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.
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5 comments:
Love kylieneworder. I like the Cat Power one, too - in style, it's mighty similar to the version by Bjork and PJ Harvey. Which was also live at the Brits. Spooky.
I didn't know the story about Steve Wright, but I am in no sense surprised. For any of our non UK members, check this wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wright), to see how much of a towering anus the man is.
For worst cover, the Sugababes/ Girls Aloud is a good shout, not least becuse they are identical groups, so the whole concept of Walk this Way is kind of wasted on them. I was a pre teen Pet Shop Boys Fan (and?), so I found East 17's version of West End Girls pretty painful, too.
And, yeah, I deleted my previous comment 'cos it didn't make any sense. And now there is a lasting internet record of my cackhanded way with words.
Oh the long wait. Finally some liner notes!
1. High points for the concept. I have many times thought about similar ideas but never done anything about it. Kudos to the doctor.
2. The Ester Phillips version of Home Is Where The Hatred Is is not the original. It was written and first recorded by Gil Scott-Heron (and that is the version sampled by Kanye West).
3. The official a-funk picks:
a) Best song: the Cat Power version of Satisfaction. Brilliant.
b) Best double act: Mr Brightside. A fine example of how a good song works in any genre.
4. My favourite cover of all time is probably Tom Waits's version of Somewhere (from West Side Story). Up there is also Crazy In Love as played by The Magic Numbers.
Anyway, it's great that we're on track again!
and another cd is worth the long wait (the post to edmonton is far too slow). kudos to dr. pepper for a great concept, and extra treats for the first "hidden" song!
i think covers only work well when the original is completely reinvented, and still with style. that's best done here with paul anka's version of mr.brightside and cat power's version of satisfaction, though i also really like the st.germain tune. i don't really know what to think about the cover version of panic. it's awfully odd to hear those girls singing "hang the dj", but i think i like it.
other covers i like are paul anka doing smells like teen spirit and johnny cash doing hurt, since they range so far from the originals and still sound great. but i think the best is pretty much anything by nouvelle vague - my vote is for their version of guns of brixton by the clash.
the worst cover ever, IMHO, is lenny kravitz doing american woman. first of all, the song is an anti-american anthem, and i'm not sure lenny realized that - he did have american women dancing around in the shocking video. second, it is basically a carbon copy of the original. third, he won grammy awards for this cover, which is completely ridonculous.
as for most outrageous "cover" - have you seen william shatner do "rocket man"? it's awesome and painful at the same time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVbv6r_tKnE
it's hard to believe that he went on to record such a cool album 25 years later.
yo James, excellent work. I love that Cat Power track, in fact I'd say that it's far better than the Stones though that might be taste aversion to a song that's way overplayed. I think I've listened to the last 2 tracks 3 times more than the rest of the CD, they're both incredible. I was just getting into Jeff Buckley's Grace album when he died. Would have been such a treat to see him live.
As for Lenny K, Pants I agree it's a shitty cover of a so-so song. But I did find this from Jimmy Kale the tune's co-author. Who knows if you can take him at his word...
"The popular misconception was that it was a chauvinistic tune, which was anything but the case. The fact was, we came from a very strait-laced, conservative, laid-back country, and all of a sudden, there we were in Chicago, Detroit, New York — all these horrendously large places with their big city problems. After that one particularly grinding tour, it was just a real treat to go home and see the girls we had grown up with. Also, the war was going on, and that was terribly unpopular. We didn't have a draft system in Canada, and we were grateful for that. A lot of people called in [sic] anti-American, but it wasn't really. We weren't anti-anything. John Lennon once said that the meanings of all songs come after they are recorded. Someone else has to interpret them."
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