Yesterday's song of the day was a somewhat cheesy 80's song, so here's another, and another one of my favorite covers of all-time.
"Hazy Shade of Winter" was written and recorded by Simon & Garfunkel in 1967, and it was a cool, up-tempo acoustic song (check it out here). The Bangles really only altered two things; they played the riff electrically, and they sang it with four female harmonies instead of two male harmonies. But good god, their version kicks the original's ass. Yes, the '80s production (and hair) is a bit (a lot) dated, but this riff played with total abandon on electric guitar and with a foxy chick knocking the shit out of the drums is the platonic ideal of this song. And lest we forget, The Bangles were great singers, with front-woman Susannah Hoffs having one of the more memorable voices of the era. There's a good reason Prince was writing hit songs for them.
Fun fact: This song was recorded as the theme song of a bad movie called Less Than Zero, which you can see clips of in the video. The film was based on the Brett Easton Ellis novel of the same name, and it stars a very young Robert Downey Jr. as a completely uncontrollable L.A. drug addict. So here's my question-- A) Was Downey cast for the role of an uncontrollable L.A. drug addict because he already was one, B) Was he relatively clean before the movie but playing an uncontrollable L.A. drug addict actually helped turn him into one, or C) Is the fact that he later turned into an uncontrollable L.A. drug addict a complete and utter coincidence?
This was originally written and posted on Facebook on June 3, 2014
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