Dear Stereogum:

Way to make me totally cum all over myself!

Was that too blue? Whatever. I reserve every right to fantasize that Ted Leo is seranading this to me while jumping up and down my bed in T-shirts, armbands and scarves from Hot Topic. Don't judge!

It was worth it just to learn some sleight of hand.

The Kidz Bop Kids "Float On" (Modest Mouse cover)
I'm usually not one for bandwagon jumping, but my pal Eric alerted me to the existence of this horrifying track—of which he learned via Ultragrrrl—and I just couldn't resist. I've long been holding off on posting a myriad of Kidz Bop massacres, but this track so perfectly encapsulates how wrong they are, I had to post it immediately.

People think I'm insane because I am frowning all the time.

These are songs I uploaded a while back for use on other sites I frequent, but I figure I might as well post them here since they're already uploaded and whatnot and I've been otherwise slacking the past few days.

Inspiral Carpets "Paranoid" (Black Sabbath cover)
I uploaded this the other day to prove to a LiveJournal friend that she is indeed wrong for loving Inspiral Carpets. Heh. Just kidding ... sort of. You should know that any criticizing I do comes from a place of love, really. Especially considering I still have (and like!!!) the "This Is How It Feels" Maxi CD.

Behl "Don't You Forget About Me" (Simple Minds cover)
Yeah, at first I didn't want to post this here because I've already posted so many John Hughes-related twee covers, but one more couldn't hurt I suppose.

I got something to put in you.

Peaches "Gay Bar" (Electric Six cover)
It's probably passé, but I loves me some Peaches.

Sebadoh "Cold as Ice" (Foreigner cover)
I'm very attracted to men who look like Lou Barlow, but not so much to Barlow himself. What's up with that?

Astrud Gilberto "Beginnings" (Chicago cover)
I'm currently experiencing a Chicago renaissance. I'm not sure why.

Cagney and Lacee (aka Dean Wareham and Claudia Silver) "Lovin' You" (Minnie Riperton cover)
Dean Wareham loves the covers, eh? Before he paired up with Jem (Britta Phillips) for 2003's L'Avventura, he worked with his then-wife to release an EP of somber little covers, Six Feet of Chain, under the Cagney and Lacee moniker. This track always made me happy.

Randy "Kiss Me Deadly" (Lita Ford cover)
This Swedish "punk" version is only worthwhile (in a humorous way) in the first few lines, in which you'll hear some iffy verb tenses and the word job pronounced as yob, which amuses me far more than it should.

Shaun Cassidy "Rebel Rebel" (David Bowie cover)
Oh, Shaun ... how I loved him back in the day. I had Shaun Cassidy pillow cases and a poster of him in that shiny white satin jacket with eyes that followed me wherever in my room I stood. To this day, I still dream of covering "That's Rock N Roll." But his Rundgren/Utopia-produced mostly-cover album that came out far past his heyday (in an attempt to reinvent him for the 1980s, I believe) is scary bad.

Tell your daddy and your mama too.

The first various artist all-cover CD I ever purchased was Rubaiyat: Elektra's 40th Anniversary, which was a collection of Elektra artists covering songs by Elektra artists I picked up my freshman year of college, 1990. It's been out of print a while now, but here are a few of the tracks that piqued my interest enough to initially shell out the dough for a double disc of songs I'd never heard before. [Remember when we had to buy albums without having heard them first? If not, I envy your youth!] I think I might've posted one or two of these back in the day before anyone even read this thing, but I can't remember and don't feel like hunting the archives. Note to self: Get working on creating a list so you can remember what was posted when!

The Cure "Hello, I Love You" (The Doors cover)

The Cure "Hello, I Love You (A Slight Return)" (sort of a The Doors cover)

The Kronos Quartet "Marquee Moon" (Television cover)

The Sugarcubes "Motorcycle Mama" (Sailcat cover)

The Pixies "Born in Chicago" (Paul Butterfield Blues Band cover)

The Might Be Giants "One More Parade" (Phil Ochs cover)

The blackness would hit me, and the void would be calling.

Alvin & the Chipmunks feat. the Chipettes "Time Warp" (from The Rocky Horror Picture Show)
Kill me now.

In a similarly odd/obnoxious vein, if you haven't seen the video for the Christian reworking of Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back" yet, you really should.

You know what I n-n-n-need. Or maybe you don't.

The Gories "Gimme Some Money" (Spinal Tap cover)
Garage-y and perfect.

London After Midnight "Sally's Song" (from Tim Burton's A Night Before Christmas)
SoCal industrial/goth band that looks like Doctor and the Medics covers a track from the standard Hot Topic afficionado's favorite musical. Predictable, to be sure, but it really could have been so much worse.

