That's The Way I've Always Heard It Should Be: Unusual Covers

I am almost completely out of my old house. I have one more car-load to pick up after work today and then I'm done! Well, done except for all of the unpacking, sorting and dumping of shit that won't fit into the smaller apartment I've moved in to. I was trying to think of some songs that had to do with moving and moving in with a girlfriend/partner/whatever. The first one that came to mind was Lou Bond's cover of the Carly Simon song "That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be." Now, Lou Bond is an interesting character. Cosmo over at Cosmo's Crates recently posted Lou's 1974 album (his only LP), but I've been digging this album since 2002 when my friend Hugh in London sent me a tape with Lou Bond on one side and Dennis Wilson's "Pacific Ocean Blue" on the other. I had asked for the Dennis Wilson album, but it was Lou who I kept returning to.

Thinking I was on to some deep shit here I insisted to my then girlfriend that the song "That's the way . . ." was a Lou Bond original, but she persisted that she recognized it from somewhere. I was wrong. Carly Simon wrote it for her debut album and it was a top ten hit. I can be forgiven cause I didn't listen to the radio back in 1971. The song is a bold one for a male soul singer, but Lou was not your average soul singer; he was sensitive. The song is a powerful one that describes the expectations and pitfalls of adult love and romance. First it gives a portrait of the singer's parents in their unhappy marriage and then the singer begins to speculate about his/her own future and how it could be or should be and then it ends in a more triumphant, optimistic tone.

I am moving in with my girlfriend, but we are not about to have kids (that I know of), so the autobiography only goes so far. Here's Lou Bond with:

"That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be"





And here are a couple of other interesting cover tunes:

Cal Tjader's take on the Stones' "Gimme Shelter"




Patato & Totico's latin-percussion version of Jorge Ben(jor)'s "Mas Que Nada"