MITCH RYDER

Much to my (and everybody else's) surprise, the Detroit Tigers awoke from their late-season slumber and kicked the forever-overrated Yankees to the curb. Thus, I wanted to start this week with some kind of Detroit-themed something-or-other.

The exact angle and vector of that something-or-other became clear while visiting my brother on Sunday (and watching the forever-inept Detroit Lions find still more creative ways to give a game away). Somehow or another, I got to thinking about Motor City blue-eyed soulman/rocker Mitch Ryder, which led me to ask my sibling if he'd ever heard Mitch's cover of the Prince song "When You Were Mine." Turns out, he hadn't.

In truth, it had been years since I'd heard it myself. For a time after its release in 1983 (on the John Cougar Mellencamp-produced Never Kick a Sleeping Dog), it received a fair amount of airplay on Detroit radio. But, since then: nothing.

Of course, that didn't stop a slew of other artists from covering the catchy little bastard. Everybody from Tegan and Sara, Crooked Fingers, Casiotone for the Playfully Alone, and Cyndi Lauper took a crack at it. My Old Kentucky Blog had the skinny on all this back in May. But, alas: no Mitch.

So, my enterprising brother took it upon himself to whip up a bit of search-engine sorcery, and, lo and behold, I had the Mitch Ryder version of "When You Were Mine" in a matter of minutes. I was quite the happy man. A tiny hole in my music-seeking soul had been closed.

Now, just to complete this story: I decided to run a quick hit on the Hype Machine to see what other Mitch Ryder tunes might be circling around the cybersphere. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that a French blog going by the name of Un Violon, Un Jambon ("A Violin, A Ham Bone"?) had posted "When You Were Mine," by Mitch Ryder, THAT VERY DAY. I mean, pardon my French, but that's just effin' spooky.

Nevertheless, here's my version, which is actually Mitch Ryder's version, which comes to you by way of my brother...

[MP3] "When You Were Mine"