The Fabs Take the Costa Brava Plane
Label: ParlophoneYear of Release: 1964
The sheer variety and quantity of Beatles cover versions out there never fails to astound me, and when I see a Beatles tribute record sitting on a shelf, I'm one of those suckers who just can't walk past. It's not that I'm expecting the efforts to usurp the originals, I just want to hear what new avenues have been explored, and any prospect at all of their recordings being bashed into weird and unusual shapes or thrust into unlikely contexts and cultures gets my heart racing.
Some of my purchases have been dire. The Band of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst issued an entire LP of Beatles covers on the Hallmark label. This feels like an experiment in stuffing the Lennon and McCartney songbook into a beaker of water and boiling it with a bunsen burner until all that's left is a fine, tasteless grey powder. Sandhurst's square marching men remove all swing, emotion, mood and groove from the Fabs and reduce their songs to perfunctory marches, managing to make their output sound formulaic and drab. Still, some might call that a statement.
Emi Bonilla, on the other hand, was (is) a wild, impassioned flamenco peformer who stuffs so much energy and loud vocalisations into the Beatles ouevre that at points here, it sounds almost unrecognisable. There's no questioning its authenticity either - this isn't polished, slickly produced tourist shop flamenco (if such a thing existed in 1964) - this is a dusty, stomping lo-fi racket which despite lacking a beat actually sounds more raucous and uncontrolled than The Beatles were at this stage of their careers. It's not as if any of it was going to get teenagers screaming, but it's rough and raw and probably gave George Martin panic attacks rather than provoking fainting fits among the youthful hordes.
Suffice to say it didn't sell very well in the UK, but Emi Bonilla had a long recording career in Spain and remains a respected flamenco performer. The Beatles? Well, we all know what happened to them.
Tracklisting:
2. Te Conseguire = I'll Get You
3. No Me Dejes = Bad To Me
4. Lo Tendras, Amor = From Me To You
1 comment:
Bearing in mind his first name, this should have been re-issued on EMI. I'll get my coat!
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