Sail away with me to another world.

I don't mean to get too YouTube-heavy on you here, but my idol Leslie Hall of Leslie and the Ly's (aka The Keeper of Thyn Gems) has finally performed a cover. In a Nashville mall's video karaoke booth. With a guy who is a regular there. Heaven.



P.S. Leslie and the Ly's will be playing at the Abbey Pub on Friday Sept. 29 as part of Estrojam this year with Fannypack and others. My ticket will be waiting for me at Will Call. Will yours?

P.P.S. If you are intrigued by Leslie and a fan of the Internet (and earworming jams about the Internet), do yourself a favor and check out the videos at We Are the Web. Fun work for a great cause.

I'll shoot, you run.

Jesus H! It's taken about 40 hours for me to make this post now that Blogger Beta is making things CRAZY!!!

Orchestre National de Jazz "Black Dog" (Led Zeppelin cover)
From their all-Zeppelin tribute Close to Heaven.

The String Quartet Tribute "A Favor House Atlantic" (Coheed and Cambria cover)
Before you die, there will be a String Quartet Tribute to you.

Siouxsie and the Banshees "You're Lost Little Girl" (The Doors cover)
Kicking it old-school with a classic cover, baby.

The Starting Line "Big Time Sensuality" (Bjork cover)

Cartel "Wonderwall" (Oasis cover)
These are from Punk Goes '90s. Man, if there's an era of music I despise, it's that of the early/mid '90s. But Bjork and Oasis, I liked. And yet I'm posting these covers anyhow. If these bands are "punk," I'll eat my copy of The Ramones. Although a group of preppy-looking emo boys calling themselves Cartel does crack me up.

Sara Noxx "Rent" (Pet Shop Boys cover)

Junobot "What Have I Done to Deserve This" (Pet Shop Boys cover)
These two are from the Pet Shop Boys tribute Always On Our Minds that came out a few months ago. It's hit or miss, as most tributes are, but the Sara Noxx track in particular is strangely compelling to me for some reason.

Mephisto Waltz "Iceblink Luck" (Cocteau Twins cover)
From Dark Treasures: A Gothic Tribute to the Cocteau Twins. Heh. Cleopatra.

Biffy Clyro "Buddy Holly" (Weezer cover)
From the all-cover CD that came with Kerrang!'s 25th Anniversary issue in June.

Jarvis Cocker and Kid Loco "I Just Came to Tell You That I'm Going (Je suis venu que te dire que je m'en vais)" (Serge Gainsbourg cover)
From this year's Monsieur Gainsbourg. Um, Jarvis? I love your scraggly hair (see video below) and I want to make out with you!

Ban you so hard.

I've long thought of having some sort of cover contest a la Songfight / Coverfight where readers could submit a cover of my choosing and I'd pick the best one. Or maybe I'd have readers vote via some kind of poll, but that seems like a lot of work I don't want to do. Heh. I wouldn't have much to offer in the way of prizes anyhow, so I'm okay with surrendering the dream.

But if I were going to host a cover contest, I think I've found the first contender. I'd want English (or Spanish, French or Italian) versions of the following insane song, a parody version of which is inexplicably No. 2 in Netherlands right now (that parody version appears to be about a boat, not a bot, but the bot version rules harder—I'm usure which came first*):



Boat or bot, It's obvious anything can hit the charts in Europe.

No need to submit entries, but you totally know you want to!

*Oh yeah, when in doubt, Wiki!

Do what I please, gonna spread the disease because I wanna.

Cobra Verde "Temptation" (New Order cover)
I forgot to include this in the New Order post a few weeks back, and I like it a lot. It's my favorite on Cobra Verde's all-cover album, Copycat Killers.

Elakelaiset "Humppaa Suomesta (Living in America)" (The Sounds cover in Finnish)
The Finnish humppsters have a new(ish) album of bizarre oompa covers out since the last time I posted anything from/about them. It still seems as if the lyrics of their versions have little, if anything, to do with the lyrics of the originals, but I still don't know Finnish, so I can't be sure. The Sounds's "Living in America" was one of my favorite songs a few years ago, so that's the track from Humppasirkus I chose to share here.

Gavin Castleton "I Still Believe" (Tim Capello cover)*
I think a reader sent this track to me. When I saw the title, I thought it might be a Brenda K. Starr cover. It took me about a minute into the track to figure out where I recognized this song from. It was so familiar, I knew all the words, I knew when to expect the sax solo, but couldn't for the life of me figure out how I could so intimately know a song and not instantly remember the name the original artist. It makes sense though. When a song is from a soundtrack you've listened to a million times in the '80s that was sandwiched between songs by INXS and Echo and the Bunnymen and other artists you'd actually heard of at the time, your ought-era recall will understandably be off. Ahhh, The Lost Boys soundtrack, how could I have forsaken thee? God, I LOVE LOVE LOVE the idea obscure soundtrack-related covers. Yay, Gavin!

*Edit: Apparently this is originally by The Call and Tim Capello covered it, which makes sense since The Lost Boys soundtrack was chock-full of covers. I plead ignorance, as I was never a fan of the Call and Capello's was the first version I heard and the version I believe Castleton covered.

