November 1, 2009

Melanie - Ruby Tuesday


Genre(s) - Folk
Origin - United States of America
Year of release - 1994 (compilation)
Bitrate - 64 kbps
Size - 22.50 MB

If you wanna be my friend you better like Melanie Safka. Agreed, her voice is an acquired taste in the same sense as Janis Joplin's: unpolished and technically not good at all, but very emotional when she wants it to be. I think you'll learn to like it. She composes haunting, intense hippie folk songs,
Leftover Wine and the gospel-like Candles in the Rain being the best originals. As was not that remarkable in those times, Melanie also relied heavily on reinterpretations of existing songs. I've heard many, many versions of the Stones' Ruby Tuesday but none has ever given me the chills as the heartwrenching lament that Melanie has crafted out of it. It's stunningly beautiful and powerful. Please don't skip this by.
  1. Mr. tambourine man
  2. Beautiful people
  3. Carolina on my mind
  4. Lay lady lay
  5. Kansas
  6. My bonnie lies over the ocean
  7. Someday I'll be a farmer
  8. Nickel song
  9. Happy birthday
  10. Ruby Tuesday
  11. What have the done to my song, ma?
  12. Somebody loves me
  13. Tell me why
  14. Candles in the rain (Lay down)
  15. Leftover wine
Load it down

3 comments:

  1. Hello,

    I have been a Melanie fan since 1977, and I think I possess pretty much all records she ever released. Plus some other recordings that she did not release, as well.

    Now when I saw this cover with the word "Concert" in the picture, I got curious. The tracklist seemed that of a regular Greatest Hits compilation (of which we have hundreds out there), but then the extremely low bitrate made me think "This must be aconcert. Why would a regular CD (bitrate 320) appear in such a low rate? It will be a rare concert."

    No, it is not. Just the regular stuff that everybody has hundreds of.

    I have once bought such a CD in the 80s or 90s when I saw the track "Bonnie over the ocean" listed. I had no idea she had ever recorded that.

    And of course she had not. It was just an instrumental playing. And that is what we have here too.

    There are really good compilations out there, and even better albums. Why would you post such a mediocre compilation of hers, and then in such a low quality, and then with the word "Concert" in the shown cover?

    This has really confused me, and now I am disappointed. Is this some prank?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hello,

    Thank you for your reply and I am sorry to have got you disappointed. I will explain.

    I posted this generic compilation because this is the only Melanie material that I actually, physically own, on second-hand vinyl. I've had it for years and it has quite some sentimental value to me, so I knew this was the one I wanted to upload. I'm sure you can understand.

    128 kbps is my favourite quality bitrate because of my limited harddisk space.

    The cover, now that is quite confusing and I am sorry. I could not find the actual cover of my vinyl version and I don't have a scanner. So I took another cover from another release with the same name, to keep as close as possible to the original. I should have mentioned that it was not a concert but it slipped my mind.

    Of course, my blog is aimed at getting people to discover new things, not complete their discographies. I'm just putting some of my favourite stuff out of my favourite artists (in Melanie's case, the generic compilation that I've learned to love so well) so that they can take a listen and see if they want to explore the artist or band further on their own.

    Seid doch bitte nicht böse, ich wollte Sie nicht schmerzen. :(

    ReplyDelete
  3. Also, of course, since it was a vinyl, I could not rip it myself (I can't even rip cds on this ancient machine) so I relied on soulseek to bring me the digital version and this 64 kbps version was the only one that came up. But I was still determined to post this comp and this one alone. So there ya go.

    ReplyDelete