Last winter, as part of our Michigan Musicians on Vacation series, I interviewed Great Lakes Myth Society founder Timothy Monger about a trip he’d taken to attend a wedding in Oregon. Well, at some point during the interview, our conversation turned to our shared love of early Bowie and I made the following proposal to Timothy. “If I could raise $25 right now,” I said, “could I commission you to record Moonage Daydream as rural pop?” (Rural pop, as you may recall, was a phrase he’d coined to describe his most recent work, which had been heavily influenced by the farm on which he was living.) Well, he accepted the challenge and we raised the modest sum in no time. And then the polar vortex hit, and I kind of forgot about it. To Timothy’s credit, though, he stayed true to his word. And, earlier this evening, I received the following rendition of Bowie’s Moonage Daydream. Or, to be more correct, I received the following rendition of Arnold Corns’ Moonage Daydream. (Arnold Corns, for those of you unfamiliar with the name, was Bowie’s band prior to the launch of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.)
And here’s a little from the accompanying letter, in which Timothy shares his thoughts on this “enjoyable task.”
…I didn’t really mean to take six months on this Bowie cover, but that just seems to be how I work. When I finally found time to record it, it was a fun project. As “Rural Pop” is an invented genre, I suppose it can be whatever it wants to be. To my ears, it just sounds like me having fun in the basement covering Bowie.
I used the alternate lyrics and the general arrangement of the pre-Ziggy Arnold Corns version. I started off trying to go more of a Neil Young Harvest route in tone, but it just turned into its own strange thing as I continued…
I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Now, who should we commission to make art for us next?
8 Comments
That’s a drop of seawater. If you find the image troubling, let me know, and I’ll change it. On short notice, it was the most appropriate thing I could come up with… It seems very outer space to me.
Arnold Corns sounds like a character on Green Acres.
I like it more than Bowie and Tim never really lets you down anyway. A rural version of Bowie is ironic considering Bowie himself claims to have absolutely no tolerance for country music of any kind. I can’t really take him seriously after a comment like that.
You should commission Dan Mulholland just because he’s about the most underrated artist/musician around here.
Get John Branon to do some Johnny Cash. He’d do it for $25.
Everyone who does a Michigan Musicians on Vacation interview should be given $25 and told to cover a song from Ziggy Stardust.
Bowie will likely let you keep it up for a year.
http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/25gbc3/bowies_last_day_we_had_permission_for_a_year_so/
That was a lovely way to start the day.
That is a damn fine version of a very cool song. Love the radiohead-esque / sonic youth ‘noise’ at the end. Wish I was tech savvy enough to figure out a way to download this recording.
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[…] And, after all of that, Timothy Monger will drop by to talk about the new record he’s working on, Amber Lantern. I imagine he might bring a guitar. And, if we run out of things to say, we’ll listen to Loose Teeth songs and point out how they might have been improved. [Monger, as you might recall, was once nice enough to record a Bowie cover for us.] […]