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One of the special guests on tonight's episode of The West Wing was the Foo Fighters, who were playing at Matt Santos' (Jimmy Smits) election night party. On the first shot of Dave Grohl, I noticed that there was a violinist playing behind him and quickly recognized her as none other than my voice-crush, Petra Haden. In the past year, I've found her playing with the Decemberists (I discovered her when she sang Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" with them in Boston), Beck, Bill Frisell, and past recordings of The Rentals, Weezer, and of course her crazy solo stuff. Some light searching tonight indicated that she also played on the Foo's latest acoustic album and is touring with them, hence her being on the set of the The West Wing. I really just love her voice, although I have some trouble convincing my fiancee that's all I love about her.
She has a couple of recordings avaiable to download and/or stream at her site. They're from her series of all-Petra a capella recordings of famous songs. She got a lot of attention last year when she covered the whole of The Who Sell Out using nothing but her voice. Now, you can check out her versions of "Thriller" and "God Only Knows," which are of course both excellent. I'll also put the song that made me fall for her, here. As good as the Decemberists are live on their own, they really need to let her sing more.
"Wuthering Heights" - The Decemberists featuring Petra Haden [removed]
Finally, back to The West Wing. R.I.P. Leo McGarry. Jon Spencer was one of the highlights of this show for 6 1/2 seasons. It's a bit spooky how much his real life echoed that of his character on the show. I think that the show's writers have done quite a good job with writing this tragedy into the show. For everyone who's asked whether his death screws up the continuity, NO, Leo was not in that opening scene of episode one of this season. It was my guess for months that he was current president getting out of the car three years in the future, but I guess we know that's not true now. Congratulations to Matt Santos on a well-won election.
Jerad posted this in Music | Comments (2)
JL,
June 23rd is Petra Haden/Kelly Joe Phelps/Bill Frissell at Symphony Space in NYC. We should go...
Chris
Posted by: chris at April 13, 2006 02:19 PM
Jared--I loved Petra's cover of Wuthering Heights, and that's not an easy song to cover (and harder even to get me to like a cover of it, since the original is so, well, specific, for a die hard Kate fan, at least...) Thanks for sharing it!
Posted by: Louisa at May 2, 2006 08:38 AM
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