Chit-Chat Check-In #141 Transcript

Hello, this is your Captain speaking. I’m on the bridge with a wide array of staff. What are we talking about?

Crystal: The two songs.

There are two songs this week. One is by Lhasa de Sela, who is ... also a Rec-Sec song, that record. If you want to look for an old record, that’s 2009, I believe. It’s a beautiful record, just called Lhasa. It was made, I think, when she was very ill, and I think she didn’t manage to stay alive long enough to tour for it. So it kind of went under the radar for a little while. But I think a lot of people have discovered it in the meantime, in recent years. It’s a beautiful, beautiful record. You should check it out if you don’t know about it.

And I did my best. It’s really the difference between a real singer, who adds all kinds of beautiful melodies within syllables, and things like that--which is difficult for me to do--and me. I think I’m a song speaker more than a song singer. I try to get better at singing, and one of the ways I try to get better at singing is trying to cover something that I really think is sung by a beautiful, beautiful voice. And I think I communicated the song, but boy, when I listen back to her version, it feels like a little kid trying to draw the Mona Lisa or something (laughs), from memory.

Anyway, a new song recommendation would be ... what was I thinking about ... there was something, hold on, hold on ... everybody just hold on.

Oh, well, that’s probably something everybody knows about, because they were just on Saturday Night Live. But Dijon--I think that’s some pretty interesting stuff you should check out. That’s the new rec.

All right, phew! Then there’s a George McCrae song that Yo La Tengo covered. I made an acoustic version of that, that hopefully you’ll enjoy. It’s somewhere between the two versions. I guess it leans more heavily on the repetitive vocal part that Yo La Tengo does in their version. I tried to get the guitar to do that.

Anyway, phew, carry on.