Saturday, August 1, 2015

Still Sweet on Sweet

It's a bandwidth buster today! Kevinpat, a relatively new and very welcome visitor to these pages, dug around the archives and found a post on Matthew Sweet from 2012 that piqued his interest. So, per his request, here is a rerun of some non-album material surrounding the 'Altered Beast' era. In 1993, I couldn't get enough Sweet and had to have everything. I bought the singles while while working at a record store that summer. When I moved to Japan that fall, the first music purchase I made was upgrading to the Japanese version of 'Altered Beast.' I spent ¥2500 for it, which was about $26 at the time. I'll let you decide whether that was too high of a price for these two bonus tracks. The 'Altered Beast' demos are from a high-quality bootleg called 'Superdeformed.' This one is worth a future post.

I hate to be a statistic, but I'm following many of my blogging peers by taking a break. This will be my last post for about two weeks. I'm busy hosting family that came into town beginning yesterday, and we are about to head to Route 101 and down the coast for beach combing and other Pacific adventures. Sweet! I'll resume the final 25 of my 100 favorite songs from the 1990s as soon as I return. Let's all enjoy these final weeks of summer!

'Altered Beast' Bonus Tracks (Japanese Edition)
"Genie (The Second Coming)"
"Swan Song"

"The Ugly Truth" B-Sides
"Born in Sin"
"Ultrasuede"

"Time Capsule" B-Sides
"Speed of Light"
"Thing"

'Altered Beast' Demos
"The Ugly Truth"
"Time Capsule"

12 comments:

kevinpat said...

Well, the ugly truth is I woke up in a bad mood this morning. But that all changed now. Thank you Brian for these sweet Sweet tracks ("Genie"..not so much…). And of course all the shares! And thanks for letting me in the sandbox! Enjoy your family/beach time!! We await the final 25 with baited summer breath. THANK YOU!!!!!!

kevinpat said...

Here's a little switcherroo……

Freedy Johnson doing Matthew Sweet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIf2QX3xVI0

kevinpat said...

And an interesting take on Sweet's…….

"I Thought I Knew You" ~ Janiva Magness (Sorry for the low volume)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nGkbgnXzCE

kevinpat said...

"We're the Same" (written by Matthew Sweet) ~ Winterpills

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nGkbgnXzCE

kevinpat said...

And one last….

Death Cab for Cutie (whines through) ~ "Sick of Myself"
They suck the angst out of this one. Death indeed! Ha!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QhWSlePFgo

George said...

The Ugly Truth demo is the best song I've heard all day. Enjoy the beach, Brian.

C said...

Have a great time, Brian, enjoy the sunshine!

I must listen to these later (I'm jsut paying a v quick visit now) - the only track I really know by him is Superdeformed which I love. Also, just yesterday I was listening to a version of Care Of Cell 44 by him and Susannah Hoffs, a friend had put it on a CD for me, I've no idea where/what it comes from (?)

The Swede said...

My love of this period of Matthew Sweet's career knows no bounds and I too splashed the cash at the time to pick up various 'Import' collections of out-takes and alternative versions. I trust we'll see Matthew represented somewhere in your top 25 on your return?
Enjoy your family time - see you in a couple of weeks.

kevinpat said...

@C ~ The Sweet/Hoffs cover comes from one of the three collections of decades the pair made. They call themselves Sid & Suzie. There is a (wOnDeRfuL) sixties, seventies and eighties collection. All done with great harmonies, instrumentation and love. If you like their version of "Care of Cell 44" you will like all the tracks. They do a really great version of the Yes song "I've Seen All Good People/Your Move" which made me not hate that song anymore! Ha! Fun collections. Check them out!

C said...

Thank you kevinpat!

kevinpat said...

Ok. The week is over. WHERE ARE YOU BRIAN???? We need a fix, man. (place big smiley face here)

Brian said...

Hey Kevinpat. We head back tomorrow night. Hope to have something up on Thursday. That's when our visitors head to the airport. Hope you all are having a good week.