C'Mon Every Beatbox to Cactus

"C'Mon Every Beatbox"  Big Audio Dynamite  No. 10 Upping St.
"C'Mon Everybody"  Eddie Cochran  Somethin' Else: The Fine Lookin' Hits Of Eddie Cochran
"C.C. Rider"  Chuck Willis Atlantic Rhythm & Blues 1947-74
"C.O.C.A.N."  Patchwork  Jazz Lounge [Water Music]
"C.R.E.A.M."  Wu-Tang Clan  Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
"Cabbage Head"  Dr. John  Goin' Back To New Orleans
"Cacada"  Bebel Gilberto  Momento
"Cachita"  Esquivel!  Music From A Sparkling Planet
"Cachito"  Esquivel!  Music From A Sparkling Planet
"Cactus"  Pixies  Surfer Rosa

   Rammellzee died this summer.  That and the name-check by B.A.D. here is really the extent of my knowledge of him.  I don't know how well this band has aged.  I still enjoy this, but it seems very much like a period piece. The overwhelming presence of the Simmons drum on this track, as well as the film loops and white guy proto-hip hop marks it from a period in the mid- to late-80s.

  Of course, I like period pieces (at this point, I may be one). Juan Garcia Esquivel did the bulk of his recording before 1962. Eddie Cochran died in 1960.  Chuck Willis in 1958.  (O.D.B in 2004, but that may not be relevant to this line of reasoning).  Good music is good music regardless of when it is made, and the mere fact that an artist is bound to a particular time, with its particular technologies, predispositions and worldview does not make it any less valuable.  The vicissitudes of public opinion mean that some things fall out of favor only to be rediscovered later.  By the same token, some artists make music that is so out of step with the tastes of their own age, it takes years for the rest of the world to catch up.

   It is a testament to my own ineptitude and general out-of-touchness that I am only now catching up to Esquivel!  The rest of the world had their self-aware, ironic revival of his space age pop/lounge music in the mid-90s.  But here I am, getting my first Esquivel! album in 2010.  And I can't say I didn't get it with the same base love-of-kitsch approach to it that folks did 15 years ago.  I am just slower at it.

  In my continuing study of cover songs, here are two songs that seem to transcend the term "cover" to become "standards."  "C.C. Rider" was 30 years old, and had been recorded multiple times already, when Chuck Willis made this version in 1957.  There are over 100 different versions recorded.  Dr. John's "Cabbage Head" is a version of an old irish ballad that has been recorded in different forms by everyone from Ruth Brown and Sonny Boy Williamson to Steeleye Span.  (I checked - I have at least one other version of each of these songs).  So the question is, given the broad recording of these tracks, is it even meaningful to consider whether the track is "the artist's own?"