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Chasing the long tail of new media

Rain

Certain Songs #749: The Jazz Butcher – “Rain”

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Album: The Gift of Music
Year: 1984

I don’t know if any of the 1980s Jazz Butcher albums are still in print or anything, but if so, the place to start is 1985’s The Gift of Music compilation, which collected the various singles they’d recorded over the past two years.

Nearly every song on The Gift of Music is pretty great, from the cannibalistic garage-y stomp of “Zombie Love,” & “JB v PM,” the sad hilarity of “Water” & “Drink,” and the well-placed covers of “Sweet Jane” and (especially) “Roadrunner.”

And then there’s “Rain.”

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Certain Songs #33: The Beatles – “Rain”

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B-side, 1966.

The other half of my favorite Beatles 45 may or may not be the first psychedelic song, but with the shimmering guitar, unpredictable bass, backwards vocals and good god, Ringo Starr on the drums, it’s always been one of the greatest. 

Did I mention Ringo? I can’t believe that it’s still a trope – shit, I can’t believe it was ever a trope – that Ringo was a shit drummer, but if you ever run across someone who believes that, just play them his fills as they come out of the second verse and he’s somehow falling apart and coming together all at the same time. Like a sunshower.

And the bit at the end, where he and Paul are starting and stopping in unison just before the backwards vocals – I envision them locking eyes in the studio, each one daring the other one to fuck this up, but breaking down in laughter when one of the them did – is quite possibly my favorite musical bit in all of Beatledom.

Official promo video for “Rain”

And as a bonus, here’s a version Blackbird Stories (with help from Scott Oliver & Nate Butler!) recorded at a drunken party in 1988 with me playing the drums. It’s the exact opposite of good.

My Certain Songs Playlist on Spotify

Every “Certain Song” Ever