Mike Bennett writesFriday iPod/MP3 Shuffle—Happy Birthday Ronnie Spector Edition

This woman took the lead on Brian Wilson’s favorite rock ‘n’ roll record ever, “Be My Baby”. She ultimately went on to marry the producer of that record, and lived to tell about it. Veronica Bennett, best known to the world as Ronnie Spector, was one of the icons of the girl group era, her yearning vocals balancing innocence and sexuality perfectly, and sounding great on top of Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound. While her work since The Ronettes faded away has been sporadic, she’s worked with everyone from Joey Ramone to Eddie Money, returning to the charts on his ’80s smash “Take Me Home Tonight”. She’s maintained her legacy with dignity, which is more than can be said of her ex. Let’s pay tribute to the lead Ronette by grabbing your iPod or MP3 player, hitting shuffle and sharing the first 10 songs that come up. 

1. Linus Of Hollywood — I Enjoy Being A Boy (In Love With You) (Right To Chews: Bubblegum Classics Revisited): This is from one of the best tribute albums ever, a Not Lame collection compiled by journalist John Borack, with tons of outstanding bubblegum covers. Here, soft-pop wunderkind Linus Dotson (ex-Size 14), works his magic on the best song in the considerable catalog of The Banana Splits. Linus’ sunshine aesthetic is perfect for this weenybopper psych-pop classic.
2. The Undertones — Love Parade (Peel Sessions 1978-1982): I think the Peel Sessions for the songs from The Undertones’ Sin Of Pride album were waxed before its release. They aren’t quite as produced as the album versions, but still show how the band was trying to meld their pop instincts with R & B, psychedelia and angular post-punk guitars. This is a very cool song, and a lot of material from this era almost sounds like a preview of the first That Petrol Emotion record, and this song is a good example. Underrated tune.
3. Mission Of Burma — Fell—>H20 (Unsound): This is a very typical Mission Of Burma song from their very good new album. They’ve now put out more stuff post-reunion than in their original reincarnation. MoB has established such a distinctive interplay, that anything they do is worth it just for the interplay between the three musicians. This is chugging and crunching all at the same time.
4. Silver Apples — Water (Silver Apples): These guys are not only one of the original electronic based rock bands, but they also pre-dated Krautrock in establishing droning as a key rock sound. This comes from a CD with their first two albums. The song relies on simple sustained keyboard chords over frisky drumming in the background. If the drumming were more upfront, this could easily be mistaken for an Oneida song. If you like them, Neu! or The Fall, you should own this.
5. Polara — Letter Bomb (Polara): This Minneapolis band was led by Ed Ackerson of 27 Various. This was truly a ’90s pop-rock record, as the underlying songs are bouncy pop, but then he layers all sorts of guitars and keyboards over them, creating an intelligent and catchy racket. This tune is not as ‘heavy’ as most of the album, but it’s very catchy in a manner somewhere between The New Radicals and power poppers like The Flashing Lights. One of the cool effects is looping and layer the female ‘na na na’ backing vocals, and Ackerson does a great job layers more and more sound as the song progresses. Unfortunately, they polished the sound when graduating to a major label, taking away what made the sound so interesting in the first place.
6. World Party — Thank You World (Goodbye Jumbo): Karl Wallinger shared with Todd Rundgren and ability to take soul elements and throw them into more of a psychedelic pop context. Of course, this only works if you can pull off the vocals, which Wallinger had no problem with. This song establishes a groove and does a great job of setting up the big chorus with all the backing vocalists joining in, leading to a nifty church revival styled middle eight.
7. The Wedding Present — Let Him Have It (Watusi): While I enjoy the earlier bruising stuff from this British institution, Watusi is my favorite album. This song has one of those chugging rhythms that David Gedge adds to with a bit of chicken scratch funk guitar and a dash of melody and his usually accounting of human ineptitude at love. This is about as funky as the Weddoes get, which isn’t that funky, but it works nonetheless.
8. My Dad Is Dead — The King Is Dead (Everyone Wants The Honey But Not The Sting): Mark Edwards’ guitar sound is fantastic — the riff here sounds like an off-kilter Bob Mould riff. Even better is how he takes this slightly dissonant part in the verses and has that flow into a surprisingly meloldic chorus from which he plucked the phrase that became the album’s title. While a lot of MDID’s stuff is more in the vibe of Joy Division meets Television, they could flat out rock, and this album is one of the best examples of that.
9. The Cardigans – Heartbreaker (First Band On The Moon): An offbeat number from this Swedish band’s most commercially successful album. This is mainly because it is grounded in a looped percussion track that almost sounds like an optigan. For that matter, it might be one. The band then throws in odd embellishments, while Nina Persson is as sweet as ever. This somehow manages to sound very loungey and gritty and indie at the same time.
10. Burning Sensations — Pablo Picasso (Repo Man): Nothing could ever top The Modern Lovers’ original version of this song, but this cover for the soundtrack of the 1984 cult classic movie is pretty sharp. The band casts this song more as a nick of the “Peter Gunn Theme” and then adds some discombobulated keyboard effects and sax and whatnot. It’s pretty effective with more sneering vocals too.