No secret to people who post in the "what song are you listening to" thread that Ben Harper is one my favorite living mainstream artists alongside Tori Amos.
He has been covering Under Pressure for his new tour - the new album is amazing - and the result was, well, to my taste, fantastic: he brings - alone - the song to life in such a way as to be faithful to the original without sounding derivative. It's his own sound, but respectful of the song's most revered vocal tricks. I wonder whether Brian has commented on this - it's a quite beautiful hommage to Queen and, especially, Freddie. It's not polished at all: Harper takes all risks, sings with passion and lets the song take him to another realm. That's one of the things I love about him.
Take a look at how much he evolved. This link below is a raw, audience footage from 05.10.2009. The performance is just brilliant. Freddie's fans will be delighted to listen to his take on the song from 1:15 on - it starts to become ridiculously close to the album version (check the lines "takes me higheeeerrr"...or "turn away from it all like...":op) and yet he manages to leave his own lovely impressive mark.
The link below is to a much better-sounding performance (an official broadcast). It's one of the first times he sang it live, but the performance is not as good as the one I linked above, in my opinion:
Finally, this is a live performance from Montreal of one of his best songs to my mind - "Ground on Down". For those who still haven't given a fair listening to him, it's very well worth checking out. I love the lyrics of this song, his guitar-playing and his vocals:
i know im old and im easily confused on a saturday morning but when i saw 'Ben Harper' in the title i automatically assumed it was Robert Lindsay in BBC 'sitcom' [term used loosely] My Family...
JoxerTheDeityPirate wrote:
i know im old and im easily confused on a saturday morning but when i saw 'Ben Harper' in the title i automatically assumed it was Robert Lindsay in BBC 'sitcom' [term used loosely] My Family...
I see. I make such mistakes myself while I'm still nodding off and half-asleep and trying to come back to the land of the living. In my daydreams I have Newton's brains and Penelope Cruz looks. Slowly, as the hard facts start to sink in and thrust upon myself, I begin to have some problems with reality, this annoying thing. Reality apart, I'm very good looking and smart. ; -)
When the BBC minor demons get out of your sleepy body, I hope you enjoy the beautiful cover and the thrilling song by Mr. Harper: he's delightful as a person, a very humble artist who gives his very best each and every concert, and is a very remarkable talent both as a great acoustic and slide guitar-player and as a singer. His vocals alternate between emotional bursts and very tender, angelic phrases and it seemed to be that this mix wound up being ideal for such a song as "Under Pressure".
I'm campaigning for Ben Harper. His new album is wonderful and I was really surprised by watching him cover a Queen song!
I urge you to invade the stores and buy all his cds, Queenzoners. He's a very good artist. Give Tori Amos a lot of support for this new tour too, if you have the chance, don't miss her concert by any means - she played at the Radio City Music Hall some days ago - on 13 August, to be precise - and there's hoping her tour will last a bit longer and encompass more countries than the last one. ; -)