SONG OF THE DAY

“Wild Nights” by John Mel­len­camp & Me’shell Nde­geo­cello (Dance Naked, Mer­cury Records, 1994). Writ­ten by Van Morrison.

MY TAKE

Eek! I love John/ny Cougar Mel­len­camp! He was my first con­cert as a music-conscious teen. It was sum­mer at the beau­ti­ful Pine Knob (now DTE Music what­ever, I still call it Pine Knob), and I went with my dad and a friend from down the street, Sarah. We were so dumb “who is this guy? I don’t know any of his songs.” And my dad was just like “shhh, shh, just come to the show, I promise you’ll like it.” That would be an under­state­ment. Turns out we not only knew every song he played, but we knew all the words to most of them! He was Clas­sic Rock Radio 101, we’d just never known who the guy was who sang all of those great songs! Need­less to say, I became an offi­cial mem­ber of his street team after that, dili­gently wear­ing the tee-shirt from his con­cert and writ­ing poetry with his lyrics, and putting him on all of the mix tapes I made for peo­ple for awhile.

Now, about this sin­gle. It was one of the first CD’s I ever bought, in 1996 I believe. My grand­mi­ola (dad’s mother, obvi­ously, and a believer in music wor­thy of praise) bought me a *gasp* portable cd player for my 8th grade grad­u­a­tion. I still had it until my recent move, so it lasted a good 13 years, lol. I went to the CD store with her and bought my first CDs: (1) a two disc set of orches­tral and choral cov­ers of famous songs from musi­cals, (2) Celine Dion’s “All By Myself” sin­gle, (3) Sav­age Garden’s “I Want You” sin­gle, (3) Jewel’s “Fool­ish Games” sin­gle, (4) John Mellencamp’s “Wild Night” sin­gle, and (5) the first Spice Girls CD. A bit of an eclec­tic mix, but cer­tainly an indi­ca­tion of my wide tastes (and the Celine Dion is an indi­ca­tion of my grand­mother being there ;) ). I prob­a­bly lis­tened to that “Wild Night” sin­gle 100 times. I was and still am really into lis­ten­ing to a song on repeat for days, breath­ing it, get­ting its beat under my skin and liv­ing to it, it’s like play­ing a char­ac­ter, and I love the rush. “Wild Night” was the first song I ever did that too. I’ll make a playlist some­time of all the songs I’ve ever done that with, it’s not that long. This song is SO fun to get under your skin: the bass line is ridicu­lously catchy (lis­ten­ing to it today, I regret not play­ing it at the wed­ding…), and it is a blast to dance along to. Even if your at work and can’t just get up and dance, let your cells dance, let the hairs on your arm dance, feel the bass line go down your spine, let this song take over you and trust me, you’ll be hav­ing a bet­ter day already!

By the way, in one of the final episodes of this sea­son of Glee, there were many ref­er­ences to Mel­len­camp and a per­for­mance of his song “Lit­tle Pink Houses”, and although I appre­ci­ate them putting his stuff out there, I thought it was an incred­i­bly narrow-minded view of Mellencamp’s music. They said all of his songs sound the same. Hello, the plot of EVERY sin­gle episode of Glee is the same, so of all the shows in all of the world to go there, it shouldn’t have been you guys mak­ing that crit­i­cism. But more than that obvi­ous fact, the whole premise of all his songs sound­ing the same is sim­ply not accu­rate at all. Hope­fully my top 10 video list of my favorite Mel­len­camp songs will illus­trate oth­er­wise to you. Third, there was a whole biased pre­sen­ta­tion of Mel­len­camp music as work­ing class, trucker uni­form, man’s man sort of per­sona. That may be a large chunk of his fan base, for sure, but I think he speaks more to his times and what was hap­pen­ing in the coun­try for EVERYONE eco­nom­i­cally, socially and polit­i­cally, rather than to a spe­cific demo­graphic. No one would say Bruce Spring­steen has such a nar­row fan base, and just like Bruce, I think Mel­len­camp cre­ated music and lyrics that really tran­scends those stereo­types of mid­dle Amer­ica and is for every man. That’s my piece.

