Time for me to hand over the blog to one of you lot. And you'll never guess who it is this week...
Hold onto your hats, because here comes George... and he's found Jesus!
Rol put the call out for a guest posting………... and the poor sod got a response from me. So here goes with a Top Ten Jesus tracks, and it’s not ten gospel tracks, but ten tracks that have the word “Jesus” in the title.
Speaking of Jesus, there is a famous (in Portugal and now Brazil) football coach called Jorge Jesus. He was a successful manager of Benfica, then tried to win the league with Sporting but just couldn’t do it, and is now manager of Flamengo in Brazil. He has become a legend there, winning the championship and the Copa de Libertadores, the first time Flamengo had won it since 1981. This latter feat resulted in the phrase “the pope might be Argentinian but Jesus is Portuguese”.
Time for some songs.
My abiding memory of this comes from 1996, sitting in the back of a Vauxhall Cavalier, five of us in the car, no aircon, boiling hot, and we are barrelling along a french motorway at 150km/h. I can’t remember if my legs were sticking out the sunroof or if it was Charity Chic’s hairy pins, and this song belting out the car CD player.
First gospel track, a glorious epic praise-the-lord song, with a rawer Sam Cooke vocal than can be heard on his later, solo, soul-pop songs. This a live performance, so it has more feeling and less polish than the studio recording (which in itself is well worth listening to, repeatedly).
And this is meant to be a Top Ten, so to omit this would be idiotically perverse, and that’s not my way. Oh No!
3. Johnny Cash - Personal Jesus
The Depeche Mode original is not exactly a poor song but Johnny Cash’s version is fantastic.
There’s a 5cd set called The Boddie Recording Company, who were based in Cleveland (Ohio not England). One of the set is a gospel collection, called Bounty:
4. The Fantastic Lightning Ares - Jesus You Are My Shining Star
Every recording is slightly amateurish, raw, ramshackle, and it’s a great collection!
Time for something a few might find a frustratingly repetitive stoppy-starty blast from Big Stick on Blast First records:
5. Big Stick - Jesus Was Born (on an Indian Reservation)
And now a rather typical 1950s gospel song from a fine collection on Ace records called The Best Of Nashboro Gospel:
6. The Angelic Gospel SIngers - Touch Me, Lord Jesus
Nick Cave could have been included twice, but I’m rejecting the track on Kicking Against The Pricks, a cover of an old gospel song, for this from Dig Lazarus Dig!!!
7. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Jesus of the Moon
And from my favourite German record label, Trikont, and the album OVERCOME! Volume 2, Sanctified Soul And Holy Gospel is a more modern gospel song. Well, from the 1971:
8. The Rance Allen Group - Hotline to Jesus
This is not exactly a lyrical masterpiece, but there’s a lovely yet despairing quality to its simplicity:
9. The Velvet Underground - Jesus
Best ‘til last.
The luscious introduction suggests you are in for a treat and man alive you are: Al Green’s sublime vocal, that beautiful understated brief musical interlude at 1 min 50 seconds, the call-and-response section, and of course it is so well-made and produced, you just never want it to end ; it all makes one of my favourite songs of all time.
10. Al Green - Jesus Is Waiting
As a bonus, here’s a great scene from the Jesus Christ Superstar film, but after playing it be careful of where you sing the refrain “MUST DIE, MUST DIE, this Jesus must die”. Well, I think it’s a great scene, some might think it rather preposterous, but it’s certainly worth a look:
No Billy Joel, no Huey Lewis. And I did a search to see if they had a relevant song, if only to exclude them anyway.
And thanks to Rol for hosting this piece.
No, thank you, George. I knew I could rely on you for a cracking selection of tune, but you outdid yourself there. Some belters. All with download links too - you'll make a proper music blogger of me yet (or get me arrested).
I couldn't find any Billy or Huey either, but this one leapt right out at me...
Jackie Leven - The Sexual Loneliness Of Jesus Christ
Now if you're reading this and thinking "Why didn't George include...!?!", well, you know what to do!
Rigid Digit's Booze Top Ten last week has already inspired one of you to compose your own Booze Top Ten (which will hopefully feature here soon), but if you think you've got another ten Jesus songs that could beat George's (pretty tough task, to be fair), then feel free to write me a post.
The doors to Guest Post Thursday are always open. I'm hoping George will make a return visit very soon, and we're all hoping for another one of Lynchie's showbiz stories. In the meantime... you know where I am. Let's keep this running and running...
