Peck Of The Week – Madness

Classic Whistle Test :- True Madness

Peck Of The Week – Do You Wanna Dance

“Do You Wanna Dance?” – Bobby Freeman

To buy the music of Bobby Freeman click HERE

Peck Of The Week – Maria McKee

Here is a great live acoustic version of a Springsteen classic from Maria McKee (Lone Justice)

“Backstreets” (Live) – Maria McKee

McKee was a founding member of the cowpunk/country rock band, Lone Justice, in 1982, with whom she released two albums. Several compilations of both previously released and unreleased material and a BBC Live In Concert album have been released since their demise. Her band opened for such acts as U2.

When she was 19, she wrote Feargal Sharkey‘s 1985 UK number one hit “A Good Heart“, a song she has since recorded herself and released on her album Late December.

The song was originally written about her failed relationship with musician Benmont Tench. Sharkey would later go on to also cover “To Miss Someone” from her self-titled solo debut, on his third solo album “Songs From The Mardi Gras”.

In 1987 she was featured in the Robbie Robertson video “Somewhere Down the Crazy River”, and contributed back-up vocals to his debut solo album, which included the song.

She released her first solo, self-titled album in 1989. Her song “Show Me Heaven“, which appeared on the soundtrack to the film Days of Thunder, was a number one single in the United Kingdom for four weeks in 1990.

She refused to perform this song in public up until recently, when she sang it for the first time in eighteen years, at Dublin Gay Pride.

Following her debut, McKee has released five studio (and two live) albums. The later three, High Dive, Peddlin’ Dreams and Late December, were released independently via her own Viewfinder Records label (distributed in the UK via Cooking Vinyl).

 

To buy the music of Maria McKee click HERE and for Lone Justice click HERE

 

Peck Of The Week

“The Prettiest Star” – David Bowie

Cold fire, you’ve got everything but cold fire
You will be my rest and peace child
I moved up to take a place, near you

So tired, it’s the sky that makes you feel tried
It’s a trick to make you see wide
It can all but break your heart, in pieces

Staying back in your memory
Are the movies in the dark
How you moved is all it takes
To sing a song of when I loved
The Prettiest Star

Staying back in your memory
Are the movies in the dark
How you moved is all it takes
To sing a song of when I loved
The Prettiest Star

One day though it might as well be someday
You and I will rise up all the way
All because of what you are
The Prettiest Star

The above  is the original single version of the song issued in 1970.

Bowie had recently re-recorded an old Deram track, “London Bye Ta Ta”, intended as a follow-up single to “Space Oddity” in early 1970. However, the same sessions had also spawned a new composition named “The Prettiest Star”. Bowie wrote it for Angela Barnett, soon to become better known as Angie Bowie, reputedly playing it down the telephone as part of his proposal to her.

The track featured Marc Bolan on guitar, with whom Bowie would spend the next few years as a rival for the crown of the king of glam rock.

Producer Tony Visconti, who brought the two aspiring pop stars together in the studio, recalled that the session went well until the end when Bolan’s wife June remarked to Bowie, “Marc is too good for you, to be playing on this record!”

Despite receiving good notices, the single reportedly sold less than 800 copies, a major disappointment on the back of the success of “Space Oddity”.

In 1973, a more glam-influenced version was recorded and released on the album Aladdin Sane, with Mick Ronson recreating Bolan’s original guitar part almost note-for-note.

To buy the music of David Bowie click HERE

Peck Of The Week

“Killermont Street” – Aztec Camera

As the city asleep
Shares its dreams and desires
Every wish that we keep
Will trace a line to other times, other places
Though the song of the proud
Howls and dies, never fall for defeat
Take a trip to reprieve
Every hour they leave
From Killermont Street

Drink a drink to before
And our memories spill
Adding on as they pour
From our Saturdays and secret sensations
Drink a drink to tonight
Whisky words tumble down in the street
With the pain that they cure
Sentimentally yours
From Killermont Street

And with collar upturned
I made it south to see
That the love I had spurned
Was just the hate in me

As the ships and the steel
Slip away to the cry of ‘compete’
There’s a message for us
We can get there by bus
From Killermont Street

To buy the music of Aztec Camera click HERE

Peck Of The Week – The Kinks

“I Need You” – The Kinks

I need you,
I need you more than birds need the sky
I need you,
It’s true little girl
That you can lift these tears from my eyes

(chorus)
But if you ever tell me goodbye
I’ll break down and you’ll hear me cry….
I need you
More than anybody else has needed anyone before

I need you,
There’s no-one else to stand in your place
I need you,
You know little girl
That you can keep a smile on my face

(chorus)

(instrumental)

I need you,
There’s no-one else to stand in your place
I need you,
You know little girl
That you can keep a smile on my face

(chorus)

More than anybody else has needed anyone before
I need you(x3)

To buy the music of The Kinks click HERE