Cover Up! Liner Notes from Dr Pepper

Hey all - Dr Pepper's CD is off the press on its way to you. So here are some liner notes:

Cover Up!...Because imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Stop! You may prefer to listen to the CD first and then come back to the notes. The beauty of covers is sometimes in the surprise.

Every second song you hear these days is some cheap, thoughtless cover of some old classic or another. How many times do you turn on the radio and hear someone butchering one of your favourite tunes? Well, here's a selection from Dr Pepper which attempts to break that mould. Great songs with great covers. You may reserve the right to think that some of these have been "butchered", but I've gone for variety and style. Personally, Dr Pepper is very pleased. So here you go, some brief notes to the album:

1 & 2. Mr Brightside. A fine tune from an admittedly over-rated band. Given some big band re-working. Turn your cd up loud, for this makes a fine introduction to the cd. Mr Paul Anka debutises in the CD Club. He has a variety of covers, though, a whole album of this could be too much.

3 & 4. Panic. Some quality from the Smiths given a twist by the Puppini Sisters. One for the Londoners here. The Smiths wrote this song after a British DJ, Steve Wright (who is still going incidentally), played Wham's I'm Your Man just after breaking the news of the Chernobyl Disaster. The Smiths, apparently outraged by the DJ's vacuousness, wrote this tribute to him.

5 & 6. Home is where the hatred is. Some classic soul from Esther Phillips given a little Kanye magic.

7 & 8. Blue Monday. The ultimate mobile phone (that's cell to you over the pond) ringtone given some liberal interpretation by Kylie; performed live at the Brits a few years back.

9 & 10. Satisfaction. A Stones classic. I debated about putting this in. The song is so perfect that I risked running the offence of the purists. But we've heard a lot from Cat Power in the CD Club so far, and she doesn't escape Dr Pepper's attention either. This re-working of Satisfaction is so far removed that the word "cover" doesn't seem appropriate. Miss Power has made this version her own.

11. Sweet Home Country Grammar. Keen observers will note that this is not a cover, but what the kids call a "mash up". But it gets on the play list simply because you can't help but smile when you hear it. Who'd have thought that Nelly and Lynyrd Skynyrd would prove such brilliant bedfellows.

12 & 13. Harry's Philosophy. John Lee Hooker was a genius. Some pure blues brings the tempo down a bit here. St Germain give it some amazing styling; listen carefully, the transition between songs is virtually seamless.

14 & 15. Feeling Good. Turn it up loud again. A Nina Simone classic given a heavy, rock touch by the gods who are Muse.

16 & 17. The Way Young Lovers Do. This is a treat for everyone. I originally heard the Jeff Buckley cover before the Van Morrison original and while the latter is good, the cover is mind-blowing. Recorded live at Sin-E, a New York coffee house, in 1993, this shows Buckley's extreme vocal talent brilliantly. This has since become one of my favourite tunes of all time, though trying to sing along does have the unwelcome side-effect of attracting stray dogs.

So there it is. Covers. No doubt there's some you think should have been included. Which starts a debate. What are your favourite covers? What are the worst covers out there? Girls Aloud bastardisation of Aerosmith's Walk This Way comes pretty close for me.

Where the notes at?

So I now have 3 more CDs since the last post. Cool! Do DJs Wordplay and Dr Pepper have anything to tell us about them?

From the Depths of the VocabuLair

Fellow 'Js,

Does waiting for DJ "Wordplay"'s mail-out have you wondering whether you're showing signs of Lexical Lethargy?

Is your vocabulary very barely there?

Need a musical bon mot to add to your spin cycle?

Check out this article on "the mondegreen", the word coined (in 1954!) to refer to those misheard, misconstrued and misinterpreted chunks o' song-lyric. We've all been there. These are those bits of chorus, verse and vocal riff that take on new phonic shapes, unintentional cadences and, ultimately, meanings of a unique sort -- often hilarious and surprisingly apt -- once warped due to multiple mis-listenings and convincing sing-a-longings....

Ok, survey says new vocab tends to stick more if you use it...
so... here goes...

Select phrases from Bruce Springsteen's "Blinded By The Light" have spawned a long list of mondegreens. Does "wrapped up like a douche" ring bells for anyone besides moi-self?

DJ Schwa welcomes real-life mondegreen examples from the HitParadeLinerNotes community -- post 'em here!

Whither September?

Where, oh where, is CD number three? September has come and gone.

DJs, please remember that you signed up to have a CD in the post by the 15th of each month. Dr Pepper, you're up for October. DJ Wordplay, we're still waiting for number three.