I Can't Help It from The Breeders on Vimeo.
I've been thinking about 2001 a lot lately so it's kind of appropriate that while i was wandering around the Breeders site I found this video of the Deal's covering Hank Williams (the deals would be a good band name, no?). I first heard this song when I was making a playlist of covers for the Dr. Awesome and Sarah Show in SDSU college DJ days (this is Dr Awesome and your listening to KCR). I typed in covers to songspy, or whatever mp3 site i used to use back in the antediluvian days of free music downloading and i found so many great covers; among my favourite still are Foo Fighters covering Carry on My Wayward Son and Sonic Youth doing Moist Vagina (Kim Gordon sounds SO much like Kurt Cobain!) and Nirvana doing. I love covers, as most people know. During the brief but intense life of the Mix Tape club i was unfairly disqualified from the covers round for submitting a tape with over 50 songs on it.
Anyway, imagine 18 year old me, fresh from the tide pool of Los Angeles and treading water in the slutty shark infested deep of San Diego. I had never been in the kind of love the song talks about and probably liked it for the same reason everyone likes breeders songs: the crazy harmonies that can be achieved when two people who sound exactly alike sing together. OF course when i rediscovered this song a few years later (think 2003ish) it hit a disturbingly close resonance for me. I had all but forgotten about it until today and it's as great as ever. I remember playing it a lot on the show (i always got in trouble for playing songs over and over) and one time i coupled it with this great Tom Waits song, also about a love i couldn't understand at the time, when my biggest romantic concerns were French exchange students (hi Suzel) and being a substitute boyfriend (sex only) for lonely girls. I think they go pretty well together. For not understanding these songs at the time, they both featured a pretty big in my musical history.
Tom Waits I hope that i don´t fall in love with yo… - MyVideo
PS: While neither Tom or the Breeders made in on my I Heart 2001 mix (though the Amps did) I was way into both at the time. I remember Mitsi and Christine Lam talking about Swordfishtrombones in Mr Acosta's creative writing class. Then I saw Fight Club, bought Bone Machine and was, like, "Oooooh".