Okkervil River "Unravel" (Bjork cover)
I've been a little slow on the uptake with a lot of the Secretly Canadian/Jagjaguar bands (except for those my best friend's brother is in, of course), so I was pleasantly surprised by this pretty live cover.

Johnette Napolitano and Danny Lohner "The Scientist" (Coldplay cover)
What is up with me? I really do not like Coldplay at all, but I love covers people do of their songs. Maybe I just hate Chris Martin's wussy demeanor or something. Johnette badasses this track up a bit and makes it more than bearable. And it's from the Wicker Park soundtrack of all godforsaken places. I swear, a movie doesn't even have to be good nowadays to be rife with indieriffic covers.

Hear the ringing of the telephone. No! No!

As you might imagine, I'm quite bogged down with phone calls since Paris' Sidekick was hacked. And still I've found the time to post some Joe Jackson covers. (Thanks to reader Allan for the hookup on some affordable webspace. Now let's see how it works.) Sometimes, I pretend it's 1982 and I'm getting all coked up for a night on the town, listening to Look Sharp! as I tease my hair.

Fantastic Plastic Machine "Steppin' Out" (Joe Jackson cover)
Japanese club bossa-lounge version. Very smooth.

Da Vinci's Notebook "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" (Joe Jackson cover)
Acappella groups give me the heebie-jeebies.

Mandy Moore "Breaking Us in Two" (Joe Jackson cover)
I have to admit I like Mandy Moore. Her music? Not so much. But I like that her all-cover album contained songs you'd never expect someone her age to revisit (or visit for the first time, more likely).

Anthrax "Got the Time" (Joe Jackson cover)
This version reminds me of my freshman year of college. And I like it anyway!

Also, Skipping Discs Records released an all-gal (well, all-gal-front-person, anyhow) Jackson tribute last year. You can hear snippets of the covered songs here.

The honesty's too much.

As couple of things first:

I wish I could post more stuff and more often and I keep having fantasies that one day I'll be able to afford a domain and lots of webspace and it just isn't happening. So, my apologies for the infrequency of my posts.

I don't want anyone to be offended, but I'm not really into taking requests. If you think I might have a cover you've been looking for, feel free to e-mail me (bigfatprettyface AT yahoo DOT com) and I can try to send it if I have it. Similarly, I'm always open to receiving covers from readers, so send 'em my way if you so desire—I might play it, I might not, but either way I'm interested to know what's out there. So yeah, my posts are based on random things I feel like posting, and I don't plan to change that any time soon.

Likewise, if you're looking for a track I've posted in the past, I will not repost it. Please don't comment asking me to. (Most of you who ask this in the Comments don't give me your e-mail addresses or specify which track you want, so I can't get them to you.) If there's something I have and you want, just drop me a line (bigfatprettyface AT yahoo DOT com) and I'll do my best to send it to you.

Now, let's commence to jiggling!

Queen of Japan "I Love Rock & Roll" (Joan Jett and the Blackhearts cover)
Electroclashtastic! Queen of Japan is my new temporary favorite band that happens to have an all-cover album. [Headrush is its name.] Head over here (as well as one track below) for a few other QOJ covers in Real Media (and a few in MP3) format. Don't you just love a band whose English bio page reads:


"After many tours of hard sexual energy and costume change the queen of japan became known well across country and town never giving in to a life of modest no glamour."

Queen of Japan "Bobby Brown Goes Down" (Frank Zappa cover)
This may or nay not be a too controversial type of song to post. When it comes to the original, I never could quite understand how much of this song is satire and how much of it is pure misogyny and homophobia. Then again, I posted a song about pedophilia in the last post, so I suppose the line has already been crossed. I'm not a huge Zappa fan, but my dad tells a great story about having front-row seats to a Zappa show at Indiana University and tripping so hard before hand that he and his friends could barely navigate the two blocks they needed to walk to the auditorium. Then, at the show, he made eye-contact with Frank and thought hallucinated an entire conversation with him or something like that. (My dad tells me he was at both of the shows Zappa played, one in 1972 and one in 1981; he was higher at the latter.) Um, yeah. My dad was a bad-ass. Aaaaanyhoooo—this is an interesting choice for an electro dance band to cover.

Si*Sé "Just Like Heaven" (Cure cover)
Part English, part Spanish, part Latin, part clubby. I bet they get a lot of play in Putumayo shops. [If Putumayo shops play any discs that aren't on the Putumayo label, that is.]

Rimini Project "Sometimes When We Touch" (Dan Hill cover)
Ha! Often my choices on which of my tens of thousands of covers to share are based on the funniest thing to hit my shuffle play that day. Welcome to today's selection! I cracked up as soon as I heard the "deep" intro. [Those of you who won't be able to stomach the bulk of this crap dancepop track, he speaks at the end as well.] Eh, what do you expect from a band whose site looks more like a fashion spread featuring the most vapid models and which declares them "an european band"? Whatever. The song sucks, but it told me a great "story."

