SHAUN CASSIDY!

Back in the day...in this case, the day being somewhere in the proximity of September 1, 1980...I tried to buy every song associated with David Bowie (which usually meant buying an album to get a song). Not just covers of Bowie songs, but even originals or covers of songs Bowie had covered. I remember having a project of assembling an album of the originals of all of the songs Bowie covered on Pin-Ups. This had the side benefit of introducing me to a lot of bands that I might not have happened upon otherwise. In fact, I never bought a Beatles album until Bowie covered "Across the Universe," never bought a Rolling Stones album until Bowie covered "Let's Spend the Night Together," etcetera. And it wasn't just music that Bowie led me to. When he said in an interview that "Jean Genie" was written as a tribute to Jean Genet (a quip which was bullshit, but I didn't know it at the time), I sought out that Frenchman, read The Balcony, loved it and read everything else by Genet that I could get my hands on. Bowie was pretty instrumental in my personal education, for sure.

Which is how I happened to buy a Bay City Rollers album (It's a Game, on which the boys do a cover of "Rebel Rebel") and Shaun Cassidy's Wasp (again, "Rebel Rebel"). I doubt that I played the Bay City Rollers album more than once--it wasn't my cuppa tea--but that Shaun Cassidy album.... It was definitely interesting. Not the "Rebel Rebel" cover, which was kind of a tacky thing*, but pretty much everything else. Especially the ones where producer Todd Rundgren's hand wasn't quite so heavy. (There are a couple of songs where you would think you were listening to a Todd Rungren album. Which isn't a bad thing, I love Todd immensely, but y'know. It's SHAUN's turn to play, Todd.) 

In fact, I really liked Shaun's covers of "Once Bitten Twice Shy," for instance. In fact, I liked it better than Ian Hunter's original version (although of course you can't beat Mick Ronson's guitar), and I still think it beats the Great White cover (a Top 5 Billboard single)  by a country mile or two. Part of it is the inventive arrangement by Todd R., for sure. But a big part of it is also Shaun's voice, which is much better than Ian's or Jack Russell's. For one thing, he goes for a deeper register which allows him to up the ante in the second half of the song, and lends it a bit more of a punch than the other two versions. 

I'm also a big big fan of Shaun's cover of "It's My Life," which is slowed down and deepened considerably, to the point where it almost sounds like an Iggy Pop dirge. (That's a good thing, by the way.) And the Todd Rundgren penned "Wasp" is just fuckin' great. Check out these lyrics:

"Hey, that you? Is that still you?
You're looking mighty new wave
I hardly recognize you with that shish kabob through your face."

They don't write 'em like THAT anymore. In fact, I think I'm going to have to pull this album out and give it a spin now.

Oh, yeah, that's the stuff. Most of the songs on this album are covers, by the way, but Shaun & Todd do a good job of re-visioning them for the most part. (Which is not meant to be a back-handed compliment: all of these songs are at least good. Just that some--like "So Sad About Us"--don't stray too far from the original.)

Which finally brings me around to the reason I started thinking about Shaun Cassidy. I have a section of my blog entitled "The Book I Read," in which I track the books I read during the course of each year. I only do it for myself, so it's little more than a list, but strangely enough those pages garner quite a few hits. So I was thinking about putting up a video of "The Book I Read" by the Talking Heads, but couldn't find one I thought was really good, and then realized that that was in part due to the fact that I had first heard this song via Shaun Cassidy's version on Wasp. Which got me to thinking about Shaun Cassidy, and now we're back to the start, aren't we?

ANYway...great album. Not so great for Shaun, alas, as it was his final studio foray, and I get the impression that sales were less than stellar. But definitely one of my Top Twenty, I'd say. (Just a guess...I don't actually know what my Top Twenty would be. Hmmm. That sounds like a project for another time.)

Btw...if you're an Amazon Prime kind of guy or gal, you can listen to his album for free! Oh, Amazon...I do love thee....

* David Bowie pun, in case you didn't notice. But Shaun's "Rebel Rebel," while not as awful as the Bay City Rollers' version, was not particularly good, either.