left banke - walk away renee

I'm going on a train journey tomorrow and was wondering what music to listen to, problem solved.

RIP. I listen to the 66-69 comp so often and treasure so much of it.

So many awesome versions of this tune

yup

I remember coming across this thread a long long time ago, way back when youtube.com was a brand new thing, in the olden times of 2007 before I'd ever heard this song. I looked it up because I was very interested in hearing what someone called the most beautiful song they'd ever heard. (I also did the same thing when someone here said the same thing about "Wichita Lineman." I'd never heard that before either, somehow.)

Anyway I remember hearing "Walk Away Renee" for the first time and liking it a lot not just because it's great but because it's a great thing brand new to me and therefore probably many others and therefore probably severely underrated. Upon reading the news in this thread today I listened to it again for the first time in a long time and still liked it a lot, and because I have free time to kill while I wait for my start date for my new job, I had a lot of the day today to sit around and listen to music. I listened to the whole Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina album twice. It's great! And I've never heard it before. And being able to hear something great I've never heard before is exactly the sort of thing I've been using this board for for nearly the last twenty years.

"I've Got Something On My Mind" is my favorite

^^ that's a super good one
"Desiree" is my favorite I think

I just looked up the backstory of The Left Banke, and I'm amazed by how young they were. I would never in a million years have guessed that Walk Away Renee was written by an actual teenager, even though the lyrics are all about teenage love.

Also there were two, possibly, three incarnations of the band, in as many years, and all of them were good.

The Stories’ “Love Is In Motion” is a great track. They don’t have their own thread so posting that here.

Now have been listening to There’s Gonna Be a Storm and really digging the melancholy garagey orch-pop of all of it, particularly “Let Go of You Girl.”

“Pretty Ballerina” has a drony violin I never noticed before, played by Lookofsky père, I believe, vaguely reminiscent of “Venus in Furs.”

Other thing I am reminded of a bit is the Dutch group The Outsiders.

Here’s a factoid I never knew from the second album’s Wikipedia page:

A pre-Aerosmith Steven Tyler, then known as Steve Tallarico, contributed backing vocals to several songs on the album including ‘My Friend Today’ and ‘Dark is the Bark’.[3]

It's really obvious it's him too. He was quoted somewhere about he'd been hanging out with the band and was shocked at how unprepared to record they were (songs written immediately before stepping into the studio and/or written in the studio).

Those are pretty good songs, unprepared or not!

Just happened upon this Michael Brown chestnut from the 70s: https://youtu.be/wLeQXGcw5gM

The four tops version is the worst.

Jesus christ!

Bass player Tom Finn has died, meaning the entire original line-up of the band is now dead.

RIP :(