Bo Diddley Beat

I'm making a collection of songs inspired by the Bo Diddley beat, which is arguably one of the most infectious and well-known rhythms in rock music.

Here's what I've compilled so far:

Elvis Presley - "His Latest Flame"
Bruce Springsteen - "She's The One"
U2 - "Desire"
Stevie Ray Vaughan - "Willie the Wimp"
The Smiths - "How Soon Is Now?"
Roxette - "Harleys And Indians (Riders In The Sky)"
Dee Clark - "Hey Little Girl"
Johnny Otis - "Willie and the Hand Jive"
George Michael - "Faith"
Normaal - "Kearl van Stoahl"
Elton John - "Billy Bones And The White Bird"
The Strangeloves - "I Want Candy"
Ace Frehley - "New York Groove"
KT Tunstall - "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree"
Primal Scream - "Movin' on Up"
The Who - "Magic Bus"
David Bowie - "Panic in Detroit"
The Pretenders - "Cuban Slide"
The Police - "Deathwish"
Wayne Fontana & The Mindbenders - "The Game of Love"
The Supremes - "When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes"
Jefferson Airplane - "She Has Funny Cars"
The Beatles - "She's a Woman"
The White Stripes - "Screwdriver"
The Byrds - "Don't Doubt Yourself, Babe"
Tiny Letters - "Song For Jerome Green"
The Stooges - "1969"
Guns N' Roses - "Mr Brownstone"
Buddy Holly - "Not Fade Away"
Jimmy Ray - "Are you Jimmy Ray?"
Megapuss - "A gun on his hip and a rose on his chest"

Anyone know some more?

David Bowie - "Jean Genie"

JAMC - "Bo Diddley is Jesus"
Gun Club - "Walkin with the Beast"

David Bowie - "Jean Genie"

― snoball, miércoles 5 de noviembre de 2008 23:09 (10 minutes ago)

No... well, not quite. It does have an almost exact riffing as "Blockbuster" by The Sweet.

Here's Panic in Detroit by Bowie. This one is definitely influenced by the Bo Diddley beat:

And here's the original in case you've never heard it before.

Diceman by The Fall.

And lots of other Fall tracks that I can't quite remember at this moment.

Compiled this list the day he died, though I missed thousands, obviously (the one I noticed most recently was "Chip N Tony," off the new Alejandro Escovedo album):

http://blog.rhapsody.com/2008/06/bos-beat-goes-o.html

Ben Ratliff did a list for the NY Times here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/arts/03sound.html

About half the Gories catalogue, including some great cover versions i.e. "Hey Crawdaddy"

Sexton Ming - You Can't Polish A Turd

I started a thread called "Best Song with the Bo Diddley Beat (that wasn't by Bo Diddley)" last year, but I can't find it, so it must have been on the Sandbox.

Yeah, remember that one.

James Brown, "Get It Together"

Rolling Stones - "Mona"

(that's a cover tho)

"Sudden Organ" - Yo La Tengo. It was basically the reason I started that thread last year, so great.

Oh FUCK yeah. One of the greatest live music experiences I ever had was watching "Sudden Organ" rise out of the mists of the "Out the Window" breakdown/freakout.

Bohannon, "Disco Stomp"

Belle Epoque, "Miss Broadway"

Love, Bummer in the Summer

... part of

Mona by Craig Mclaughlan and Check-1-2.

The BDB is all over the new album by the Pretenders, Break Up the Concrete

Thomas Dolby, Europa and the Pirate Twins (also its not-so-geat "sequel" Eastern Bloc)

Yardbirds-Honey In Your Hips

New York Dolls, "Trash"
Them, "Mystic Eyes"
Pretty Things, "Rosalyn"
The Clash, "Rudie Can't Fail"
Elvis Costello, "Lover's Walk"

Bow Wow Wow/Strangeloves - "I Want Candy"

uh... i swear i ctrl-f'd

They all say that.

