Chris Stamey and Yo La Tengo: "Politician"
[Featured in A Question of Temperature]

Chris Stamey and his pals Georgia, Ira, and James are well-educated students of popular music, and they sure know how to pick a cover. They plucked this bad boy off of the studio disc of Cream's Wheels of Fire and though they keep the plodding riff of the original in place, their version is actually more animated and a sight less grey than its ancestor. Granted, Stamey, wailing into some light vocal processing, doesn't sound quite as sleazy as Jack Bruce did, but he also doesn't sound like he just drank a gallon of strange acid, so it evens out. The line "I support the left, though I'm leaning to the right" is so apropos of American politics in the 21st century that it's hard to believe it was written in 1968 until you realized that nothing has really changed since then--politicians still take money and influence from all the wrong places and most of them still hail from well-moneyed circles. It's a bit of a shame that this cover's context on Stamey & YLT's V.O.T.E. album necessarily avoids addressing the double entendre "Hey now, baby/ I wanna' just show you/ What my politics are" beyond simply singing it, but when the purpose of a release is getting young people more engaged in politics, it's hard to argue small points like that, especially when Ira digs into that solo. [Joe Tangari; January 11, 2005]

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