A while back I was heavily obsessed with Red House Painters and was beginning to look into any sort of bootlegs from their live shows. This being difficult because they have this longtime policy of not allowing any cameras or recording devices, but far and between from their formation to their last tour there were indeed some bootlegs floating around.
I had stumbled upon a recording of one of their last shows ever in 2001 and it had a bunch of cool rendition of 'Grace Cathedral Park' and even a fucking RHP version of 'Duk Koo Kim'; I was happy. But all of that would make little to no difference in the week long torment that would follow finding this bootleg.
The first track of the bootleg was entitled 'Introduction' which contained a snippet of a song that was playing in the venue's speakers and promptly was cut short as the band went on stage. It sounded like Thom Yorke singing with a choir from hell. It was absolutely fantastic. Yet, I was left dumbfounded since the vocals were pretty much words being stretched to infinite and the noise from the crowd obscured any finer details.
I tried looking everywhere, I used those websites that would capture the melody from your voice, I tried playing the melody on guitar and asking if anyone knew what it was, I even contacted the bootlegger if he had any clue and if he could share a longer snippet of the track. Luckily, he had one and wished me luck on my journey.
I was able to use the snippet for the melody website and found it was 'Evil Angel' by Rufus Wainwright. The fuck? I was pretty confused for two reasons, the first since I figured Wainwright was just some pop singer. The second because the track opens with this immensely evil sounding cello... I was pretty wrong with my premature judgement!
In the long run I was able to hear this entirely fantastic track, I was greatly impressed by the album, Poses, it was on (highly recommended for some actually great alternative/singer-songwriter music), in my quest I actually found these two other bands called Swell and The Ocean Blue (their spot will be on here in the future...), and I didn't kill myself out of frustration.
All for a good melody.
Note: Pretty cool tribute here.
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