INTERESTING FACTS (a la wikipedia)

- “Wild Night” is a song writ­ten by North­ern Irish singer-songwriter Van Mor­ri­son and included on his 1971 album, Tupelo Honey. It was released as a sin­gle in 1971 and reached #28 on the US pop chart.

- “Wild Night” as orig­i­nally recorded by Mor­ri­son was rated at #747 on Dave Marsh’s 1989 book, The Heart of Rock and Soul, The 1001 Great­est Sin­gles Ever.

- Tom Mag­in­nis in All­mu­sic describes it as: “an effu­sive three and a half min­utes of Stax-inspired R&B, buoyed by a sweet gui­tar lick from Ron­nie Mon­trose of such qual­ity that would make Steve Crop­per proud.”

- David Cavanagh, review­ing Tupelo Honey in Uncut mag­a­zine, remarks on “Wild Night”: “Recorded live in the stu­dio (as all Morrison’s albums are), it sounds intri­cately lay­ered, highly sophis­ti­cated by 2007’s stan­dards, like speeded-up Steely Dan­meets Allen Tou­s­saint. It’s fluid but metic­u­lous; ultra-rehearsed but effort­less. It promises a party to come.”

- “Wild Night” was recorded by John Mel­len­camp and Meshell Nde­geo­cello and released as a sin­gle in 1994. This ver­sion of the song reached #3 on the Bill­board Hot 100 chart dur­ing the sum­mer of 1994 and remained in the Top 40 for 33 weeks. It also topped the U.S. adult con­tem­po­rary chart for eight weeks.

- The song was included on Mellencamp’s 1994 album, Dance Naked and an “acoustic” remix was released as a pro­mo­tional sin­gle for radio.

- Martha Reeves cov­ered the song on her first solo album Martha Reeves. She also released it as a sin­gle in 1974, chart­ing at #74 on the R&B charts. Reeves’ ver­sion of the song was fea­tured on the 1991 film Thelma and Louise.

- Other cover ver­sions were recorded by Polly Brown, Richie Havens, Johnny Rivers, and The Amaz­ing Rhythm Aces on the 1980 album How the Hell Do You Spell Rhythum?.

- Star­sailor have cov­ered this song in con­cert and in 2008, Elvis Costello cov­ered “Wild Night” at the Hardly Strickly Blue­grass Festival.

- It has remained a pop­u­lar tune per­formed by Mor­ri­son at many of his con­certs and was one of the clos­ing songs dur­ing his appear­ance as the first day head­line act at the Austin City Lim­its Music Fes­ti­val in Sep­tem­ber 2006.

- “Wild Night” is also one of the songs per­formed on Morrison’s 1980 con­cert disc on the Live At Mon­treux 1980/1974 DVD released in 2006.

- “Wild Night” was included on the 2003 (10 CD) set Ulti­mate Sev­en­ties Col­lec­tion by Time-Life.

- Dance Naked is the 13th album by John Mel­len­camp released in 1994.

- The album was released in response to the record company’s accu­sa­tions that Mellencamp’s pre­vi­ous album, Human Wheels, didn’t “fit the for­mat.” Mel­len­camp was irri­tated with this remark, feel­ing that none of his albums ever fit the for­mat. As a result, he wrote sev­eral pur­posely radio-friendly songs and recorded them within the span of 14 days at the Bel­mont Mall Stu­dio in Indi­ana, intend­ing to show the lack of effort required to pro­duce the type of album they were ask­ing for. Although Mel­len­camp claims that Dance Naked was merely an easy out­put to give the com­pany what it wanted, the album was still well received.

- The most notable accom­plish­ment was the largely suc­cess­ful sin­gle “Wild Night”, a cover of the 1971 song by Van Mor­ri­son. The song fea­tured Me’shell Nde­geo­cello on a duet with Mel­len­camp as well as the promi­nent bass lead.

