Oh, and hello to any new visitors who've found this as a result of the piece on covers in the new issue of Oxford American. (And thanks to Boyhowdy who alerted me to its existence.) I hope you have a good time here.
And while I'm in a rare typing mood, I feel as if I need to give a few disclaimers/reminders:
1. 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 bigfatprettyface AT yahoo DOT com 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.
2. 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. 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.
3. 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.
Okay, now that that's out of the way, here are today's tracks:
Trip-hoppy, electronic and Italian. Love it.
About a month or two ago, I became completely obsessed with Head, the Monkees' 1968 weirdo, psychedelic art flick. I'd seen it more than a decade ago for the first time, but I had a difficult time not hating it. I blame the lack of, um, proper intoxicants for that. Now I revel in it. I love the whole self-conscious "we hate being pre-fab" and "Big Brother is watching us" angles, especially when you consider the fact that no one would have even given a crap about a Monkees movie if it weren't for the pre-fab image. I also find myself excited imagining the certain awkwardness of, say, a 12-year-old kid who loved the benign TV show being accompanied by his or her parents to this inexplicably G-rated movie full of free-love and free-mind activities. That the movie begins with this out-of-the-ordinary (for the Monkees, anyhow) psychedelic Goffin/King-penned opus only adds to the delicious irony of everything: If you don't want us to trap you in a box and consider you only a manufactured product, why not write all of your songs, you know? (Note: The Peter Tork-written tracks on the soundtrack rule. Try not to hold the 7th Heaven episodes he's been in against him.) Aaaaaanyhow, manufactured or not, this song is bad-ass and has been covered by tons of great artists. This is only one example.
I believe I was just complaining to a friend the other day that I'm sick of cover acts covering the same songs and referenced this as one that's covered far too frequently. I also complained about country & western-flavored cover acts. But when I heard this, I really liked it. Basically, you can't trust anything I say. Ever. Although believe me when I say that my favorite cover of this song is still Hi-Posi's. And what the hell? I don't think I had nearly one-fifth of the readers I have now back when I originally posted it, so here's that version too. As stated above, I almost never repost things I've already posted, so it's your lucky day—especially if weird and wonderful Japanese covers are your bag.
This is another song of which I never wanted to hear another version, yet I'm glad I did.
I love this. It's got the pop earmarks of all Polyphonic Spree songs, yet somehow retains the darkness of the original as well. Perfect for a song about bipolarism, really.
There truly is a dearth of worthwhile Benatar covers. Thank you, Rasputina, for acknowledging her greatness with your quirky chamber pop.
I had totally forgotten about this cover until the other night when I drunkenly sang this song at karaoke with my friend Ray. I'm always a fan of bands covering songs you're surprised to find out they even know or like.
Caro Italy: Più, per favore. Mi piace.
Ah, glithcy techno... why not?
It's not really much of a stretch for a dream-pop band to cover JAMC, but it's a pretty little cover nonetheless. Recommended if you're still into Mazzy Star or Mojave 3, which I can't particularly say I am.
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