Week 18 – Think Bensonium

Day 126: Baby can I hold you, Tracey Chapman

Roderick Benson — Wed, 09 Sep 2020 14:55:26 +0000

I remember exactly where I was when I heard Tracey Chapman’s first hit. It was my final honours year at Sydney University and it was in the afternoon. I was downstairs in the Anderson Stuart building working on dissecting some chic motorneurons in a tissue culture cabinet. I had the radio playing and “Fast Cars” by Tracey Chapman was played. Although I enjoyed the song I thought the person singing was male. Anyway, a little later I bought the album and this was another hit song that was on it which I think is a little better.

Day 125: Money, Pink Floyd

Roderick Benson — Wed, 09 Sep 2020 14:49:54 +0000

Staying on Shania’s money theme, I wonder if she got the start of her Ka-ching song from this all time Pink Floyd classic?

Day 124: Ka-Ching! Shania Twain

Roderick Benson — Wed, 09 Sep 2020 14:46:08 +0000

“All we ever want is more, a lot more than we had before, so take me to the nearest store.” The character of the modern age. The beginning of this song always sounds like the same sound effect sequence used in Pink Floyd’s “Money”. Now the odd thing about her album entitled “Up” is Shania did two versions of each song. One was called the red version the other the blue version. Although she has uploaded the red version song to Youtube, there is not video clip to go with it, but I have included it below just in case you want to directly compare the two musical styles she uses across her two albums.

The Red Version

The Blue Version

Day 123: Jessie’s Girl, Rick Springfield

Roderick Benson — Wed, 09 Sep 2020 14:37:53 +0000

A song that captures a common scenario for many teenage and twenty something blokes.

Day 122: Sk8er boi, Avril Lavigne

Roderick Benson — Wed, 09 Sep 2020 14:31:36 +0000

So is this song about Chad Kroeger from Nickelback (see yesterday’s post)? Probably not!

Day 121: Should’ve have listened, Nickelback

Roderick Benson — Wed, 09 Sep 2020 14:23:56 +0000

Never really understood why so many people hate Nickelback. I like this tune again because its lyrics tell a story. This film clip is clearly captured at one of their concerts by one of their fans on a low quality mobile phone. Yet what is impressive is how close their sound is to the original studio album performance. Always an impressive feat in my view because it shows the original album was not over-produced with auto-tune and other post production tricks.

A concert version

And here is the original

Day 120: Girl’s just want to have fun, Cyndi Lauper

Roderick Benson — Wed, 09 Sep 2020 14:11:58 +0000

So this is another song from my University days. The mid-80s was a great time for pop/rock music in my opinion. Correction just googled and it was actually 83 so I was actually still at school. Time goes too quickly!