- Meshell Nde­geo­cello (born August 29, 1968) is an Amer­i­can singer-songwriter, rapper, bassist, and multi-instrumentalist. Her music incor­po­rates funk, soul, hip hop, reggae, R&B, rock, and jazz. She has received sig­nif­i­cant crit­i­cal acclaim through­out her career, and has had ten career Grammy Award nominations. She is often cred­ited for hav­ing “sparked the neo-soul movement.”

- She was raised in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. where she attend­ed Duke Elling­ton School of the Arts and Oxon Hill High School.

- Named Michelle Lynn John­son at birth, Nde­geo­cello has had numer­ous name changes. She adopted the sur­name Nde­geo­cello, which means “free like a bird”. Me’shell Nde­geo­cello is pro­nounced Mee-shell N-deh-gay-o-chel-o. Early press­ings of Plan­ta­tion Lul­la­bies were stick­ered with the instruc­tions. She has changed the spelling of this name a num­ber of times dur­ing her career; how­ever, the cor­rect spelling of her stage name is now Meshell Nde­geo­cello, with­out apos­tro­phes or any unusual capitalizations.

- Nde­geo­cello is bisex­ual and pre­vi­ously had a rela­tion­ship with fem­i­nist author Rebecca Walker.

- She suf­fers from pho­to­sen­si­tive epilepsy and is sus­cep­ti­ble to seizures induced by flash pho­tog­ra­phy when she is per­form­ing live.

- Her son Askia was born in 1989.

- She was one of the first artists to sign with Mav­er­ick Records, where she released her debut album, Plan­ta­tion Lul­la­bies. This record­ing pre­sented a dis­tinct­ly androg­y­nous persona.

- Her biggest hit is “Wild Night”. Her only oth­er Bill­board Hot 100 hit has been “If That’s Your Boyfriend (He Wasn’t Last Night)”, which peaked at #73 in 1994. She had a Dance #1 in 1996 with a Bill With­ers cover called “Who Is He (and What Is He To You?),“ as well as Dance Top 20 hits with “Earth”, “Leviti­cus: Fag­got”, “Stay” and the afore­men­tioned “…Boyfriend”. Nde­geo­cello sang back­ing vocals on the song “I’d Rather be Your Lover” for Madonna on her album Bed­time Sto­ries.

- Her music has been fea­tured in a num­ber of film sound­tracks includ­ing How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Lost & Deliri­ous, Bat­man & Robin, Love Jones, Love & Bas­ket­ball, Talk To Me, Tyler Perry’s Daddy’s Lit­tle Girls,The Best Man, Higher Learn­ing and Down in the Delta.

- She has appeared on record­ings by Base­ment Jaxx, Indigo Girls and The Blind Boys of Alabama. On The Rolling Stones’ 1997 album Bridges to Baby­lon she plays bass on the song “Saint Of Me”. On Ala­nis Morissette’s 2002 album Under Rug Swept she plays bass on the songs “So Unsexy” and “You Owe Me Noth­ing in Return”. On Zap Mama’s album “ReCre­ation” (2009) she plays bass on the song “African Diamond”.

- She can also be seen in the doc­u­men­tary movie Stand­ing in the Shad­ows of Motown, singing The Mir­a­cles’ “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me” and The Temp­ta­tions’ “Cloud Nine”.

- In the late 1990s, she toured with Lilith Fair.

- She also did a remake of the song, “Two Doors Down” on the 2003 release, Just Because I’m A Woman: The Songs of Dolly Par­ton.

- Nde­geo­cello was also a judge for the 2nd annu­al Inde­pen­dent Music Awards to sup­port inde­pen­dent artists’ careers.

- Her song “Tie One On” was cho­sen as the Star­bucks iTunes Pick of the Week on Feb­ru­ary 23, 2010.

- John Mel­len­camp, pre­vi­ously known by the stage names Johnny Cougar, John Cougar, and John Cougar Mel­len­camp, (born Octo­ber 7, 1951) is an Amer­i­can rock singer-songwriter, musician, painter and occa­sional actor.

