I can feel the earth begin to move, I hear my needle hit the groove

[2003 Glastonbury photo credit]

Two nights ago I watched the 2003 Britpop documentary Live Forever (more on that later), which begins by laying a foundation of the music scene in Nineties England from the initial impact of the Stone Roses — so I smiled today when this fantastic cover version came up on a mix I’d made.

Yorn: “So like I said, this is hot shit for us to be over here at Glastonbury. We come from the U.S. of A and this is a very exotic festival that we love and we’re happy to be here and we’re huge fans of the music over here and blah blah blah . . . This is from Manchester, okay?“

She Bangs The Drums (Stone Roses cover, live at Glastonbury 2003) – Pete Yorn
(apparently this is encoded at a rate that streaming doesn’t agree with. Until I can fix it, if you download it, it sounds fine; if you click the blue arrow, you get Alvin & The Chipmunks singing the Stone Roses, which is actually a whole different kind of interesting)

Speaking of she bangs the drum, I could not stop my own personal rhythm section pattered out onto my legs last night at the screening of the Pearl Jam documentary. Seeing and hearing Immagine in Cornice on the big screen with all the glorious surround-sound was an immense experience of live PJ fabulousness. My personal highlights were the renditions of Blood (ugh, love that song), Come Back (sheerly absurdly gorgeous), and a compelling ending of Rockin’ In The Free World with every single Italian audience member’s hands raised in the air, clapping along in unison.

In addition to the beautifully-done cinematic treatment of their live shows, the documentary also offered some very interesting behind-the-scenes glimpses: the urgent reorganization of the encore setlist backstage while the crowd screams for more, Jeff skateboarding at some deserted Italian skatepark, Ed and his daughter Olivia talking on the tour bus (and how cute is she?), a bunch of Italian kids sitting on the street belting out a passionate acoustic rendition of Porch. Stone barely made an appearance (it’s all Stone’s fault) and not surprisingly I would have liked for it to be longer so they could have shown more of what goes on that we don’t see onstage. But overall, solid A. If I can’t see PJ live this year, heck I’ll settle for last night. Thanks to all who came out for an awesome experience, it was moltissimo fun.

Finally, the road to Denver will again be my buddy tonight as I head back up to see the Ike Reilly Assassination at the Larimer Lounge. Last time he was here it was acoustic and still mind-blowing, so I am very excited to get the full band baptism. I highly recommend this show if you can make it out.