolfgang’s Vault, indie music site Daytrotter, and on-line publication Paste Magazine. Learn a bit more about how Sagan got started in our earlier post.

While the Music Vault collection is heavy on classic rock, it also includes new music and fabulous jazz performances. Here is a sample to whet your appetite.

Ray Charles covering Paul Simon.

U2 covering Bob Dylan.

Louie Armstrong performing a song he recorded in 1949 that Fats Domino would later cover.

And it doesn’t get any more indie than Rubblebucket (get past her funny hat, this is a pretty interesting band)!