- He has sold over 40 mil­lion albums world­wide and has amassed 22 Top 40 hits in the United States.

- In addi­tion, he holds the record for the most tracks by a solo artist to hit #1 on the Hot Main­stream Rock Tracks chart, with seven, and he has been nom­i­nated for 13 Grammy Awards, win­ning one.

- His songs are known for their pop­ulist themes. Mellencamp is also one of the found­ing mem­bers of Farm Aid, an orga­ni­za­tion that began in 1985 with a con­cert in Cham­paign, Illi­nois to raise aware­ness about the loss of fam­ily farms and to raise funds to keep farm fam­i­lies on their land. The Farm Aid con­certs have remained an annual event over the past 25 years, and as of 2010 the orga­ni­za­tion has raised over $36 mil­lion to pro­mote a strong and resilient fam­ily farm sys­tem of agriculture.

- Mel­len­camp was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 10, 2008 by Billy Joel.

- Mel­len­camp was born in Sey­mour, Indi­ana with a mild form of spina bifida that neces­si­tated a lengthy stay in the hos­pi­tal as a baby.

- He formed his first band, Crepe Soul, at the age of 14.

– In 1975, Mel­len­camp finally found some­one recep­tive to his music and image in Tony DeFries of Main­Man Management. DeFries insisted that Mellencamp’s first album, Chest­nut Street Inci­dent, a col­lec­tion of cov­ers and a hand­ful of orig­i­nal songs, be released under the stage name Johnny Cougar. The album sold 12,000 copies.

- Mel­len­camp record­ed The Kid Inside in 1977, the follow-up to Chest­nut Street Inci­dent, but DeFries even­tu­ally decided against releas­ing the album and Mel­len­camp was dropped from MCA records.

- He then drew inter­est from Rod Stewart’s manager, Billy Gaff, after part­ing ways with DeFries and was signed to the tiny Riva Records label. At Gaff’s request, Mel­len­camp moved to Lon­don, Eng­land for nearly a year to record, pro­mote and tour behind 1978’s A Biog­ra­phy. The record wasn’t released in the U.S., but yielded a hit in Aus­tralia with “I Need a Lover”. Riva Records added “I Need a Lover” to Mellencamp’s next album released in the U.S., 1979’s John Cougar, where the song became a #28 sin­gle in late 1979.

- In 1980, Mel­len­camp returned with the Steve Cropper-produced Nothin’ Mat­ters and What If It Did, which yielded two Top 40 sin­gles — “This Time” (No. 27) and “Ain’t Even Done With the Night” (No. 17). “The sin­gles were stu­pid lit­tle pop songs,” he told Record Mag­a­zine in 1983. “I take no credit for that record. It wasn’t like the title was made up — it wasn’t sup­posed to be punky or cocky like some peo­ple thought. Toward the end, I didn’t even go to the stu­dio. Me and the guys in the band thought we were fin­ished, any­way. It was the most expen­sive record I ever made. It cost $280,000, do you believe that? The worst thing was that I could have gone on mak­ing records like that for hun­dreds of years. Hell, as long as you sell a few records and the record com­pany isn’t putting lot of money into pro­mo­tion, you’re mak­ing money for ‘em and that’s all they care about. Poly­Gram loved Nothin’ Mat­ters. They thought I was going to turn into the next Neil Diamond.”

- In 1982, Mel­len­camp released his break­through album, Amer­i­can Fool, which con­tained the sin­gles “Hurts So Good,” “Jack & Diane” and “Hand to Hold On To”. “Hurts So Good” went on to win the Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Per­for­mance. “To be real hon­est, there’s three good songs on that record, and the rest is just sort of filler,” Mel­len­camp told Creem Mag­a­zine in 1984. “It was too labored over, too thought about, and it wasn’t organic enough.”

- Mel­len­camp had the record com­pany add his real sur­name to his stage moniker. The first album he recorded as John Cougar Mel­len­camp was 1983’s Uh-Huh, a top-10 album that spawned the top 10 sin­gles “Pink Houses”, “Crum­blin’ Down” and “Author­ity Song”.

