Farmertan

this is our first official youtube video.

The podcast. Named for a popular device from the Apple Computer company, it has become America, and perhaps the world’s favorite single serving out of the freezer save for later entertainment source. From Comedy, (Ricky Gervais has an excellent show)- to music, to news and information, the podcast is here to stay.  The podcast is todays college radio.  The correct podshow can let you discover new bands and musical forms.  They run the spectrum from very professional to completely amatuerish.  The spirit of the program is always the same,  to create a show that is influenced by an everyday individual’s personality.  It can be an audio blog or a demo to attract bigger and better things for it’s maker.  Whatever the motivation podcasts are ambitious works that deserve to be heard.  Here are 2 podcasts playing Farmertan:

http://music.podshow.com/music/listeners/podshow_details.php?ShowHash=e7970c08cd9fd7839335ff0f5531fd27#

http://music.podshow.com/music/listeners/podshow_details.php?ShowHash=23d5a7e129c6ed5e4eef489d6c636620#

Once in a while, the ideas for Farmertan lyrics come from external sources and just find their way into the songs. Songs about cars and motorcycles and movies and subliminal product placement. Every once in awhile it gets a bit political, and this weeks selection is called “General Strike.” You have heard of a union strike, and the general strike is the similar  concept of all working class people just not showing up for work- (perhaps this is quite timely given the Wall Street greed Debacle)- and then certain people saying- wait, we need those people..etc. but really this song is about all the ads on TV about the National Guard and how they pay for your school- but guess what- you better know what you are doing because the price of college may be your life.

On a non-political note,  its a pretty song- with a nice lead guitar melody.

http://www.divshare.com/download/7469992-e06

Everyone loves Canada, and if they don’t admit it, it is because they have fell in love with it yet; from comedians, to wonderful cities, to the home of Santa Claus and the North Pole- its a big white wonderland.  And it is home to some of the finest music that the planet has to offer; from Bruce Cockburn to the Barenaked ladies, to RUSH, Triumph, The  Tragically Hip to Bryan Adams, Sloan to Hot Hot Heat to the Constantines, Sam Roberts to many many more- the CBC radio station, and programming are unmatched.

But the undisputed jewel atop the golden crown of Canadian pop and folk music is certainly, none other than Gordon Lightfoot. Who can name a more haunting melody than “The  Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”  But for this weeks selection we have an acoustic version of a crossover folk and country hit “Sundown.” As a bonus, we are including a Farmertan original acoustic song called “Pieces,” a rip-roaring tale of betrayal in the modern internet age.

“Sundown” Gordon Lightfoot, performed by Farmertan

http://www.divshare.com/download/7262146-49a

“Pieces” by Farmertan

http://www.divshare.com/download/7261995-bff

For a very long time, the Pixies Trompe le Monde was in my college CD changer. Perhaps that was because the album was brand new at the time;  but an album that got at least as much play was certainly “Doolittle”- the undisputed Zenith of the Pixies phenomenon. Kurt Cobain listed the Pixies as one of his greatest influences, especially the dynamics of quiet verse juxtaposed against hammering choruses. “Debaser,” “Monkey Gone to heaven,” “Hey,” and “Wave of Mutilation” were bonafide classics, but perhaps the hit and often maligned standout was “Here comes your man.” It has been said that the Pixies did not like the song and refused to play it; but a  live show and several DVD’s of other concerts disprove this myth.

“Here comes your man” is not a love song; its a song about dropping the atomic bomb on Japan. This confusion is eerily  similar to REM’s “The one I love”- also not a love song but misconstrued as one for years.

Enjoy

“Here comes you man” the Pixies; Performed by Farmertan

http://www.divshare.com/download/7153256-444

We have skipped a bunch of weeks, but we have been busy. We have been diligently been distracted by cover songs and are loading up the stockpiles for week after week ear assaults.

If you looked on a notebook in high school you may see “Led Zeppelin” or AC-DC; or maybe the Police, definitely U2 but just as likely, the CURE. Robert Smith Was every bit effeminate as any of the American Hair Bands, he was 100% all English man of the eighties. Right as the first wave of pink subsided and new wave was kicking in, Robert said, let me do it my own way, so in the seventies, at the age of 18 years,  he went his own way and wrote Boys Don’t Cry.

In these covers we try to extract the power in the songs, and serve them up with a heaping help of Farmertan sauce.

The Cure, Boys DOn’t CRY. performed by Farmertan.

http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?track=03-boys-dont-cry-3-28

This cover of the week takes a couple influences down with one stone. The Jesus and Mary chain hit the scene in a similar fashion to many brit new wave style post punk bands, and being from the same part of Glasgow, Scotland as the famed CT musical entrepeneur Brian Sinclair, as well as Aztec Camera and Lloyd Cole, they had to be good. Often JMC was compared to a cross between the Velvet underground and the Ramones. They could drone like crazy over fast or slow melodic fuzz induced jams.  They seemed to be out of time, spanning decades through the 80’s 90’s and new millenium with reinvented and listenable grace.

And then we take a left turn….

