The Backbeat Band "Money"

Here's another Weekend Post:

Following up on yesterday's Afghan Whigs post, it's worth remembering this little Venn diagram of 60s/90s ephemera . . .

"Backbeat" was a decent-enough film about the relationship between John Lennon and original Beatles bassist Stu Sutcliffe, set during The Beatles pre-fame days in Hamburg.

How about the amazing band that was assembled to recreate the lean, tight, uppers-and-American-Rock-N-Roll fueled early days of The Fab (at that time) Five?

Greg Dulli of Afghan Whigs sang the John Lennon songs and Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum sang the Paul McCartney songs.  The rest of the band:  Dave Grohl (after Nirvana's "In Utero" but before the death of Kurt Cobain) on drums;  Thurston Moore (of Sonic Youth) and Don Fleming (of Gumball, as well as a producer of loads of records) on guitar.  And Mike Mills of R.E.M. on bass.  Mills also voiced Sutcliffe's one spotlight song, "Roadrunner."

They recorded a really solid album's worth of 50s and early 60s rock, and made only one live appearance as a unit, at the MTV Movie Awards.

This record was totally not appropriate for my Alternative specialty show, except for its pedigree.  But when I needed to fill 2 minutes to ride out the hour, "Long Tall Sally" sure did the trick.


Hear the songs on Youtube.


Hear "Roadrunner" on Youtube.

Weekend posts are a chance to revisit songs that have happy memories, not of anything in particular, other than just hearing the tunes.

Many of these songs were tracks that I played during my 90s stint as an Alternative/Modern Rock radio show.  They're tunes that I hardly hear these days, but are wonderful to revisit.

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