The wife and daughter were out shopping... doing there more than their fair share of helping our economy I might add... so I had a good couple of hours to get everything in position and do some serious music listening.
I was feeling kinda mellow, and I dug out a couple of discs that I had sorda forgot about but seemed appropriate. And when I thought of them, I suddenly remembered how much I loved a few of the tracks from them and couldn't wait to hear them on my new system.
The first was Tori Amos' remake of "Thank You" then "Angie." The other disc was the Sunday doing a remake of "Wild Horses." And the last one was Lay Lady Lay from Duran Duran's Thank You album. It struck me as odd that all three songs I couldn't wait to hear were 1) all remakes 2) 3 were orginally sung by males, but remade by females, 3) two were Rolling Stones songs and 4) All were about from the same era.
I moved my speakers around a bit and I actually used one of the surround formats called Extended Stereo that puts a nice ambient effect in the surrounds. It really changes the imaging, but it's actually quite pleasing and seemed to provide the right ambience for the mood. My couch is against the wall with the surrounds to this side. I've found that if I litterally turn the surrounds away from the listening position, angled a bit towards the wall, it creates a very nice affect with that surround mode.
With Tori Amos, what I noticed most on the two tracks were the subtle abient sounds that bring character to a song. Her breath as she inhales or the bumping sound of her piano as she hits the pedals. Much like the way guitars strings squeak, I thought his just added to the realism of the songs. The imaging was spectacular and her signature way of building songs to climatic finishes was very much present and came through better than I've ever heard them. Both songs, and the way she delivers them give you shivers. I literally had goosebumps a couple of different times.
The Sundays remake of Wild Horses is one of the sweetest sounding songs. It's got a lot of heavy reverb, echo, and sustain, but it just fits. Harriet Wheeler just has the sweetest, most dreaming voice in the track. It's very different from the original, but still conveys the very same feelings and evokes the same emotions.
I grew up in the 80's and graduated 1987, so Duran Duran was the deal back when I was already well on my way into getting into music. I'm a big fan of their older stuff and I was excited when they came out with a cover album called Thank You years back. They did a cover of Dylan's Lay Lady Lay that I just love. It's one of the songs that I had put on a disc a few years back of romantic dinner music to play when I was trying to get my wife to dig me. I remember I had made her dinner and I had candles lit in the other room with that disc playing softly in the background. We finished dinner and had just gotten up and starting to the other room when that song came on. I just took her hand and led her into the candle lit room and we slow danced to that. It was perfect. Simon LeBon doesn't have one of the great voices, but it's unique in it's own way and works well with the song. The musicality of the remake is fantastic and it just flows nicely from start to finish.
I'd recommend giving those songs a listen some night when you have some quiet time. I listened to each song a few times among some others and couple I had to grab from Itunes, but it was a good couple of hours. I killed a bottle of 97 Legacy, too big a chunk of 6 year old gouda, and half a loaf of cibatta bread. All was good.