Rahid Taha - "Kelma"

Aw, can't see it.

I found it and that is the biggest sounding drum in the world.

The Cure - Close To Me

Yeah, "Faith" always seemed to me like what would have happened if some film producers played "Close to Me" for Kenny Loggins and asked him to replicate it.

Robert Wyatt -- "Heaps of Sheep"

Loads of QMS especially in their punkier '68 era.

Several bits of The Moodists one of my alltime favourite OZ bands.

Saw that somebody had mentioned Walkin with The beast by the Gun Club, though I think I may prefer the earlier Ward Dotson version.

Is Tombstone Blues a Bo beat?

wish I could find my Raven compi of the funk Bo era.

The Chocolate Watchband - Gone and Passes By

That Rachid Taha joint is immense. I'm suddenly fantasizing a club were beats are more organic like this one and less guetta.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbxdggU6daQ

Seeing as "I Want Candy" is on here, you can add Husker Du's "Hare Krsna."

Vivian Stanshall's "Labio-Dental Fricative" has a Bo Diddley vibe to it.

Around 1:16, one of the more fascinating interpretations of the Bo Diddley beat:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnO8sHmkbv4

deadly snakes, 'talkin' down' from their album i'm not your soldier anymore

The Exciters - Something to Shout About

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q6K9fbYP9M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dtWple55nQ

^ feels a bit like discovering paedo porn

HOLY fucking Fuck - that James Brown clip. whew.......

ornette coleman - "voice poetry"

Matias Aguayo - Bo Jack

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st9cbxY9HUA

that's fantastic.

not really hearing the bo diddley beat, but cool track

oh, and (self promotion alert) i've posted this elsewhere on ILM, but never here. this is me:

https://twitter.com/BoDiddleyBeat

not really hearing the bo diddley beat, but cool track

That's pure Bo Diddley. Jump to 1:30 or something and you can't miss it. And yeah, cool track.

the vocal version makes it a bit more obvious:

https://soundcloud.com/comeme/matias-aguayo-feat-ladybumbox-bo-jack-vocal-version

Another good minimalist take, Deadbeat - "Horns of Jericho"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqYbWk6rwxg

Ahh, I think I couldn't really make out the bass thump the first time, low volume on crap office speakers

Waylon Jennings - "Clyde"

One I noticed today:

Beck - Black Tambourine

Can, "I Want More"
Eno, "Blank Frank"

bowie 'sound + vision'
chic 'can't stand to love you'
cocteau twins 'squeeze-wax'
depeche mode 'flexible'

bobbie gentry 'reunion'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvhNC7pXiGI Rinder and Lewis cover of the Johnny Otis is pretty amazing.

Also found on a mix called Live Mixx made by Eye from Boredoms' (as DJ Chaos), in one of the best sequences there: https://www.discogs.com/release/2791156-DJ-Chaos-X-DJ-Chaos-X

I love that cover

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL7JSK0w-dc

Chip E – Time to jack (vocal mix)

the intro lines:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RtDKjCgHJU

the link of the rinder and lewis one is offline, here's a diff one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj1eZh0lhP0

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5ljjnCgoAWarfqLF6qAEne

let me know what's missing

(it's more or less chronological)

This is fun! Bucha post-new wave and songs I didn't really think of as fitting, like "Candy-O" and "i only said" indeed fit.

It has "I Want More" - but not by Can, instead it's a a song by Kaleo which sounds about as little like Bo Diddley as it's possible for a song to be.

Eno, "Blank Frank"

― Waterloo Subset (Tom D.), Thursday, 11 February 2021 18:38 (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is a fun list of songs, but sooo many of these songs are not the Bo Diddley Beat. The Doobie Brothers songs being some of the most egregious examples. Ya

the expanded bo/clave/hambone universe is the concept here I take it. Like, I've never really heard "How Soon is Now" as literally a Bo Diddly beat, but it's fun to put all this syncopation side-by-side.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUGi5z_a1tg

love that!