We can be like they are. Come on, baby!

I've spent a good part of the weekend making my friend Jovan a multi-disc compilation of "the gayest stuff in Liza's PC"—see here and here—and I just realized I should post some stuff here too. My holiday weekend was the lamest ever. I'm sure there were barbecues and get-togethers and goings on, I just happened not to be invited to any. So, lest you believe me "cool," now you know the truth. I'm a sad, sad soul. And I will die alone. But Blue Oyster Cult knows how to console me and ready me for the end, yes? (Sorry for the lack of umlauts. I'm lazy about my HTML, yo.)

The Beautiful South "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" (Blue Oyster Cult cover)
Fey British jazz-pop death.

Clint Ruin and Lydia Lunch "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" (Blue Oyster Cult cover)
Punk-staple death.

Apollo 440 "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" (Blue Oyster Cult cover)
Techno-pop death.

Unto Ashes "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" (Blue Oyster Cult cover)
Pretty, ethereal, folk-goth death.

H.I.M. "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" (Blue Oyster Cult cover)
Hard-rock glam-goth Finnish death.

Andy McCoy and Pelle Miljoona "Kuin Romeo Ja Julia [(Don't Fear) The Reaper]" (Blue Oyster Cult cover)
Mainstream Finnish death.

Goo Goo Dolls "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" (Blue Oyster Cult cover)
"Grunge" death. (Surprisingly slightly more punk-sounding than the Ruin/Lunch cover.)

Oh, and thanks again for all the Threadless love. By the way, they have a few brand-new geektastic designs up now, if you're interested. The $10 sale ends Sunday.

Other voices, other rooms.

The Live Journal Audiography community is having a covers theme right now. Head over there to find lots of people posting covers, some of which I've posted here previously and many I have not. Be warned, however, that most users in that community use You Send It to host their files, so the extraction can take a while.

Also, thanks to all of you who are still buying stuff at Threadless' $10 sale. My friends who will be getting free shirts as a result thank you.

The only thing I ever really wanted to say was wrong.

Scrawl "Public Image" (P.I.L. cover)
I used to really have a thing for Scrawl (and P.I.L., come to think of it) back in the day.

Killing Heidi "Tomorrow" (Silverchair cover)
Australian band I'd never heard of covers Australian band I wish I'd never heard of.

Tin Tin Out "Here's Where the Story Ends" (Sundays cover)
Not different enough from the original (or good enough to exist). But whatever.

Morgan Fisher as Hybrid Kids as British Standard Unit "D'Ya Think I'm Sexy" (Rod Stewart cover)
Former keyboardist for Mott the Hoople asks some friends to help him create wacky covers and makes up band names to go along with them because we needed a industro-synth version of this so desperately.

Stephan Eicher "Sweet Jane" (Velvet Underground cover)
Most covers of "Sweet Jane" are syrupy and not at all very different from the original—most of them.

That's what I'm paid for.

Themes are great and all, but I prefer random smatterings. (That and I apparently feel like testing the true strength of my bandwidth.) So here goes ...

The Konki Duet "Il Fait Tout Gris (Fade to Grey)" (Visage cover)
Electronic J-Pop with 1960s-era honey-dripping French vocal stylings? Don't mind if I do.

Bruce Willis "Under the Boardwalk" (comp. Resnick/Young)
Help us.

Shivaree "The Fat Lady of Limbourg" (Brian Eno cover)
I've been aware of Shivaree for a while now, but man, did their presence on the Kill Bill Vol. 2 soundtrack give them a real boost or what? Good for them. Any band who covers this track is at least a little okay in my book.

Shiina Ringo "Yer Blues" (Beatles cover)
I want more hard-rocking, guttural Japanese goddesses to cover songs like this.

Manic Street Preachers "We Are All Bourgeois Now" (McCarthy cover)
The band McCarthy was but a blip on my radar during its heyday in the mid to late '80s, but I liked this cover enough to reinvestigate them. Jangly and fun. Check 'em out.

Emilie Simon "I Wanna be Your Dog" (Iggy Pop cover)
I know I've been Iggy-heavy lately, but I suspect you love it.

Ronnie Ong "Buttons and Bows" (comp. Ray Evans)
WFMU says the liner notes of this one refer to Ong as "Singapore's answer to Trini Lopez." Did any one ever ask? Whatever. I'm always down for 1960s Asian fuzz rock.

Sufjan Stevens "The One I Love" (REM cover)
Dear Sufjan: Marry me. Or just meet me for coffee. Or something.

June Tabor "Pharaoh" (Richard Thompson cover)
I'm shocked by how much I like this.

Visage "2525" (Zager and Evans cover)
Before "Fade to Grey" [see above] became their biggest hit, Visage released this cover as their first single. Oh, new wave! If only it would make a comeback...

Donovan's Brain "Smothered in Hugs" (Guided by Voices cover)
This is the worst GBV cover I've ever heard. And that's saying something.

Not lame.

Sheesh. Between Comcast (whose service has been iffy at best lately) and Blogger (whose service seems to have been in and out as well) and power outages during thunderstorms, it's taken me three or four days to make this damned post. If it weren't for the fact that I was able to spend the last few days watching Freaks and Geeks DVDs, I'd have gone postal.

Aaaaaanyhow ... local reader/photographer/general cute geeky type Peter sent me these tracks from a new Cars tribute—click here to hear sample MP3s, read band descriptions and buy the disc—he helped wrangle. Nice. Many of Not Lame's cover comps (as well as it's bubblegum, psych and powerpop comps) are pretty worthwhile. I've long been a fan of Right to Chews and the like. And the 1984 Cars cocnert was the first concert I actually chose to go to.

Damone "Just What I Needed" (The Cars cover)

The Argument "Hello Again" (The Cars cover)

Bleu "You Might Think" (The Cars cover)

Not Cars-related: Parents, kids at heart and furries might be interested in checking out the Wormseye video for the Kidz Bop version of "Since U Been Gone" found here. (Thanks, Don!)

Seis de Mayo*

The Beat Boys "O Meu Tamborim (My Green Tambourine)" (Lemon Pipers cover in Portuguese)
Love it! This is from one of the Brazilian Nuggets comps, which are, for the most part, completely awesome.

Capital Inicial "O Passageiro (The Passenger)" (Iggy Pop cover in Portuguese)
If this were an American band covering this in English, I'd probably find it predictably "alternative." But Brazilian rockers are cuter, so this is much better.

Roberta Miranda "A Mulher Em Mim " (Shania Twain cover in Portuguese)
Sigh. Nothing good can come from the mediocre covering the mediocre. Even in a foreign tongue.

Rebekah Del Rio "Llorando (Crying)" (Roy Orbison cover in Spanish, from Mulholland Drive)
Even though I've read what it was all supposed to mean, I still don't really get it.

Los Rockin' Rebeldes "Danny Boy" (Traditional song in Spanish—people are still debating its original composer)
This is freaky, It starts off with a Mexican Scott Walker/Rufus Wainwright vibe and jumps into garage psych. Que sorpresa!

Los Locos del Ritmo "Hey Joe" (Jimi Hendrix cover in Spanish)
This has more a sense of immediacy to me than the original. Or maybe I've just had too much tequila. (This track as well as the one above are from Mexican Rock and Roll Psych-Out, which rules.)

Paralisis Permanente "Quiero Ser Tu Perro (I Want to be Your Dog)" (Iggy Pop cover in Spanish)
Apparently Latin American and/or Spanish grupos love Iggy. And who can blame them?

Braun (and the Mob) "Da Flash an da Funk (Flashlight)" (Parliament cover in Spanish)
Yay for glitchy funk from Germany sung in Spanish!

Selena "Fotos Y Recuerdos (Back on the Chain Gang)" (Pretenders cover in Spanish)
Ah, fair Jennifer Lopez Selena! The Spanish lyrics of this song replace the "Chain Gang" idiom with "photos and memories," thus changing the entire tone of the song—a fate I'm sure has befallen many today's selections. Pretty annoying. Had I a chance to see her perform live before her terrible fate, I'd have spent the duration of this song staring at her midriff.

Los Abandoned "Como la Flor" (Selena cover)
Speaking of Selena, she is not above reproach! Chilean/Los Angelean post-punkers rework one of her big hits (the sole track today that was originally performed in Spanish) so you can mosh to it. Or do whatever dance people at Blink-182 concerts do.

*All songs featured today are not solely by Mexican performers, but there are a couple.

I miss you like crazy.

Hey, kids, sorry about the dearth of MP3s this week, I've been a bit queasy the past few days and my priorities shifted. I'll post some soon, I promise. To tide you over until then, you might want to scroll through some of the comments people have left in my past few entries. There you should find a handful of links to strange sites sharing covers.

I never said I wasn't gonna tell nobody.

Oh my god. New Copy, Right? reader Brad Walsh (thanks, ultragrrrl for linking me so he could find me!) has made me ecstatic by letting me in on his electro covers. That anyone would cover Stacey Q's "Two of Hearts" in the first place makes me giddy. That it's actually cool makes it even better. (Does anyone remember Stacey's stint as Cinnamon of The Facts of Life? That was the shit.) And though Crystal Waters' "100% Pure Love" is one of my most hated songs (still not as much as the homeless song), his cover is amusingly refreshing. Check out those covers as well as a few more on his music page. And, while you're there, why not try some remixes and originals too?

I'll probably post some new tracks by Tuesday night.