- In 1985, Mel­len­camp released Scare­crow, which spawned five Top 40 sin­gles: “Lonely Ol’ Night”, “Small Town”, and “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A. (A Salute to ‘60s Rock)”, “Rain on the Scare­crow” and “Rum­ble­seat”. Scare­crow was also the first album Mel­len­camp recorded at his own record­ing stu­dio “Bel­mont Mall,” located in Bel­mont, Indi­ana and built in 1984. Mel­len­camp sees Scare­crow as the start of the alter­na­tive coun­try genre.

- Shortly after, Mel­len­camp helped orga­nize the first Farm Aid ben­e­fit con­cert with Willie Nel­son and Neil Young in Cham­paign, Illi­nois on Sep­tem­ber 22, 1985.

- Prior to the 1985–86 Scare­crow Tour, Mel­len­camp added fid­dle play­er Lisa Ger­mano to his band. Ger­mano would remain in Mellencamp’s band until 1994, when she left to pur­sue a solo career.

- Mellencamp’s next LP, 1987’s The Lone­some Jubilee included the sin­gles “Paper in Fire”, “Cherry Bomb”, and “Check It Out”. “We were on the road for a long time after Scare­crow, so we were together a lot as a band,” Mel­len­camp said in a 1987 Creem mag­a­zine fea­ture. “For the first time ever, we talked about the record before we started. We had a very dis­tinct vision of what should be hap­pen­ing here. At one point, The Lone­some Jubilee was sup­posed to be a dou­ble album, but at least 10 of the songs I’d writ­ten just didn’t stick together with the idea and the sound we had in mind. So I just put those songs on a shelf, and cut it back down to a sin­gle record. Now, in the past, it was always ‘Let’s make it up as we go along’ – and we did make some of The Lone­some Jubilee up as we went along. But we had a very clear idea of what we wanted it to sound like, even before it was writ­ten, right through to the day it was mastered.”

- As Frank DiGia­como of Van­ity Fair wrote in 2007, “The Lone­some Jubilee was the album in which Mel­len­camp defined his now sig­na­ture sound: a rous­ing, crys­talline mix of acoustic and elec­tric gui­tars, Appalachian fid­dle, and gospel-style back­ing vocals, anchored by a crisp, bare-knuckle drum­beat and com­pleted by his own vel­veteen rasp.”

- Dur­ing the 1987–88 Lone­some Jubilee Tour, Mel­len­camp was joined onstage by sur­prise guest Bruce Spring­steen at the end of his May 26, 1988 gig in Irvine, Cal­i­for­nia for a duet of Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone”, which Mel­len­camp per­formed as the penul­ti­mate song dur­ing each show on that tour.

- In 1989, Mel­len­camp released the per­sonal album Big Daddy, which Mel­len­camp called at the time the most “earthy” record he’d ever made, is also the last to fea­ture the “Cougar” moniker.

- Mel­len­camp was heav­ily involved in paint­ing at this time in his life, and decided not to tour behind Big Daddy, stat­ing “Whats the point?… This other step that peo­ple keep want­ing me to take to become another level of record­ing artist — to be Madonna? To sell out? To bend over? To kiss somebody’s ass? I ain’t gonna do it.“ In his sec­ond paint­ing exhi­bi­tion, at the Churchman-Fehsenfeld Gallery in Indi­anapo­lis in 1990, Mellencamp’s por­traits were described as always hav­ing sad facial expres­sions and con­vey­ing “the same dis­il­lu­sion­ment found in his musi­cal anthems about the nation’s heart­land and farm crisis.”

- Mellencamp’s 1991 album, When­ever We Wanted, was the first whose cover was billed to just John Mellencamp. “It’s very rock ‘n’ roll,” Mel­len­camp said of When­ever We Wanted. “I just wanted to get back to the basics.”

