Copy, Right?: The day is beautiful and so are you.

Friday, August 19, 2005

The day is beautiful and so are you.

Recently the Arcade Fire (a band I otherwise quite enjoy) mutilated my favorite Magnetic Fields song, "Born on a Train," and lots of other blogs posted it and called it good. It freaked me out. They didn't even start at the beginning! And it sounded like a bad Tom Waits impression. Shudder. I'm not saying all of the covers here are great, by any means, but none of them (not even the ones by Peter Gabriel or Chrash!) make me as angry as the Arcade Fire cover, which, I'm sorry, is so bad I'm not even going to post for you to hear how bad it is.

Aaaanyhooo, Stephin Merritt writes wonderfully deadpan songs about the true nature of human emotions and I love him. Though not quite as much as some.

!!! "Take Ecstasy With Me" (Magnetic Fields cover)
Note the proper spelling of ecstasy. Ecstacy is one of my biggest pet peeves.

Divine Comedy "With Whom to Dance" (Magnetic Fields cover)
The morose and acerbic covering the morose and acerbic always works for me.

Kelly Hogan "Papa Was a Rodeo" (Magnetic Fields cover)
Viva la Chicago-based alt-country!

Evelyn "Smoke and Mirrors" (Magnetic Fields cover)
Does anyone know anything about Evelyn? This was on a Teenbeet Records sampler from 1998, but the liner notes don't tell me much. Whatever. It's okay.

Superchunk "100,000 Fireflies" (Magnetic Fields cover)
I like Superchunk.

Peter Gabriel "Book of Love" (Magnetic Fields cover)
I've said it before, but I hate Peter Gabriel. Yes, even "In Your Eyes." Hate him. This is from the soundtrack of some movie that totally sucked.

Kings of Convenience "The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side" (Magnetic Fields cover)

Chrash "I Don't Want to Get Over You" (Magnetic Fields cover)
Whoa. I don't know what's worse, their cover or the "astute" diatribe that precedes it.

Mary Lou Lord "I Don't Want to Get Over You" (Magnetic Fields cover)
Here's a more palatable version.

Edit: An anonyomus poster just reminded me of a link I totally meant to add to this post but forgot because work got busy. You can find a handful of Mag Fields covers at It's Meaningless.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: Ben Gibbard's band All Time Quarterback covered "Why I Cry", which is my most loved Magnetic Fields song. Unfortunately he made it over happy and used a toy piano. some may like it, but I am not one of them.; March 18, 2007 9:33 PM

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Disclaimers/Reminders:

1. MP3s on this blog are available for a short time and are here for sampling purposes only. My only goal is to share my love/hate relationship with cover songs and to turn readers on to artists of whom they might not have otherwise been aware. If you are the creator or copyright owner of a song or anything else that might be posted here, please CONTACT ME by sending an e-mail (see above) if you wish to have it removed.

2. PLEASE don't direct link to any individual tracks. If you like an artist you hear here (either the original artist or the one performing the cover), you should definitely do your best to take the knowledge you gain here and go out and BUY THEIR ALBUMS.

3. I very rarely, if ever, repost songs. If you missed something, I apologize, but I get lots of e-mails from people asking me to repost things. If I actually reposted all the tracks people wanted me to, I'd never get a chance to post anything new. That said, if there is A TRACK OR TWO you feel you desperately need, feel free to drop me a line at liza.copyright @ gmail.com (sans spaces) and I'll do my best to get it to you. But please keep in mind that it might not be instantaneous, as I get approximately 600 e-mails a week.

4. If you read my updates via an RSS feed aggregator or via a LiveJournal feed, there will be times when old posts will suddenly appear with non-working links, which happens as a result of my going back to an older entry to remove the links or to update or edit the post in any way. Again, I apologize if you missed these posts initially, but I cannot repost the songs. Lately I've been keeping songs up for two weeks to a month and I feel that should be plenty of time for you to get the songs. If you don't read your feeds often and regularly miss tracks, I suggest you bookmark the site and check it once a week or so.

5. I do not generally take requests nor do I guarantee that songs submitted to me will appear here. You're welcome to send me a track or two, but it might not hit the blog. Also, I get LOTS of e-mail so submissions sent via sites like YouSendIt or Dropload.com often expire by the time I get to them. Please attach your files to the actual e-mail if you want to ensure I get it. Similarly, I'd really appreciate it if those of you sending MP3s to my inbox would check to see whether or not I've already posted the tracks first. There is a search bar in the upper left corner of the site that should assist you in said endeavor. Granted, chances are good that even if I've not posted it, I already have it, but at least there's a chance I don't.

6. If you're looking for a few suggestions on beginning your own cover hunts, here is an old entry that might prove helpful.

7. If you are a member or agent of a band, please keep in mind that I ONLY POST COVER SONGS. Similarly, I do not "review" albums. I will most likely delete and ignore any communication from you that shows you do not understand this.

Thanks for listening,

Liza.

Copy, Right?

Friday, August 19, 2005

The day is beautiful and so are you.

1 comment:

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