Sunshine Day "I'd Like to be You for a Day" (theme to the original Freaky Friday)
I love that someone covered this! Don't even get me started on my age-old girl crush on '70s, Disney-era Jodie Foster. Damn, I still don't know if I wanted to be her or to date her. She was so tough.

I know perfectly well I'm not where I should be.

Ugh. I've been trying for days to post these, but haven't found the time to say what I want to about each. So I'll just let you guess. You know me pretty well by now.

M. Ward "You Still Believe in Me" (Beach Boys cover)

Kylie Minogue & Nick Cave "Where the Wild roses Grow" (Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds cover)

Antony & the Johnsons "Perfect Day" (Lou Reed cover)

Hajime Chitose "Birthday" (Sugarcubes cover)

The Last Dance "Dead Man's Party" (Oingo Boingo cover)

It's just the way the medication makes her.

One of my favorite albums released last year was the eponymous effort of self-described "Brecthian punk cabaret" duo, The Dresden Dolls. And leave it to the innovative minds who decided to fuse riot grrrl angst with the honest social commentary in the style of Kurt Weill to create a full-fledged "karaoke verite" video throughout which they lip-synch Avril Lavigne's "Together." Perhaps we'll now have to expand our definition of cover songs to those that weren't actually covered. You can see the Dolls' "Together" video, as well as tons of their other stuff, by visiting their video download page.

Who sang what now?

I'll preface this post full of songs you wouldn't imagine being covered by the people covering them by mentioning a cover I've seem linked a few different places today: NWA's "Straight Outta Compton" as covered by Nina Gordon (ex-Veruca Salt). Yeah. Um. I don't like it. [Better] Indie artists singing rap songs is pretty predictable nowadays and I don't find anything spectacular about her following suit. Of course, I have a deep-seated dislike of Nina Gordon that's partially based on being forced to listen to her whine the insipid lyrics of songs like "Horses in the City" at a listening party years ago and being reprimanded by an acquaintance for making fun of it all with my best gal pal Lisa. But, I digress. Her covers are okay, I guess, and you can get the aforementioned track along with a few others (I'm partial to "Nobody's Fool," myself) by visiting her site.

Lemar "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" (The Darkness cover)
I certainly didn't foresee an R&B cover of this nu-glam smash coming our way, but then again, I'm rarely looking for any modern R&B covers of anything.

Nancy Sinatra "Let Me Kiss You" (Morrissey cover)
I love Nancy Sinatra. Love her. And her recent self-titled, chock-full-of-covers album makes me feel warm inside like I just downed four shots of Jack Daniels. (The Jarvis Cocker-penned "Don't Let him Waste Your Time" is my current favorite.)

Lindsay Lohan "Don't Move On/Living for the City/Changes" (Marty Blasick [producer and songwriter], Stevie Wonder, and David Bowie cover medley)
As you probably well know, I really have a thing for starfucking good girls gone bad and Lindsay is totally my girl, yo, but I really can't defend this. Perhaps I need to see Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen to put it all in context so I can understand its deeper meaning, thus forcing me to reevaluate my opinion. Um. Or not.

Faces of Sarah "...Baby One More Time" (Britney Spears cover)
Soooooooo many people in sooooooooooo many genres have covered this song, from lounge acts to Scot pop hipsters to power-punk bands to reggae gals to Zappas. And still I was surprised to find this. I guess I have an unrealistic idea in my head that goth bands would be too cool and aloof to want to even acknowledge the existence of popular artists. 'Cause god knows I wouldn't have when I was all gothed out. (I know it's hard for younger readers out there to imagine, but there was a time when irony wasn't cool and things actually had to be old before we got nostalgic for them.) But in this day and age, I bet this is probably one of their most popular numbers and at least a handful of their fans go in the hopes they'll hear it. And that's good for the band. Every ticket sold helps contribute a little bit to the next mesh shirt or pewter ankh pendant. Ahhhhh. Goth. Now, those were the days.

I've got a driver, and that's a start.

I've had a cold for ages and finally went to a doctor. She gave me hydrocodone, which was a pretty cool trip until my body started to reject it and I freaked the hell out. May the following tracks make you feel as if you're on narcotics as well.

Bonnie "Prince" Billy and Matt Sweeney "Ignition" (R. Kelly cover)
Okay, I'd let these pros behind my wheel any day. Whiny indie rock boys thuggin' it out? Yeah, I'd let their lovin' in my trunk, if you know what I mean. (And I'm sure you do.)