- In 1993, he released Human Wheels. “To me, this record is very urban,” Mel­len­camp told Bill­board mag­a­zine of Human Wheels in the sum­mer of ’93. “We had a lot of dis­cus­sions about the rhythm and blues music of the day. We explored what a lot of these (cur­rent) bands are doing — these young black bands that are doing more than just sampling.”

- Mellencamp’s 1994 Dance Naked album: “This is as naked a rock record as you’re going to hear,” Mel­len­camp said in a 1994 Bill­board mag­a­zine inter­view. “All the vocals are first or sec­ond takes, and half the songs don’t even have bass parts. Oth­ers have just one gui­tar, bass, and drums, which I haven’t done since ‘Amer­i­can Fool.’ ”

- He returned to the con­cert stage in early 1995 by play­ing a series of dates in small Mid­west­ern clubs under the pseu­do­nym Pearl Doggy.

- In Sep­tem­ber 1996 the album Mr. Happy Go Lucky was released. “It’s been fas­ci­nat­ing to me how urban records use rhythm and elec­tron­ics, and it’s ter­ri­bly chal­leng­ing to make that work in the con­text of a rock band,” Mel­len­camp told Bill­board mag­a­zine in 1996. “But we took it fur­ther than an urban record. The arrange­ments are more ambi­tious, with pro­grams and loops going right along with real drums and guitars.”

- After the release of Mr. Happy Go Lucky, Mel­len­camp signed a four-album deal with Colum­bia Records, although he wound up only mak­ing three albums for the label.

- Issued a day before his 47th birth­day in 1998, his self-titled debut for Colum­bia Records included the sin­gles “Your Life is Now” and “I’m Not Run­ning Any­more”. “Ini­tially, I wanted to make a record that barely had drums on it. Dono­van made a record (in 1966), Sun­shine Super­man, and I wanted to start with that same kind of vibe—Eastern, very grand sto­ries, fairy tales.”

- He released a book of his early paint­ings, titled Paint­ings and Reflec­tions, in 1998.

- In 1999, Mel­len­camp cov­ered his own songs as well as those by Bob Dylan and the Drifters for his album Rough Har­vest (recorded in 1997), one of two albums he owed Mer­cury Records to ful­fill his con­tract (the other was The Best That I Could Do, a best-of collection).

- The early 21st cen­tury found Mel­len­camp team­ing up with artists such as Chuck D, Trisha Year­wood and India.Arie to deliver Cut­tin’ Heads.

- In 2003, he released Trou­ble No More, a quickly-recorded col­lec­tion of folk and blues cov­ers orig­i­nally done by artists such as Robert Johnson, Son House, Lucinda Williams and Hoagie Carmichael. Colum­bia Records then engaged him to record an album of vin­tage Amer­i­can songs.

- Mel­len­camp par­tic­i­pated in the Vote for Change tour in Octo­ber 2004 lead­ing up to the 2004 U.S. Pres­i­den­tial election.

- In 2005, Mel­len­camp toured with Dono­van and John Fogerty. The first leg of what was called the Words and Music Tour in the spring of ’05 fea­tured Dono­van play­ing in the mid­dle of Mellencamp’s set. Mel­len­camp would play a hand­ful of songs before intro­duc­ing Dono­van and then duet­ting with him on the 1966 hit “Sun­shine Super­man.” Mel­len­camp would leave the stage as Dono­van played seven or eight of his songs (backed by Mellencamp’s band) and then return to fin­ish off his own set after Dono­van departed. On the sec­ond leg of the tour in the sum­mer of ’05, Fogerty co-headlined with Mel­len­camp at out­door amphithe­aters across the United States. Fogerty would join Mel­len­camp for duets on Fogerty’s Cree­dence Clear­wa­ter Revival hit “Green River” and Mellencamp’s “Rain on the Scarecrow.”

- Mel­len­camp released Freedom’s Road on Jan­u­ary 23, 2007. “Our Coun­try” began being fea­tured in Chevy Sil­ver­ado TV com­mer­cials in late Sep­tem­ber 2006. He sang the song to open Game 2 of the 2006 World Series. “Our Coun­try” was nom­i­nated for a 2008 Grammy Award in the cat­e­gory Best Solo Rock Vocal Per­for­mance but lost out to Bruce Springsteen’s “Radio Nowhere.” The record peaked at No. 5 on the Bill­board 200 album chart by sell­ing 56,000 copies in its first week on the mar­ket. Freedom’s Road included “Jim Crow”, a duet with Joan Baez.