The Flu "I Hate to Say I Told You So" (The Hives cover)
I swear, if Swedes are covering anything, I'm so there!

Ginger Sling "Can't Stop the World" (The Go-Go's cover)
As a pre-teen/teenager, I listened to Beauty and the Beat more than any other album, I think. It always kind of bothered me that the Go-Go's had such a poppy squeaky-clean image in the mainstream but really wrote such sad, dark songs that weren't making the charts. Granted, those were poppy too, but they were no "We got the Beat." This is one of the Go-Go's's (?) more optimistic tunes covered by some innocuous pop chickadee I've never heard of who really didn't change it up all that much. I still like to see it being covered though. (It's on the Sky High soundtrack, which is full of far worse covers than this, to be sure.)

M.I.A. "Every Day I Love you Less and Less" (The Kaiser Chiefs cover)
From a live performance on a radio show. Shit. Remember all the M.I.A. buzz in the blogosphere back in the day? I feel it was warranted, but I almost forgot all about it.

The Riffs "I'm Waiting for the Man" (Velvet Underground/Lou Reed cover)
Portland, OR, punks whose "riffs" actually remind me more of glam-metal like Poison's than that of anything punk, but whatever. I've certainly heard worse.

Devendra Banhart and Jana Hall "Little Monkey/Step in the Name of Love" (Devendra Banhart original/R. Kelly cover)
The cover part of this track doesn't start until about 3 minutes or so in, but I'm liking it. Because it's Devendra and it's a cover of R. Kelly that isn't "I Believe I Can Fly" or "Ignition." I still wish I could go back in time and relive and better document the R. Kelly/Jay-Z show I went to in 2004. (The first day of their later-defunct 2004 tour, I believe.) That was some crazy shit.

Absolute Body Control "Baby's on Fire" (Brian Eno cover)
Good or bad, this sounds to me what I imagine my friends and I hanging out, messing around with a 4-track and deciding to cover this song would sound like. Hmmm. Maybe I should get on that project, come to think of it.

Brass Band Willebroek "It's My Life" (Bon Jovi cover)
There's a reason this exists. I'm just not certain I've discovered it yet.

Stop whispering, start crunking.

Before a million people comment telling me about it, I should probably go ahead and do what everybody's doing and link you to DJ Gyngyvytus's Skeet Spirit: A Crunk Tribute to Radiohead. [Note: The downloads are .rar files and you will need a program like WinRAR to open it. If you don't have WinRAR, you can get it at www.download.com.]

WHAT?!?!?!?!

All of our time spent keeps us alive.

It doesn't happen very often, but I do get in a hard-rock/metal mood from time to time. As someone who collects covers, this is a good mood to be in, as the ratio of metal covers to non-metal covers is approximately 15:2.

There are details about my past that newer friends are often shocked to learn about me. One of them is my history as a hard-rock/glam-metal fan, which at times overlapped with my new-wave/alternative/indie periods. In high school/college, I saw a slew of concerts performed by the likes of Bon Jovi (four or five times), Poison, Motley Crue, Guns N' Roses. Not to mention seeing Skid Row at least three times opening for said acts. I mean, just look at me my junior year:





My hair could have totally beaten up your hair.

Thy Majestie "In God We Trust" (Stryper cover)
As I'm certain you all well know, sometimes we lovers of irony get so embroiled in making fun of something that before we know it, we actually do wind up kind of loving that which we mock. Such is the history of my relationship with Stryper. Obviously, my hair-band-loving friends and I were quick to laugh at the idea of Christian metal, but dammit if those songs weren't catchy. And I LOVE this cover version. It's a sickness, I know.

Big Country "Paranoid" (Black Sabbath cover)
At first I thought I wasn't going to include this because I was more looking for metal acts covering non-metal songs, but this is surprisingly rocking for Big Country.

Jaded Heart "Larger Than Life" (Backstreet Boys cover)

Sonata Arctica "The Wind Beneath My Wings (comp. Larry Henley/Jeff Silbar, most popularly performed by Bette Midler)

Sun'N'Steel "I'm So Excited" (Pointer Sisters cover)

Strawberry Slaughterhouse "Kids in America" (Kim Wilde cover)

Superbeing "Hungry Like the Wolf" (Duran Duran cover)

Renato Zero "Sgualdrina (Dreamer)" (Supertramp cover in Italian)

No, I've never met anyone quite like you before.

Let's all hope my bandwidth hold up so you can grab today's covers!

New Order covers:

The Arcade Fire "Age of Consent"

Devine & Statton "Bizarre Love Triangle"

Even As We Speak "Bizarre Love Triangle"

Mathilde Santing "Blue Monday"

Xiu Xiu "Ceremony"

Seabound "Confusion"

Bis "Hurt"

Hungry Lucy "Love Vigilantes"

Color Filter "Regret"

Ming "Subculture"

Moby "Temptation"

Flunk "True Faith"

The String Quartet Tribute "True Faith"

(And this was after I narrowed it down to 13!)