I was trying to think of my favorite cover song today. As I did, I noted a few categories of covers. One is the jokey cover that so transforms the song as to make it a novelty, like the Evan Dando cover of Skulls. This makes it fun to listen to a few times, but you will probably hit the skip button the next time it comes on your Ipod. Then there are the too faithful covers. I am thinking of the Echo and the Bunnymen cover of People Are Strange. If I don't listen closely, I sometimes think it is the Doors playing. What's the point of that? Or there are those punk tribute covers that are basically the same song played faster and less well. No thanks.
Good covers manage to reinvent the song without making it silly. Here are some good examples:
Metallica: Whiskey in the Jar So this one takes a slow tempo song and adds the Metalla-cruncha cruncha so well.
Ramones: I Can't Control Myself. Alright, so the Troggs version isn't that popular and this is late period Ramones anyway. Still, among the many many covers the Ramones made this one manages to do the first better by adding energy to the urgency.
Foo Fighters: Baker Street This one gets props for covering a song that people don't like to admit that they like. Be sure to watch the linked Gerry Rafferty video. The backlit sax will kill you. And the Foos give it a nice 70s rawk treatment.
Mention must be made of cover disasters as well.
I have always disliked the Indigo Girls cover of Uncle Johns Band. It's by no means my fave Dead song, but I hate that the IGs changed the lyric from "Goddam while I declare" to "Sister I declare." That's lame.
The award of dishonor has to go to Natalie Merchant. Her cover of Everyday is Like Sunday is dreadful, somehow deleting all the pathos of the Morrissey version. The man is so sad that he seeks nuclear oblivion but she sounds like she is singing about the laundry. Then we have her cover of Don't Go Back to Rockville. Not as bad, but it doesn't work without Stipe's exaggerated Southern accent.
Any other best and worst cover ideas?
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Trapped inside the song
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4 comments:
I'm with Steve on 1 and 3.
My $0.02:
1. Big Black (Cheap Trick) "He's a Whore"/Rapeman (ZZ Top) "Just Got Paid." I'm counting these as one entry because they're both Steve Albini giving an AOR standard The Treatment. Ba ba BA, ba ba ba-ba BAAAH .....
2. Ennio Morricone's "Ave Maria" from The Mission soundtrack. I guess this wouldn't really count as a cover song, but it's the most haunting version of this piece that I've heard. As those of you who have seen the movie will recall, the song - and the manner in which it is presented by Jeremy Irons' character - figure heavily in the film's examination of the tension between dogma and grace, i.e. that human beings and human institutions are weak vessels for the spiritual truths of the faiths that they profess. It seems to me that our notions of justice must always be tempered by mercy, whether the laws we seek to impose or enforce are temporal or spiritual. For a good look at the potential military, political and commercial consequences of religious bigotry, check out Lawrence James' description in "The Raj: Making and Unmaking of British India" of the 1857 sepoy mutiny, which was sparked to a large degree by British indifference (and in some cases, outright hostility) to the religious sensibilities of the largely Hindu and Muslim population under occupation. [insert comment re: GWOT here, substituting Halliburton for the British East India Co.].
3. I think I read somewhere that Hendrix's All Along the Watchtower is a cover of a Bob Dylan song. If so, then it belongs in Steve's "special place."
b
Along Steve's 'special category' lines I think Patti Smith's cover of "Because the Night" is definitive and...awesome. Then 10,000 Maniacs went on to cover THAT version quite lamely on MTV Unplugged. So uncessary.
I hold a grudge against that Sixpence None the Lamer band who covered "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House. Great song, crappy cover that still gets played a lot.
Steve-
Totally agree on the special category and the McGee note. It seems Kris Kristofferson is all about the assist. I am thinking of Willie Nelson's "Sunday Morning Coming down"
Brack:
Nice conflation of cover songs, spaghetti westerns, faith and imperialism! (And I second James, he's good)
CG-
Sixpence none the lamer, hee hee. Thanks for adding to the Natalie Merchant pile on.
I have another nomination for the "makes it their own" category. It is the Johnny Cash cover of Sting's "I Hung My Head." The Sting song is good, but Cash brings such gravitas that I feel like weeping whenever I hear it.
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