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Friday, August 9, 2013

Classic Covers Project - #2 - She's Gone (Hall & Oates)


The second instalment in our Classic Covers* series is She's Gone, a widely-known soulful soft-rock track from inveterate songwriting duo Hall and Oates, originally released in 1974.

***Prior to viewing this instalment we must politely INSIST that you FIRST watch the original Hall and Oates video here: 

One of Jack E's mom's favourite bands, and thus an unintentional early influence on the female half of Cursed Arrows, Hall and Oates are ubiquitous radio staples across the adult-contemporary pop spectrum and hold the crown as best-selling musical duo of all time.  The track She's Gone managed to hit #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 a few years after its release.  The song weaves an intimate, yet widely appealing tale of heartbreak.  

The most compelling aspect of this track, requested by our fans in the Toronto/Guelph rock outfit The Folk, was the fantastically strange promotional film that the duo produced to support the song - pre-MTV of course, in 1973.  According to Oates it was likely " one of the first music videos ever made." The thoroughly blasted duo shot this hilariously lazy-eyed video under the direction of Oates' sister, armed with tattered living room chairs, monopoly money, and memorable costumes.  Needless to say, the TV channel never aired their visual masterpiece and it was left up to Oates himself to leak the video online in more recent years.

The track - selected for us by a promising young rock act called The Folk (featuring Sara and Emma Bortolon-Vettor, twin daughters of the aforementioned Larry Vettor, and rounded out by Mark, Liam, and Patrick) at first confounded us.  After wrapping our heads around Hall and Oates' sense of humour, and getting a kick out of the lyrical vibe (Think I'll spend eternity in the city/Let the carbon and monoxide choke my thoughts away), we eventually found our own groove. 

Curiously, a month after we finished production on our version of She's Gone, a weathered original pressing of Abandoned Luncheonette, Hall and Oates' debut album on which She's Gone originally appeared in its extended format, materialized before us on a dirty sidewalk.  We took the record home and it plays just fine....clearly karma had a hand in all of this.

Thus we present our farcical take on a satirical promotional video for a classic pop song - one that we hear blaring out of satellite radio anytime we enter a grocery store.  Jack E's mom would enjoy this video. We hope that The Folk - the talented souls who believed in us enough to request that we reinterpret this song - get as many laughs out of it as we did.  

Very sincere thanks to our friends/Fiends Paul and Sarah Copoc for the use of their living room (featuring the singular artwork of Hamilton, ON painter and sculptor Dan Hill) while we took care of their gorgeous dog, Scout, who insisted on appearing in the video looking as blase as Hall and Oates themselves in the original promotional spot.  

Thank you Hall and Oates for the inspiration. 

Read more about the original video here: 
http://mentalfloss.com/article/30544/craziest-hall-oates-video-ever 

*Cursed Arrows are a post-proto-punk duo from Canada.  Our Classic Covers Project was initiated during the making of our 2013 full-length original album, SONIC UNION.  All songs were performed and recorded by us, specifically by fan request, and remain unreleased outside of Youtube.  All videos were shot and edited by Cursed Arrows.  

© 2013 Aluminum Monster Productions

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http://cursedarrows.bandcamp.com

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