This week it's "Don't Bring Me Down" in the crosshairs.
"The snob in me half-way wants to replace 'Don't Bring Me Down' with something fabulous from The Move, but really my power play with The Move is replacing 'Bohemian Rhapsody' with 'Cherry Blossom Clinic Revisited'."
vs.
An oldie but “goodie” from my good ol’ first foray into bloggin’.
vs
From: 10 May 2008
Time : 6:08 PM
Lancaster vs York. Beatles vs Stones. Picard vs Kirk.
Epic battles of opinion are as old as time. They never really resolve; they either implode, explode or fade when their combatants lose interest.
While it is not polite to discuss politics or religion in mixed company, there is another topic that should be reserved for gatherings devoid of alcohol, hipsters or smartypants. Damn near impossible, I know. That is why the following subject falls into the realm of “agree to disagree” and polite — yet tense — acknowledgment of an assured mutual silence on the matter. Among friends, anyhow.
The grave matter I speak of is Layla vs Layla Unplugged.
I, of course, am a fan of the original Layla. I enjoy its raw, ragged and impassioned sound. It is clearly written by a man in torment — a man who, at this drugged-up stage in his life, could have had any woman he wanted. But he wanted his best friend’s wife. George Harrison’s wife, Patti.
Hell, when he wasn’t writing her crypto suicide notes about the pain of his love, he was sleeping with Patti’s sister just to be, somehow, closer to her. He submerged himself in rock star excess to try and blot out how futile his longing felt. How crazy! How decadent! How rock and roll!
Fast-forward 25 years and you find the sated Eric Clapton, and his fat-n-happy Layla. Slow and disconnectedly nostalgic…Layla Unplugged has all the appeal of hearing your parents talk about doing it. It lopes along tepidly, vaguely reminiscent of the rock epic it once was. When Clapton sings about how she’s got him on his knees, the image that comes to mind is of an old man in a sweater, scrubbing up cat pee for his wife rather than a tormented rock star, down on his knees, begging for mercy from the cruel gods of heroin. The fact that Layla Unplugged was nearly as overplayed as the original is a testament to the state of popular music in the very early ’90s. I suppose it was either Layla Unplugged or C+C Music Factory — pick your poison, really.
My best friend is a fan of Layla Unplugged. I still don’t understand why he prefers it (I understand that the tacked-on piano bit at the end ofLayla is kind of boring, but still), and we have never, ever in over a decade of friendship been able to come to a middle ground on the matter. It just ain’t happening. So we agree to disagree and never broach the subject. Should either version play on the radio when we’re both around, we may glance cooly at each other but that’s it. Some things are better left to rock and roll.
But not Layla Unplugged. Jeez, it sucks!
I, for one, prefer cocaine “Layla” to my-son-is-dead “Layla”.
Solidarity, brother. *fist bump*