- His 18th album of orig­i­nal mate­r­ial, Life, Death, Love and Free­dom, was released on July 15, 2008, and pro­duced by T Bone Bur­nett. In an inter­view with the Bloom­ing­ton Herald-Times in March 2008, Mel­len­camp dubbed the album “The best record I’ve ever made.” He signed with Starbucks’ Hear Music label to dis­trib­ute the album and said, “they think it’s a fuck­ing mas­ter­piece.” It sold 56,000 copies in its first week on the market.

- In its list of the 50 best albums of 2008, Rolling Stone mag­a­zine named Life, Death, Love and Free­dom No. 5 over­all and also dubbed “Trou­bled Land” No. 48 among the 100 best sin­gles of the year.

- On Sep­tem­ber 3, 2008, Mel­len­camp made avail­able on his web­site a home-video record­ing of his solo acoustic cover of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin’” as a sign that the 2008 Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion is going to bring about change in America.

- Mel­len­camp filmed a con­cert at the Crump The­atre in Colum­bus, Indi­ana on Sep­tem­ber 23, 2008 for a new A&E Biog­ra­phy series called “Home­ward Bound”. The show, which fea­tures per­form­ers return­ing to small venues they per­formed at dur­ing the early stages of their careers.

- Mel­len­camp released an eight-track live album called Life, Death, Live and Free­dom on June 23, 2009. This is the first offi­cial live album of Mellencamp’s career.

- In 2009, Mel­len­camp recorded a new album, No Bet­ter Than This, and was again pro­duced by T Bone Bur­nett. The tracks for the album were recorded at his­toric loca­tions, such as the First African Bap­tist Church in Savan­nah, Geor­gia as well as at the Sun Stu­dio in Mem­phis and the Sher­a­ton Gunter Hotel in San Anto­nio, where blues pio­neer Robert John­son recorded “Sweet Home Chicago” and “Cross­road Blues”. Mel­len­camp recorded the album using a 1955 Ampex portable record­ing machine and only one micro­phone, requir­ing all the musi­cians to gather together around the mic. The album was recorded in mono. Mel­len­camp wrote over 30 songs for the record (only 13 made the final cut), and he wrote one song specif­i­cally for Room 414 at the Gun­ther Hotel. “It’s called ‘Right Behind Me’. I wrote it just for this room,” Mel­len­camp told the San Anto­nio Express-News. No Bet­ter Than This is sched­uled to be released on August 17, 2010.

– Mel­len­camp has been work­ing on a musi­cal with hor­ror author Stephen King, enti­tled Ghost Broth­ers of Dark­land County since 2000. Liv Ull­mann said in a March 2010 radio inter­view that she will direct. Accord­ing to Mellencamp’s web­site, pro­duc­tion of the Ghost Broth­ers of Dark­land County CD/book pack­age began on June 15, 2009, when Bur­nett began lay­ing down tracks in Los Ange­les for the 18 new songs Mel­len­camp has writ­ten for the musi­cal. The record­ing will be avail­able in a book pack­age con­tain­ing the full text, two discs fea­tur­ing the entire pro­duc­tion of the spo­ken word script and songs per­formed by the cast, and a third CD of the songs only. There’s no orches­tra, just two twangy acoustic gui­tars, an accor­dion, and a fiddle.

- Mel­len­camp has made sev­eral for­ays into act­ing over the years, appear­ing in four films: Falling from Grace (which he also directed) (1992), Madi­son (2001, nar­ra­tion only), After Image (2001), and Lone Star State of Mind (2002). Roger Ebert called Falling from Grace “one of the best films of the year” in 1992.

