BOTB: WITHOUT YOU

Started on the Far Away Series, and refined by the bloggers noted below, I've been somewhat of a renegade player in the Battle Of The Bands blogfest, which happens on the first and fifteenth of each month. These guys are the brains in this outfit:

Far Away Series

STMcC Presents BATTLE OF THE BANDS

Tossing It Out

Your Daily Dose


The way it works is, I put up two versions of a song and you tell me which one you like better.

Simple right? If you look at past comments, some people agonize over this decision, but I'll let you in on a little clue.....there's no wrong answer! Whatever you like IS the right answer!

Where I fail to follow rules is, there's supposed to be a post in five days or so where I tally up the votes and disclose my preference.

Well usually I disclose my preference in the comments, I assume anyone who can get to this site can also count, and I'm generally not motivated enough to do that second post. Plus, I stink at following rules!

For this one, I tried to go back through everyone's prior posts to see if it had been used before. 

Problem is, there is no way to easily search blogs (that I know of), and after dealing with getting past 30 A to Z posts for two bloggers, and opening every post to see what song was used, I said the heck with it. If it's a repeat, everyone knows how they'll vote. 

That effort led me to rethink my naming convention for these posts-usually I try for a clever name, now I will use the title of the song. I even went back and re-titled past BOTB posts just in case any of the other participants ever have the same issue.

But I digress-you are not reading to learn of my obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

Back to the tunes.

"Without You" was written by Pete Ham and Tom Evans, and first appeared on Badfinger's No Dice album (closes side one for you vinyl hounds).

Both Ham and Evans felt the song had little potential, but it has been covered more than 180 times, was a number one hit for Harry Nilson and a number three for Mariah Carey.

Sadly, both Ham and Evans took their own lives during the decade following their release of the song, and never saw how enduring a hit it became, once being called "the killer song of all time" by Paul McCartney (who may have written a song or two himself, I am told).

Interesting (for me) tidbit-the follow-up album was started with George Harrison as producer, but he pulled out due to the Bangladesh concerts (bloody quitter). 

A certain whiz-kid producer named Todd Rundgren came in to save the day and finished the album. The album spawned two hit singles ("Day After Day" reached number 4, and "Baby Blue" reached number 14), the former with a clear Harrison sound, the latter sounding more like Rundgren (but not as heavy handed as he often is). 

The album itself reached number 31 (back when that meant something) and featured uncredited performances by Harrison (slide guitar on "Day After Day") and Leon Russell.

But I digress even further...so without further ado...

First up is the original Badfinger version of the song....

And from a couple of decades later, here is Mariah's version.

This next version is not intended to be part of the battle-I simply remembered they'd done it and thought I'd give you a listen to the Heart version....although nothing stops you from voting for it if you are so inclined...

I mean, it's not like the US Government is spying on you and would know that you voted on an unauthorized BOTB cover....is it?

You know how this works...the suspense is killing me!