Weddin'

I’ve spent the last few days hauling through a mountain of vinyl to put together a perfect set of wedding music. The choices for the Non-Wedding band (which I guess should be the Anniversary Band since these folks are already hitched) are actually quite easy–most of what was played last year (plus whatever we didn’t get to) and embellish on that front and we’ve already come up with some choice additions. The actual Wedding Band is a bit more of a challenge in that we want to rock but we also want to make folks hang out and dance a bit. The Groom’s requests have been most helpful and right now I’m grooving on what will undoubtedly be one of the highlights of the set: Madonna’s “Beautiful Stranger”. I’m not a huge Madonna fan though I am partial to some of her earlier hits and over the years of playing in different bands have found that her pop songs make excellent rock songs. “Borderline” really rocks as does “Ray of Light”. “Beautiful Stranger” really hit me when it came out, despite the goofy video featuring Madonna slinking on stage and Mike Meyers being a big dork. Years later I discovered one of the reasons why “Beautiful Stranger” is so good–its a chord for chord rip-off of the song “She Comes in Colors” by Love. Front man Arthur Lee was probably in prison when Madonna and William Orbit put their version (which, admittedly, is written a third higher than the Love song) on the charts and may not have been aware that someone was cashing in by creating a retro feel with actual chords from 1967.

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