- Mel­len­camp lives in Bloom­ing­ton, Indi­ana, and has been mar­ried to for­mer super­model Elaine Irwin Mel­len­camp since Sep­tem­ber 5, 1992. Mel­len­camp has five chil­dren from his three marriages.

- In a 1987 TV inter­view, Mel­len­camp said: “The biggest joke for me was when they cleaned the Statue of Lib­erty off and all these peo­ple who were get­ting screwed by these cor­po­ra­tions were going, ‘yeah, man. Great.’ I was embar­rassed by all that. I wouldn’t watch that, I wouldn’t go to it, I’d be no party to that kind of stuff. That’s how manip­u­lated we are.…I can live with­out the land­mark. Get the starv­ing peo­ple and the men­tally ill peo­ple who need help off the streets of New York. You wanna do some­thing with that money? Get those peo­ple off the streets. Don’t spend mil­lions of dol­lars to clean the Statue of Lib­erty. Who gives a shit? I don’t care if it falls down. It don’t mean any­thing to me. What means some­thing to me is try­ing to help these people.”

- He has also been bestowed with the Nordoff-Robbins Sil­ver Clef Spe­cial Music Indus­try Human­i­tar­ian Award (1991), the Bill­board Cen­tury Award (2001), the Woody Guthrie Award (2003), and the ASCAP Foun­da­tion Cham­pion Award (2007). On Octo­ber 6, 2008, Mel­len­camp won the pres­ti­gious Clas­sic Song­writer Award at the 2008 Q Awards in Lon­don, Eng­land. Mel­len­camp was nom­i­nated for induc­tion into the Song­writ­ers Hall of Fame in 2009 but was not elected. He’s been nom­i­nated again for the Class of 2010.

- Mellencamp’s biggest honor came when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Class of 2008. The induc­tion cer­e­mony took place in New York City on March 10, 2008, and Mel­len­camp was inducted by good friend Billy Joel, who asked Mel­len­camp to induct him into the Rock Hall back in 1999 (Mel­len­camp had to opt out because of another com­mit­ment, so Ray Charles inducted Joel). Dur­ing his induc­tion speech for Mel­len­camp, Joel said:

MY JOHNNY COUGAR TOP 10

I love Johnny Cougar so much, so I thought I’d lay out a Top 10 list for y’all. It’s fun for me to do too because I get to lis­ten to his music all day to write this blog! What a great day I’m hav­ing! I couldn’t put this list in any sort of order of great­ness, so it’s just my 10 favorite, no order, with videos!:

1) “Wild Night”…this is for sure my #1 all-time favorite JC song. I love it above all oth­ers. It’s actu­ally one of my favorite songs of all time, if you must know. I, of course, included it’s video below, rather than in the list, since the post is about this song and all. Below, I also included a video of the orig­i­nal ver­sion of the song by Van Mor­ri­son, since it was his in the first place. The JC video is so amaz­ing to watch because (a) Me’shell is so supremely rock­ing that bass gui­tar, and it makes me want to learn bass just so I can have as much fun as she looks like she’s hav­ing, and (b) do you see how much fun they’re both hav­ing? This song rocks.

2) “I Need A Lover”: Def­i­nitely my #2 Mel­len­camp song, I sing this song all the time…“Some girl that knows the mean­ing of, uh, hey, hit the highway!”:

3) “I’m Not Run­ning Anymore”:

4) “Small Town”:

5) “Cherry Bomb” :

6) “Hurt So Good”:

7) “What If I Came Knock­ing”: What the hell is this video?:

8) “Paper In Fire”:

9) “Check It Out”:

10) “Lonely Ol’ Night”:

Run­ners up:
“Pink Houses“
“Crum­blin’ Down“
“Just Another Day“
“Author­ity Song“
and I guess “Jack & Diane” but I’ve def­i­nitely tired of that song and am okay with never hear­ing it again (too much other great Mel­len­camp, why would I go to that?).

VIDEO OF THE DAY

Here’s the cover I am blog­ging about today by JC & MN:

And here’s the orig­i­nal track by Van Mor­ri­son: