Song Of The Day 12/17/2014: John Holt & the Aggrovators - "You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine"

Song Of The Day Outtakes 2014: This was cut from the last Quarterly Covers Report, because over the summer and autumn I acquired (not necessarily purchased, though I wouldn't rule that out) a bunch of Trojan Box Sets and figure that some off-week next year (possibly two) I'll do a whole theme week of Trojan covers. (Mom: Trojan is a record label.) After having a year-on, year-off relationship with reggae that's veered between exhaustion and acceptance, I finally came to accept that I could, in fact, spend an entire afternoon listening to dub, rocksteady and ska from the '60s and early, pre-Marley-saturation '70s and be perfectly happy. Most of my friends either don't deal with or openly despise reggae, so it's usually when I'm home alone working on new drafts of the manifesto on an Underwood manual typewriter with a broken "t" key.

There are parameters to my reggae affections, though. Generally the moment you introduce synthesizers into the mix I'm out. Also the recording shouldn't be that clean. That's usually to suit my state of mind and my current hearing frequency range, which, well, ain't what it used to be. I'm also fascinated with reggae cover songs, which were made by the hangar-full in the '60s and '70s for instant material. Like the Isley Brothers did, some reggae musicians took American and British songs of a certain, let's say, not-hip stripe and turned them into something other-worldly. I would never call Lou Rawls' "You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine" anything derogatory, but what John Holt & the Aggrovators do to it over the course of seven minutes is one of my favorite things of music and stuff.