In college I had a 5CD changer that had a cartridge to fill, you would then stick the hunk of plastic back into the player and it would sputter and have fits as it delivered the CD of choice to the laser. For lack of lubricant, it was whine and rub and sound like a braying donkey and you went from disc to disc. But for much of the end of my college days, The PIxies “Trompe le monde” occupied that opening slot. And on that disc was a cover of “Head on” by JMC.  This cover was a rip roaring return to loud guitars and punk sounds that injected musical steroids into the song from which it could never look back.

Perhaps this song is what a “cover” is all about, the Pixies, take a song from a great band, and make it their own- do it their own way. They don’t try to copy the tempo, the feel, the notes, arrangement- it doesn’t matter. They make it their style. Their own; That is what Farmertan is trying to do with the cover of the weeks we post- Give a Farmertan filter to a bunch of great songs.

When we do this song, we sound more like the pixies version,  and as Bono from U2 once said about Helter Skelter…       The Pixies stole this one from the Jesus and Mary Chain; and we are not stealing it back, but just buying it back from a pawn shop.

“Head on” by the Jesus and Mary Chain; performed by Farmertan.

http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?track=01-head-on-3-28&amp;show_comments=true&amp;auto_play=false&amp;color=ff7700″></param

Neil Young is one of those iconic figures that is ever present in the music mind of gen x americans, who were able to hitch on to the Young train after his all aboard but way before his cab ride home. Perhaps a tier below some of the rock and roll’s biggest hitters, but still in the dugout with them, fully able to carry their jockstraps, and especially relevant as an influence to the indie rock, grunge and alt country jet setters.  

There was a time in the 90’s when Neil reached what alcoholics might have termed “a moment of clarity,” an epiphany, perhaps the denoument of the novel that is Neil’s career. He strapped on the old Les Paul and got up on stage with none other than Pearl Jam, singing “(Keep on) Rocking in the free world.” A terrific song and built for farmertan with its easy chord changes, limited vocal range, and plodding arrangement, but no, that would be to trite and easy, so we switch it up. We choose to cover a song about a stripper, a very tan good time girl, and the man that falls in love with her for his whole life, or at least for one night???.

Neil Young,   “Cinnamon Girl” performed by Farmertan

http://www.divshare.com/download/6805660-8b8

We have been a little slack on posting lately, we are getting ready to gig. We have had an emergency and now we have a new Gig date of Saturday March 7, 2009, same place, Mcfairlawns. 

Through the years, Farmertan has practiced together for the most part once or twice per month, and played countless shows with all types of cool bands. When we play a cover at one of our shows, you better believe we like it.  Believe it or not, there was a Farmertan show where we played The Beatles’ “Hard Days Night,” “Last Dance with Mary Jane” and different hodgepodges of songs, and many bands do this, but if an original song has a part that kind of sounds like another song, well than sometimes you are obliged to break into that cover. Farmertan has a song, “Simple way” with a Coda that is dead on Cheap Trick’s “Surrender” - Many times I just start singing the Cheap trick part. 

This weeks cover of the week is a walk down eighties memory lane, with a pair of indie garage rock beer goggles on. This was recorded in a 10 degree Farenheit band room at midnight. Hope you can get a smile listening to it. oh yeah, and go ahead and sing along.

Cuts like a knife/Summer of 69/Owner of a lonely heart/run to you/heat of the moment medley

http://www.divshare.com/download/6613191-9b0

The 80’s brought us a ton of  great stuff. One of the best things was big haired post-punk british bands. Echo and the Bunnymen fit this bill.  You know, lips like sugar, the cutter, Bring on the dancing horses. Also , the bunnymen had a hit with the song from the film “Lost boys”- with the cover of the Doors classic “People are Strange.” No matter if the bunnymen sing about summer or ocean rain or hot nights, it always will remind me of winter.

This weeks Cover is “Killing moon, ” a song which appeared in the film “Donnie Darko.” Ours is an acoustic version. 

Also this week is a special song for the Superbowl. This song “win this for me”(vince lombardi) Is a fictional story of underdogs faced with winning the championship for their dying coach. We hope you like this Farmertan original.

“Killing Moon” off Echo and the Bunnymen Ocean Rain(1984) performed by Farmertan

 http://www.divshare.com/download/6461454-bea

“Win this for me (lombardi)” Farmertan

http://www.divshare.com/download/6465653-0b9

Whether you love him or despise him, Robert Pollard is an indie rock legend, with equal Beatles and Who influences, his generations’ John Lennon, perhaps. A sportsman’s roots in Dayton Ohio, a teacher by day job, he is a prolific song writer who is said to be able to write an album during one sitting on the morning toilet. While the mainstream record industry was producing early to mid nineties drivel, Guided by Voices was compiling box sets of indie greatest hits, not the least of which was 1997’s rock opera “Mag Earwhig!”

For this album, Pollard added Cleveland rockers “Cobra Verde” as backers, giving the album a rough and ready sound. This sound, he didn’t know at the time, was particularly suited for FARMERTAN doing covers of his music. And there you have it.

and, as an added bonus, we have included Farmertan’s original song, “Dressed to Kill.” We hope you enjoy this song, all about weddings, churches, Boston, and lies.

“Bulldog Skin” by Guided By Voices off “Mag Earwhig!

http://www.divshare.com/download/6343790-22d

“Dressed to kill” by Farmertan

http://www.divshare.com/download/6353241-82a