Johnny Hollow "People are Strange" (Doors cover)
If there were a 2005 remake of The Lost Boys, this cover should replace the one Echo and the Bunnymen did for the original. This is far more horrorshow.

Cristina "Drive My Car (Long Version)" (Beatles cover)
Those of you who are currently down with Swedish (edit: Norwegian, sorry!) dance-pop sensation Annie, might want to check out the work Cristina put out in the '80s. It's Girls at Our Best! meets the B-52s at a party held by the Flirts where Dale Bozzio gets drunk and takes off her plastic bra.

Tom Waits "Heigh-Ho!" (from Disney's Snow White)
This is the version the dwarves sing in hell.

I bought a ticket to the world, but now I've come back again.

I've never found covers of some of the songs that really remind me of my recently departed friend Sherie, such as the Thompson Twins' "Lies," whose chorus became a sort of nickname she had for me to the tune, "Lize, Lize, Lizaaa." Nor have I found a remake of ABC's "The Look of Love," a song whose words we'd once completely rewritten and left as a message on my dad's answering machine. But there are others out there, and during the godawful (pun not necessarily intended) contemporary Christian medleys that her family chose to play at her funeral service, I tried my best to imagine the following songs (the originals, of course) playing instead.

Will.I.Am. and Fergie "True" (Spandau Ballet cover)
I don't think I ever really liked this song, but Sherie did. I found it terribly overblown and grandiose and would often mock the overdramatic melancholy of it all by loudly singing the "I bought a ticket to the wo-ooo-ooorld" line in my best foppish timbre directly in her ear ad nauseam. Good times. Similarly, I was pretty much over the Black Eyed Peas last album immediately, although the "Hey, Mama" iPod commercial did intrigue me for a second. That said, I do, however, find myself mesmerized by Fergie's hip-shaking, if for no other reason than I can't imagine that a human waist can actually be that small and still sustain life.

Jennifer Batten "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" (Michael Jackson cover)
Everyone loved Thriller, didn't they? I remember one day Sherie and I must've been hopped up on sugar and played WBSS on repeat for about an hour, dancing around like maniacs and conga-ing around her house loudly chanting "Ma Ma Se, Ma Ma Sa, Ma Ma Coo Sa." God, being a total dork can feel so fun when you're 10.

This track is by one of the few females in the guitar-shred realm who happened to also play in MJ's touring band and I don't really care for it, but I thought posting the Whitney/Mya/Usher version seemed too predictable.

Scorpions "Drive" (Cars cover)
Sherie and her mom took me to what I consider to be the first "real" concert I attended—i.e. the first concert I attended that I actually wanted to go to rather than one I was dragged along to. (Beatlemania, Merle Haggard and Beach Boys sans Brian Wilson, I'm looking in your direction.) It was at Market Square Arena in Indianapolis in 1984 and featured The Cars with Wang Chung as openers. Pretty rad, no? anyhow, we attended with Sherie's mom and brother and a boy Sherie liked. I remember that, during "Drive," she gave me a look just before turning to her beau as coyly as an awkward 12-year-old girl could and serenading him with the question, "Who's gonna drive you home ... tonight?" It was totally cheesy (or "queer," as she would have said at the time) and it made me laugh really hard. I mean, come on, her mom was going to drive him home.

Speedbuggy "Pretty in Pink" (Psychedelic Furs cover)
I remember Sherie thinking that the line "she gives him these clothes as cars collide" was "she gives him a clove as cars go by," which is actually a much better lyric, in my opinion. Seriously, why all the talk of coats and clothes in that song? I never got it then and I still don't. Man, I haven't smoked a clove in ages. (P.S. It was in the beginning of her dark adolescent years that Sherie taught me what cloves even were.)

Eve's Plum "Save a Prayer" (Duran Duran cover)
Sherie and I were hardcore Durannies. The day I bought the clamshell VHS DD video collection, was one of our happiest days ever. We were ecstatic that my dad was cool enough not to care that it had some sort of "adult content" sticker on it thanks to all the hard-nipple action of the "Girls on Film" and "The Chauffeur" videos, but we did have to be careful that her mom not catch us watching it, which proved a challenge since we wore that damned thing out. (I'm talking to the point of memorizing all of the dialogue—particularly Simon's deranged Shakespearean ramblings—throughout the overwrought long version of "Waiting for the Nightboat.") But "Save a Prayer" held a special place in our hearts. We could just picture John slow dancing with us as it played. And, you know, that video was educational too. I didn't even know Sri Lanka existed until I saw them in the SAP video cavorting there on elephants. If I were in charge of the music at Sherie's funeral, this would have been the pinnacle tearjerker of the selection. I can't believe she's gone.

