Great rock and roll is either really tight or really loose. This song by The Only Ones almost doesn't happen. It barely comes together in the beginning; guitars swirl, beat patterns aren't synching up and then suddenly it drops into step. It whines and blasts along for a couple of minutes then it falls right back apart again. I love that. It's like most of the best Pavement songs. Like watching footage of a controlled building implosion run backwards. Dust and utter chaos rush backwards, de-swirl if that's a word, and then the last little push back up and viola! an intact building again. Song starts all over the place and then, almost by magic, a coherent song appears out of the miasma.
Another Girl, Another Planet probably never had that barely controlled tension again. It was the luck of the session. The stars just aligned. Like Maggie May. The hit version is genius, and it's all in the performance and that particular recording of it. Listen to a live version and it's a plodding drunken footballer's singalong. Hear it at karaoke (god forbid) and it's absolutely unbearable. But that version is perfect. Same with Todd Rundgren's I Saw the Light. The exact right bounce, a perfectly struck balance of tension. But coverbands beware! Try to cover it and it's a galumphing slagfest. You'll get none of that perfect framework for confessions of deep nighttime longing and reverie. That's only in the studio version. I saw Todd 6 or 7 times and I never heard him play it. Smart producer like him, he knew there was no way he could recreate that. Same with the Only Ones and Another Girl Another Planet.
Plus, you just have to love a song about space chicks.
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