Joe Cocker!


Welcome to the inevitable downside of the reopening of 'Murica. How fitting that i find another Joe Cocker album for the occasion. It's his sophomore exclamation point. I mean, Feliciano wore it first a year earlier, but we aren't here to cat call the catwalk. We're here to listen to a spastic British curmudgeon belt out his versions of other peoples' songs. Yeah, no, how interesting that the Cuban Jazz guitarist and British Blues singer both yell their names at you.

But you know what i hear? It's a word i've used before. That word is "authentic." Disregarding the self titled second album (a fashion faux pas to be sure), there is nothing questionable about it. You might ask why he chose that particular song by that particular songwriter, but you definitely can't say that there is any other way that Joe Cocker could possibly sing it. Joe Cocker is not Barbra Streisand, he's not making choices; Joe Cocker walks up to the microphone and has an unpremeditated audio-epileptic seizure at it. It's glorious.

Christgau called him "gruff and vulgar" and they printed that on the actual jacket for the back-handed compliment it is. Remember, 49% of what Eric Burden does is copy this guy. Your old pal Bottle might rival Gloria Steinem on the scale of Dude to Feminist, but i think she and i would both agree that any woman knowingly climbing into Joe Cocker's bedroom window signed the liability waiver by default. That's a purely musical joke, Joe Cocker was an angel of human being. McCartney and Harrison loved the royalties his biggest hit brought them so much that they said something like "she's all yours, Joe." Again i joke, they were super happy that he made "Friends" into a legit Soul masterpiece.

What's hilarious is that he refused to go back on another US tour and broke up the Grease Band, only to find out the tour was already booked and that he'd have to hire a new band and tour whether he liked it or not. If only he'd read my book "How to confuse people and not be popular." 

But there's an even more interesting thing we can say about Joe Cocker. There isn't a millisecond where he doesn't mean it. It's not for show, it's not contrived, it's 100% if it kills me 100% of the time, compared to say Ian Curtis's 99.9999%. If Joe Cocker sang your song, you got to hear that it meant something, and that exclusive club includes Linda Ronstadt, Weird Al, and that's it. If we were enrolled in Cultural Appropriation 101, this would be the lesson plan for "this guy gets it." Like i said, authentic.

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