Wait, so there's a real human person operating this thing?

So, just when I thought I'd be back and posting super-regularly, I had to leave town for the funeral of a childhood friend who committed suicide. I also used this as a chance to visit with a good friend and see my dad for the first time since his mild stroke over the holidays. Whew! I'm hoping the Year of the Rooster has better things in store for us all.

On a happier note: One of you wonderful bloggers out there recently posted "Girl About Town" by the band Helen Love and I'm absolutely obsessed with it! Thank you. While hunting out info on the band, I discovered that you can download a cover of the track by power-pop-punk staples The Queers at this site.

Working for The Man every night and day.

Man, I've been attempting to post these for the last few days but dammit if life doesn't get in the way sometimes.

Guided By Voices "Sympathy for the Devil" (Rolling Stones cover)
On Dec. 30, my old pal Ryan and I caught what is rumored to be the penultimate GBV show ever. And it was pretty good. We think. For, as GBV themselves tend to do before a show, we got—how you say?—absolutely plastered. So plastered that we felt the desperate need to leave pre-encore, which means we missed the bulk of their poppier selections. Eh, whatever. I've seen them about 25-30 times, so I've seen them perform them before. And, because it was one of their last shows, they focused mostly on their own catalog, but usually they play at least one or two covers. Like this one.

Cosa Nostra "Proud Mary" (Creedence Clearwater Revival cover)
Hmmm. This is an interesting early-'70s Mexican funk/R&B/garage/psych cover.

The Killers "Why Don't You Find Out for Yourself" (Morrissey cover)
I admit it: I'm a sucker for all of the new new-wave outfits. Any time The Killers or The Rapture or Interpol or The Arcade Fire or Ted Leo & The Pharmacists (or what have you) hit my appropriately titled "On the Go" iPod playlist, the spring in my step (or should I say strut?) increases tenfold. Of course, as a cover lover, I'd prefer to hear said bands tackle songs in genres other than those that have so obviously influenced them, but that's a lot to expect, I suppose.

So this is the new year.

Hey, remember me? I'm the gal who's been too busy and/or too sick to post the last couple of weeks. Here's a quick belated Happy New Year to you all via themed cover songs. I'll do my best to come back in full force as soon as the NyQuil withdrawal subsides.

Front Line Assembly and Tiffany "New Year's Day" (U2 cover)

Arab Strap "New Year" (Sugababes cover)

Loop the loop.

You'd think that, when I hatched my bombard-them-with-Christmas-covers plan, I might've saved the best for last. But no. I'm just as random as ever. That's what you love about me, right?

Anyhoo, this may (or may not) be my last post before Christmas, so thanks to all of you for reading and an extra thanks to those who've commented or e-mailed thanking me for what I do here. It makes me feel great to know I'm not alone in my sickness.

Powder "Christmas Don't Be Late" (Chipmunks cover)
When I first heard this track, I pictured a twee little gal singing it backed by your standard trucker-capped backup band. Instead, it's these characters. Go figure. I guess it's about time LA got a Dale Bozzio for the new millennium.

Low "Blue Christmas" (Elvis Presley cover)
Another one for your next Slit Your Wrists at Christmas mix.

Hanson "What Christmas Means to Me" (Stevie Wonder cover)
Many of the holiday songs I've posted here used to be clear-the-music-department-of-customers favorites of mine. This, on the other hand, was a standard "how can I get my snotty, slacker, hipper-than-thou co-workers to get the hell away from me for three fucking minutes?" track. Ah, the indie glares I'd get! I just learned that Mercury just re-released Hanson's 1997 Snowed In, from whence I got this, as The Best of Hanson: The Christmas Collection as part of their 20th Century Masters series. Um. Yeah. We all knew Armageddon was nigh.

The Maddox Brothers and Rose "Jingle Bells" (Traditional)
This is my least favorite Christmas song, but I love this old-school hillbilly country version.

Shoutin' out with glee.

I don't got no time for jibba jabba, so just listen.

Daniel Johnston "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (Marks)

The Humpers "Run, Rudolph, Run" (Chuck Berry cover)

Me, I'll be just fine.

Vic 20 "Marshmallow World" (Darlene Love cover)
My Vic 20 never did anything this cool. All I could use it for was graphic-less "video" games in which I had to maneuver my way out of a bog using simple word commands.

My Chemical Romance "All I Want for Christmas is You" (Mariah Carey cover)
My favorite local cable access video show, Ken Mottet's The Otherside, played an MCR video a few weeks back. I found myself just slightly less than intrigued with the music, but knew that a 14-year-old version of me would love it and would become obsessed with the hot geek-goth look of the boys in the band. And, really, anyone who covers my favorite secular pop Christmas song (shut up, it's some of Mariah's best work!) is okay by me.

