― mick hall, Monday, 24 February 2003 16:36 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Monday, 24 February 2003 16:36 (twenty-one years ago) link
― thomas de'aguirre (biteylove), Monday, 24 February 2003 16:40 (twenty-one years ago) link
― James Blount, Monday, 24 February 2003 16:43 (twenty-one years ago) link
best Chuck Berry cover versions? dunno that I have a "favorite" per se, so I'll just go with the above (for now)
― M Matos (M Matos), Monday, 24 February 2003 16:48 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Monday, 24 February 2003 16:50 (twenty-one years ago) link
― James Ball (James Ball), Monday, 24 February 2003 16:55 (twenty-one years ago) link
― M Matos (M Matos), Monday, 24 February 2003 17:19 (twenty-one years ago) link
"Tulane" is also very great, the best song ever written about a head shop?
And don't forget the awesome "Thirteen Question Method," Liliput has nothing on this.
In an interview he did around 1970, he referred to the Stones' singer as "Dick Jagger."
― frank p. jones (frank p. jones), Monday, 24 February 2003 17:47 (twenty-one years ago) link
It's not really a Chuck Berry song. The Bees did it as "Toy Bell" in 1954. Pretty blatant heist, actually (though not as bad as "Surfing USA").
― Jazzbo (jmcgaw), Monday, 24 February 2003 18:51 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Monday, 24 February 2003 18:52 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Nick H, Monday, 24 February 2003 18:55 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Jazzbo (jmcgaw), Monday, 24 February 2003 19:02 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Monday, 24 February 2003 19:13 (twenty-one years ago) link
In Wim Wenders's Alice in the Cities there is an indulgent but lovely moment where the lead character momentarily leaves the little girl he is shepherding around Germany to see Chuck Berry at an outdoor festival. There is about 10 seconds of performance footage (obviously cribbed from another source) and Chuck is smokin.
― Amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 24 February 2003 19:47 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Monday, 24 February 2003 19:57 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Pete Scholtes, Monday, 24 February 2003 20:50 (twenty-one years ago) link
― duane, Monday, 24 February 2003 21:31 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 25 February 2003 04:28 (twenty-one years ago) link
― keith (keithmcl), Tuesday, 25 February 2003 04:47 (twenty-one years ago) link
― James Blount (James Blount), Tuesday, 25 February 2003 05:03 (twenty-one years ago) link
Best Chuck Berry song is "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man," though, yep, toughest pick ever. "Memphis" is a runner-up for the reasons Matos suggests (so different from most of his great stuff and so touching)as well as:"Maybelline" ("motorvating"!!!) "You Never Can Tell" ("coolerator"!!!) "Promised Land" (where he bypasses Rock Creek)"Sweet Little Sixteen" ("sweet little sixteen/she's got the grown-up blues" -- best juxtaposition evah!)"Nadine" ("coffee-colored Cadillac"!!! "campaign shoutin' like a Southern diplomat"!!!)"Let it Rock" (rhymes "Alabama" and "steel-driving hammer")
― chris herrington (chris herrington), Thursday, 25 September 2003 16:17 (twenty years ago) link
― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Thursday, 25 September 2003 16:23 (twenty years ago) link
― Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 25 September 2003 16:24 (twenty years ago) link
― chris herrington (chris herrington), Thursday, 25 September 2003 16:28 (twenty years ago) link
― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Thursday, 25 September 2003 16:31 (twenty years ago) link
I was just making a knee-jerk comment because one of the frustrations of being a Chuck Berry fanatic in Memphis is that he basically gets ignored except for "Memphis" which is regularly appropriated (though often in the Johnny Rivers version -- gag) by city boosters as some kind of "come to Memphis and get drunk on Beale Street" tourist anthem when obviously the appeal of the song doesn't have much to do with Memphis itself (though "her home was on the south side, high upon the ridge, just a half a mile from the Mississippi bridge" gets me)and isn't a good-time celebration kind of song. But that isn't the King's fault.
― chris herrington (chris herrington), Thursday, 25 September 2003 16:40 (twenty years ago) link
― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Thursday, 25 September 2003 16:45 (twenty years ago) link
Best cover version: the Rolling Stones' "Carol" (1st lp, NOT Ya-Yas).
― Burr (Burr), Thursday, 25 September 2003 17:44 (twenty years ago) link
― Burr (Burr), Thursday, 25 September 2003 17:45 (twenty years ago) link
― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Monday, 21 March 2005 08:51 (nineteen years ago) link
I pick "Come On".
― I got the job because I was so mean, while somehow appearing so kind. (AaronHz), Monday, 21 March 2005 10:36 (nineteen years ago) link
Anyway, these runners-up deserve mention too. I love how bits of "You Can't Catch Me" found their way into "Come Together" (and the Stooges' "1970"!) years later. Love how his guitar duplicates his vocal precisely in "School Days". "Havana Moon" may have inspired "Louie Louie", "Too Much Monkey Business" definitely inspired "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and maybe even Mark E. Smith! (For clarification, read "The Artist Formerly Known As Mr. Diamond"'s remarks upthread.) And, yeah, "Memphis" and its sad little twist ending gets me everytime.
― Myonga Von Bontee (Myonga Von Bontee), Monday, 21 March 2005 11:35 (nineteen years ago) link
(I have to disqualify "Back in the USA" because the last time I heard it, I got very emotionally affected, and I realize I'm starting to say this about every other song around, which probably means I should stop smoking so much weed, but anyway, when I heard it I wasn't even IN the USA, also I'm not even from there, which means I'm doubtless missing layers of 'true' meaning in this unbelievably great song [those b. vox!!], so that's why I didn't pick that one)
― dave q (listerine), Monday, 21 March 2005 16:33 (nineteen years ago) link
Runnerup "Promised Land." And "You Never Can Tell."
