Song of the Week: The Tell-Tale Hearts - Too Many Lovers

The smart ones of you out there new this was coming. Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? 

Yesterday we looked at the 1965 recording by The Scorpions doing Too Many Lovers. Some comments to that post led us to today where we jump 21 years ahead to 1986 and across many, many miles to land in San Diego. It was there and then that The Tell-Tale Hearts traveled to a 3-track recording studio tucked away in the mountains East of town. The band at that time was (from L-R), Bill Calhoun, Mike Stax, Dave Klowden, Ray Brandes and Pete Meisner. (Meisner and Stax are both alums of The Crawdaddys, btw) This is the only TTH recording with the über talented Pete Meisner on lead guitar. And it was the last recording of The Tell-Tale Hearts as we really knew them. The TTH's superb take on Too Many Lovers was released on the Australian Kavern-7 Records.

While the arrangement stays largely faithful to the original by The Scorpions, there are some clear differences. The ethereal harmonies are gone, Calhoun's Vox Continental organ doesn't quite go to the quirkiness of the original. Mike Stax's bass work is brought to the fore, Dave Klowden's drum gets a huge production boost, particularly towards the end where the reverb drenched drum fills bring the song to a percussive end. On top of that, singer Ray Brandes attacks the song with anger whereas the Scorpions singer, Peter Lewis, sang the song with regret and sadness. And last, The Tell-Tale Hearts give the song a much needed supercharge at guitar. Meisner's guitar work (which I believe was done with a Guild Starfire III and a Vox AC30) is phenomenal and buttresses Brandes' bitter approach perfectly. Listen for the click at 1:11 as he steps on the Vox Tone Bender to take the lead to 11. 

Enjoy the two back-to-back. And if you are up for it, check out this 2009 Flip-Side post on The Tell-Tale Hearts.

Until next time, we'll see you On The Flip-Side!

Song of the Week: The Scorpions - Too Many Lovers

Holy Scorpion songs, batman. We're back for a second straight day of featuring a song from the 60s beat group, The Scorpions. To be honest, that's a lot of attention paid to a band of this little infamy. A couple of comments on yesterday's Scorpions post for Hey Honey got us referencing this song so we figured we better put it out.

The song is Too Many Lovers and it is a real quirky number with a freaky cool organ bubbling under the whole song and some dang nifty falsetto harmonies at 1:49 to carry us out. It was released as the Flip-Side to a mundane cover on CNR Records in October of 1966. (We really do get carried away with the Flip-Sides on this blog. Good thing we named our site appropriately). Many, many years later the San Diego rock band, The Tell-Tale Hearts, would record a beautiful version of this song for Kavern-7 Records. Hmmm, is that a hint to tomorrow's post?

The organ in this Scorpions song reminds us of a song recorded in Minot, North Dakota a year later by The Trenchmen. You can read that post here. Highly recommended stuff, dude.

Song of the Week: The Scorpions - Hey Honey

Ladies and gentleman, welcome to our stage...The Scorpions! No, not the German soft metal band from the 80s who like to rock things like a weather phenomenon. This group was from Manchester, England before they relocated to The Netherlands sometime in 1964. The band was (at the time of this recording) Peter Lewis, Tony and Rodney Postill, Ian Lucas and Terry Morton. The band released 12 singles and an album on the dutch based CNR label. Most are tepid covers of Chuck Berry and Little Richard covers. But tucked away on a few Flip-Sides were band compositions that stood out from the rest. 

Today's Song of the Week is one of those. The song is Hey Honey, and it's the Flip-Side of their 7th single, released in June of 1965. I love the simple two chord riff and then the descending chords into the main structure of the song. Despite a very weak guitar lead, the rhythm guitar work throughout the song makes this a must spin gem. 

Until next time, we'll see you On The Flip-Side.