The Masters of the Hemisphere "The First Noel" (Sandys)
From one of the Kindercore Christmas comps, comes a whimsical little indie First Noel from a band I'd never heard of. Imagine.

Donny & Marie "Winter Wonderland" (Bernard/Smith)
Shit, what I'd give to get back the Donny & Marie portable record player (with microphone!) I had as a child. I loved that thing. I could dance and sing and pretend I was Mormon. Pretty awesome.

Ru Paul "Hard Candy Christmas" (from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas—Dolly Parton's version is probably most popular)
Many thanks to my pal Ray who was able to get this track to me after I hunted for about three months to no avail. I remember watching TBLWIT repeatedly on cable as a child and getting teary-eyed when the whores all went their separate ways. Like Dolly, I kind of always related to whores. Even at 8 years old. I know, I'm weird. Anyhow, it's even better with drag queen banter. I miss Ru Paul.

Fall on your knees.

Sonic Youth "Santa Doesn't Cop Out on Dope" (Martin Mull cover)
This cover always perplexed me. It's pretty annoying.

Melt Banana "White Christmas" (Well, this is called "White Christmas," but it's really a somewhat fucked-up version of "Here Comes Santa Claus.") (Autry)
You know I love Japanese covers. The stranger the better.

Sufjan Stevens "O Holy Night" (Adams/Dwight)
I love this so much I can't even believe it.

Pond "Gloria in Excelsis Deo" (Bach? Handel? Traditional?)
Not bad for a band I totally forgot ever existed. (And I only knew because a Sub Pop distributor pushed a promo on me, which I promptly forgot to listen to.)

Richard Davies "Do they Know It's Christmas (Feed the World)" (Band Aid cover)
Okay, who slipped the ativin into this guy's eggnog?

Gets colder day by day.

Coldplay "2000 Miles" (Pretenders cover)
The original used to be a big favorite of mine in high [or was that middle?] school. I wish I liked Coldplay more.

Ivy "Christmastime is Here" (Vince Guaraldi & the Peanuts gang)
A friend of mine in high school could dance exactly like Peanuts characters. It was awesome. (From Nettwerk's Maybe this Christmas Tree comp.)

Cranes "Happy Christmas (War is Over)" (John Lennon & Yoko Ono cover)
Like nails on a chalkboard to me. I remember that when I heard the Cranes were opening for the Cure in 1992, I strategically planned to miss them. I was successful. I don't mind dream pop from time to time, but I can't stand this baby-voiced schtick. Hell, I'd rather listen to Jordy's "Dur Dur D'être Un Bébé" than this. (From Rock for Choice's O Come All Ye Faithful comp.)

C3-P0 & R2-D2 "Sleigh Ride" (Anderson)
This is not as much a cover as it is an insane reworking. And could C3-P0 be more condescending? (From Christmas in the Stars.)

Taime Downe (ex-Faster Pussycat) "Silent Night" (Traditional)
Yep, you read right. (From the We Wish You a Hairy Christmas comp.)

I'll give it to someone special.

Spectrum "Santa Claus" (Sonics cover)
I'll have what they're having.

The Cocteau Twins "Frosty the Snowman" (Nelson/Rollins)
At least half of the Cocteau Twins' non-holiday songs sound Christmassy to me so I'm not sure this was even necessary.

Jimmy Eat World "Last Christmas" (Wham! cover)
Leave it to the, uh, kings (?) of emo to make this song sound even gayer than the original.

No Doubt "Oi to the World" (The Vandals cover)
Even after a decade or more, I still can't definitively say whether I love or hate No Doubt.

The Vandals "Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies" (Tchaikovsky)
The Vandals Christmas album is another all-time holiday favorite of mine. You should buy it.

Come, I tell you.

These are from another of my all-time favorite Christmas comps, Sympathy for the Record Industry's two-disc Happy Birthday, Baby Jesus. My favorite track is Spectrum's "Santa Claus," but that's not a cover, now is it? Here are a couple of tracks that belong here. Edit: Well, except that it is a cover. A Sonics cover. With a lot of poetic license. My bad. Maybe tomorrow.

Bomboras "Little Drummer Boy" (Davis/Onorati/Simeone)
There is an unwritten law that all surf instrumental covers must break into "Tequila" at some point. Deal with it.

The New Bomb Turks "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home" (Darlene Love/Phil Spector cover)
Not all punk covers break into "Runaround Sue," nor should they. Still, this is far more entertaining and lively than Death Cab for Cutie's version.

Let nothing you dismay.

Warning: Because I have slew of holiday songs to post before Christmas and I have very limited web space, in the next few weeks, tracks will probably only remain on the site for a day or two. So download early and often, kids. I'm doing my best to let you know so I don't have to field questions like this from mannerless ingrates.