― edd s hurt (ddduncan), Monday, 21 March 2005 16:44 (nineteen years ago) link
― kephm, Monday, 21 March 2005 16:46 (nineteen years ago) link
― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Monday, 21 March 2005 16:54 (nineteen years ago) link
― Ken L (Ken L), Monday, 21 March 2005 17:30 (nineteen years ago) link
― mark s (mark s), Monday, 21 March 2005 19:03 (nineteen years ago) link
― Pete Scholtes, Tuesday, 22 March 2005 04:08 (nineteen years ago) link
― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Tuesday, 22 March 2005 05:30 (nineteen years ago) link
― Myonga Von Bontee (Myonga Von Bontee), Tuesday, 22 March 2005 07:27 (nineteen years ago) link
Christgau's written a lot about Chuck Berry over the years--he's why I sought out the Motorvatin' compilation years ago, even though I had most of what was on there already--so his second recommendation here seems worth noting:
http://social.entertainment.msn.com/music/blogs/expert-witness-blogpost.aspx?post=afa691a5-619c-4909-8019-c531d23cdb86
― clemenza, Friday, 3 August 2012 22:32 (eleven years ago) link
(For the thread: "Come On.")
― clemenza, Friday, 3 August 2012 22:35 (eleven years ago) link
Sounds like a damn nice comp. Really hard to say that The Great Twenty-Eight needs much improving, but "You Never Can Tell" would be nice, it's true.
JOHHNY B. POLLED: chuck berry's great twenty-eight
― Doctor Casino, Friday, 3 August 2012 22:37 (eleven years ago) link
I was lucky enough to find Golden Decade Vol. 2 as a cutout once, which has "Come On," "You Never Can Tell" (not really a favourite, though of course great in Pulp Fiction), "The Promised Land," and "Let It Rock." So I've got all three Golden Decades--can't remember a thing about the third--plus Motorvatin'. The Great Twenty-Eight showed up afterwards.
― clemenza, Friday, 3 August 2012 22:42 (eleven years ago) link
Volume three has one track that would also end up on Great Twenty-Eight ("Beautiful Delilah") a whole lot of the blues-oriented material, and a couple of really oddball rockers. Nice stab at "The House of Blue Lights," but the ones to cherry-pick IIRC are "Downbound Train" and the curious "Broken Arrow." It's definitely not essential, but it's always fun to open up the non-28 material for me, cause I know that stuff so deep down it's always a pleasant surprise to go, wait, dude had other songs!
― Doctor Casino, Friday, 3 August 2012 22:55 (eleven years ago) link
It's gotta be 'Rock'n'Roll Music'...
― The Jupiter 8 (Turrican), Friday, 3 August 2012 22:59 (eleven years ago) link
I picked up Bear Family's "Chuck Rocks", with all uptempo songs, and it's perfect.
― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Saturday, 4 August 2012 00:38 (eleven years ago) link
Brown Eyed Handsome Man
― J. Sam, Tuesday, 13 August 2019 14:27 (four years ago) link
Havana Moon
― one charm and one antiup quark (outdoor_miner), Tuesday, 13 August 2019 14:30 (four years ago) link
these days for me it's "Club Nitty Gritty". Never fails to destroy to dancefloor when I dj out
― “Hakuna Matata,” a nihilist philosophy (One Eye Open), Tuesday, 13 August 2019 14:34 (four years ago) link
Wow, don't think I've heard this one before.
― Good morning, how are you, I'm (Doctor Casino), Tuesday, 13 August 2019 16:27 (four years ago) link
No Particular Place to Go. The fills!
― bendy, Tuesday, 13 August 2019 18:10 (four years ago) link
Never fail to be amused by the possessor of the Venus referred to in “Brown Eyed Handsome Man.” Sounds to me like Chuck sang “Marlowe’s Venus,” which I imagine as referring to Christopher Marlowe, whose Venus was a poxy quean for all I know, if not a non-being a la Wittgenstein’s Mistress. Sometimes it sounds like people, such as Carl Perkins, to name one, are singing about “Marvell’s Venus” in a nod to Andrew Marvell’s coy mistress and her problematic relationship to time’s winged Coupe de Ville.
― Old Man Reacts to Cloud (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 25 March 2023 22:27 (one year ago) link
It's "Milo de Venus," right? Or maybe "Marla de Venus" or something like that?
― got it in the blood, the kid's a pelican (Doctor Casino), Sunday, 26 March 2023 03:26 (one year ago) link
Online lyrics say Milo Venus but that’s not quite what I hear him singing. I am sure he meant to sing about the same Venus as Tom Verlaine, but something got a little mutated by a cosmic ray along the way.
― It’s Only Her Factory, Girl! (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 26 March 2023 03:38 (one year ago) link
I always heard “Milo’s Venus” which is a good translation tbh
― The land of dreams and endless remorse (hardcore dilettante), Sunday, 26 March 2023 03:38 (one year ago) link
It’s probably that but the vowel sounds still seem different.
― It’s Only Her Factory, Girl! (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 26 March 2023 04:10 (one year ago) link
I mean of course he meant Venus de Milo aka Aphrodite de Milos, it’s that he changed it to “Milo’s Venus” as if Milo was a person not a place, and then when someone else sings it sometimes the vowels widen and it seems like it’s a different person from the original “Milo.” Listen to Carl Perkins here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZRwhbOeBgE
― It’s Only Her Factory, Girl! (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 26 March 2023 11:23 (one year ago) link
See also that one song about “Pete’s Leaning Tower.”
― It’s Only Her Factory, Girl! (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 26 March 2023 11:24 (one year ago) link
Drifting Heart
― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Wednesday, 27 September 2023 20:01 (eight months ago) link