Hooked On The Classics

Hooked On The Classics

Sorry for missing out last week--I've been kind of busy. I'm making it up to you with this one.

Hey Jim--Remember the other day, when you were all, "Wouldn't it be awesome to take the best of disco, and combine it with the melodic hooks from the best of classical music?" No worries--I've got you covered. "Hooked on the Classics" were a series of albums conceived and produced by Louis Clark, who also conducted the British Philharmonic Orchestra in their execution. Prior to this little brainchild of his, Clark arranged songs for ELO and conducted their strings backing. The results are pretty shocking.

He made a preposterous amount of tracks based around this one idea--Hooked on Mozart, Hooked on Beethoven, Hooked on Baroque--these are all real titles. But this, the original Hooked on The Classics, remains his magnum opus.

God knows why, but I absolutely loved this shit when I was like ten. Took me hours of searching a couple years back before I was able to figure out the name of whatever the hell I remembered listening to as a kid...but when the 1812 Overture kicks in straight out of the March of the Toreadors, and that beat just keeps on grooving--it was all worth it.

My Body's a Zombie For You

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My Body's a Zombie For You - Dead Man's Bones

High Jug Band Standards

Nashville Cats



Like most everyone alive, I thought my parents' music sucked when I was a kid. There was a point, maybe it was when I first got into Dylan, where I realized my mother had cool taste. She liked folk music, and while I never got into Judy Collins (sorry, mom, still haven't) or Joan Baez (ditto), there was an obvious overlap with some of the musicians she liked and the ones I got into.

My father, on the other hand, like Motown and groups like The Lovin' Spoonful. These took a while longer for to come around on (outside of "Summer in the City" which is one of the best songs ever written), but The Lovin' Spoonful is an amazing band. John Sebastian wrote beautiful pop songs, "Nashville Cats" being one of the best.

The guitars are really swell in this song. They layer guitar track on top of guitar track, give enough room for a sweet solo, and bring the whole thing in at a minuscule 2:37. That's fine, fine work, boys.

I like Sebastian's precision with the lyrics, "Well, there's 1352 guitar pickers in Nashville." The humility, as well, is pretty awesome: "And any one that unpacks his guitar can play twice as better than I will." The phrasing throughout is playful and cool, bending and twisting around in this Dr. Seussian way, that makes those precise numbers even funnier, "Playin' since they's babies."

Sebastian didn't have the greatest voice, but it was wonderfully emotive. The way he hopefully says, "But I will," or the way he trails off and slurs his words into the next line make this song's slow chug work.

The best line is the one that in a way reduces the song to some sort of Nashville PSA, "And I sure am glad I got to say a word about the music and the mothers from Nashville."

But, really, I can't say anything better about The Lovin' Spoonful than this:
"Arguably the most successful pop/rock group to have jug band roots, nearly half the songs on their first album were modernized versions of jug band standards."
That's right. Jug band music.