Now that that's out of the way, these tracks come from what was once my favorite holiday album, the long out-of-print A Christmas Present to You from Zero Hour. That was back when I was all about effects-laden and/or syrupy lo-fi bands nobody else had ever heard of. Especially those on Zero Hour, as I mentioned way back here. Sigh ... was it really a decade ago that I was in my early 20s and had that kind of time? It seems like just yesterday I was stealing all the crap promos from work, but I digress.

Unfortunately, my favorite tracks from this album are the non-cover songs, such as Kittywinder's "Don't Wanna Hear No Merry Christmas" and Nicole Blackman's spoken-word "What I Want for Christmas," but at least it's not full of the same ol' Nat King Coles, Bing Crosbys, Mariahs and Enyas most Xmas comps are jam-packed with.

Grover w/Kevin Salem "Fairytale of New York" (Pogues/Kirsty MacColl cover)
This doesn't stray much from the feel of the original, but I like it nonetheless. In fact, I may be the only person who actually paid money for Grover's full-length album. The one with the Barbie doll face on the cover. Anyone? Anyone?

22 Brides "A Coventry Carol" (Traditional)
I think the gals in this folk duo were sisters. It's kinda pretty, I guess. That's about all I have to say here.

The Dirt Merchants "Jingle Bells" (Traditional)
Kinda noisy, kinda poppy, kinda rockabilly-y.

The Black Watch "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" (Traditional)
Back when the Black Watch were on Zero Hour, former Medicine frontman Brad Laner produced their album. And it shows. Very distortion-heavy sonic drones and goth-sounding violin and shoegazery overtones. (And I've never seen an album cover that screams "recommend me to fans of My Bloody Valentine or Medicine" than this.) If I could afford drugs on my measly salary, I'd consider getting into this kind of music again.

Space Needle "Silent Night" (Traditional)
Um, speaking of distortion and sonic drones, allow me to introduce you to the song that saved my sanity on more than one occasion during the holiday season. No, it's not because I find this track aurally pleasing, to say the least. My love for this track comes from the fact that, back when I needed a break during my former holiday retail whoring, playing this track ensured that the entire music department would clear out. Yeah, I had to endure a scowl or two—not to mention the tedious and seemingly relentless dissonance of this "song"—but it was worth it not to have to sell another Yanni album to a bitchy Gold Coaster.

All right, already.

As Joss Stone proved a little while back with her [excruciating, in my opinion] cover of "Fell in Love With a Girl Boy," nowadays a song need not be in the grave before someone decides to resurrect it. Here's further proof.

Ada "Maps" (Yeah Yeah Yeahs cover)
The original might make you want to dance and sing along, this German electronic chill-out version just makes me want to sleep.

Ben Lee "Float On" (Modest Mouse cover)
I loved Ben Lee's first album so much when it came out. I still like his stuff, but it's just not as amazing now that he's no longer 12. Still, I'll forgive his live slip-ups. He used to be cute.

Jeffrey Lewis Band "The Modern Age" (The Strokes cover)
Comic books and anti-folk? Previously stereotypical slacker types are too damned motivated nowadays.

Richard Cheese "Hate to Say I Told You So" (The Hives cover)
I had a few requests recently for more Cheese, and I'm nothing if not a giver.

REM "NYC" (Interpol cover)
God, I know it's lame to be all "cool" and say I don't like REM now, but I really don't like REM now.

Grum Lee "Get Free" (The Vines cover)
Prepare your ears for the acoustic, um, stylings of France's Grum Lee, whose covers have been submitted to and available on various sites over the years. I can't tell if he's trying to make outsider art (which would, of course, mean that it couldn't technically be outsider art) or if he's completely serious (which would mean it could be outsider), but either way, his stuff will probably frighten and amuse you in equal amounts.

Scissor Sisters "Take Me Out" (Franz Ferdinand cover)
Back in the day, everyone and their brother posted this. Well, they probably posted the full (read: a little longer and a lot quieter) version, but whatever. I figured I'd jump on the bandwagon just in case anyone out there missed it. I really love this. It makes me long for the time when Elton John actually wrote good songs. I was hoping they'd play it back in October when I saw the Sisters at the Metro, but no such luck.

Also: I'm preparing a slew of holiday covers for you. Be on the lookout.

If man is five.

Like most aging hipsters and/or indie kids who were still in diapers when Doolittle was originally released, I saw the Pixies last week. It was a good show, albeit surprisingly short and encore-free for the hard-earned dough I spent on it. And there weren't even any air-brushed paintings of the band in front of which to have my picture taken as there were at the R. Kelly/Jay-Z show I went to for free a month or two ago. What a gyp! (Holy crap, I'm 32 and I think, while typing that out, I just realized that gyp might be a derogatory term generating from stereotypes of gypsies. If so, my apologies!)

Anyhoo ... I saw the Pixies and lots of people like the Pixies. Unfortunately, very few of the bands who cover the Pixies appear to actually be even one-tenth as good, but they're certainly better than most of the predictable tracks on that stupid emoey (shut up, it's a word) tribute that came out a while back. I don't take enough drugs anymore to fully enjoy most of these tracks. But you might.

The first two are from Hey, a "CD" that's downloadable via a FrankBlack.net along with a Frank Black solo tribute. (Read how you too can get a hold of it here, if you have the patience.) Actually, the third song is on that too, although I got it initially from the Death to the Pixies, We're Better! (as if) tribute, from whence the fourth and fifth tracks come as well. The last track is from what I thought was a Japanese (but now appears not to be) Tribute to the Pixies, from which you might remember that insane version of "Debaser" by Feed I posted a while back.

Clootie "Holiday Song"
An interesting, somber take that kinda makes me want to slash my wrists.

Jonus "I've Been Tired"
I like Lou Reed, he said. And Dylan. And I sound like John Flansburg. And I sighed, "Ahhhhhh."

Mother Universe "Debaser"
This soooo could have been on the soundtrack to Electric Dreams. Or Kidd Video.

Pixels "Gigamuffin (Um, an instrumental Gigantic and a cat named Muffin?)"
Meow Meow like meow meow beats, whistles and sirens.

Koos Kreuk "Waar is mijn Hoofd? (Where is my Mind?)"
This was my favorite Pixies song until a few years ago when it wound up in Fight Club, which is weird considering I liked Fight Club. I'm kooky. Now that I've heard this harmonica-drenched version, I like it even less.

Seafood "Levitate Me"
This makes me miss the era in which I wanted to have sex with Britpoppers. Won't they please fawn over me???

Where I belong, I'm right.

I wish I had more time in my week to point you all in the direction of covers on other mp3 blogs when they arise, but I just don't. Covers are immensely popular in blogland and they're everywhere. Still, I found a few extra minutes today, so here are a few that might interest you.

You can find ex-Dismemberment Plan member Travis Morrison singing an amusing cover of Ludacris' "What's your Fantasy" on this page. (This one gets extra points because I hadn't heard it before.)

Marc Almond and the Royal Philharmonic sing "Paint it Black" here.

SVC has a few covers in this entry, including a longtime favorite of mine, My Bloody Valentine's cover of Wire's "Map Ref 41N 93W."

David F has an electronically mangled "My Cherie Amour" here, also heretofore unknown to me.

Now for some of my own picks:

Frank Bennett "Disarm" (Smashing Pumpkins cover)
Another cover crooner in the style of your Richard Cheeses and the like, but Bennett plays up the Rat Packiness of his namesakes a bit more faithfully than the others while singing a more diverse selection. For instance, I never suspected I'd hear a swinger version of Nick Cave's "Red Right Hand."

Maisie "Fixing a Hole" (Beatles cover)
Italian music blog MusicBoom put together a downloadable tribute to the Beatles a while back that features unique combination of songs by (Italian, of course) indie, lo-fi and electronic acts. It's no longer available at the site, but here's a taste.

The Quakes "Killing Moon" (Echo and the Bunnymen cover)
This is my favorite track from Swing-a-Billy Chartbusters from Germany's swing label, Frankie Boy Records.


The next two tracks come from one of my favorite tribute albums of the past year or so, Stop Me if you think You've Heard this One Before. Of course, I'm not sure that's a rousing review, since most tribute albums really suck. But the way I see it, any tribute album that can get me to listen to a Mazzy Star song without retching has some merit.

The Delays "Ride it On" (Mazzy Star cover)

Detroit Cobras "Last Nite" (Strokes cover)

Tuesday, I am fading.

I only have 20 minutes left in my lunch hour, so I have to make this quick. First, lemme say that I am totally for democracy, I just couldn't find time in my schedule to participate in the Music Bloggers for Democracy thing. Hell, I can barely manage to post once a week right now. Who knew I could go from unemployed sloth to promotion material in a few short months?

Almost Better "Pieces of Me" (Ashley Simpson cover)
Now that we've all recovered from Ashleegate, I thought I would prove to you that, even when she's lip-synching, I'd still rather hear a saptastic song like this sung by a female pseudopunk nepotist than sung by your standard male emo whiner. Almost better, indeed.

Jason Falkner "Photograph" (Def Leppard cover)
I love Falkner's covers. This one, from the Metal Rules comp, makes me very happy.

Graham Coxon "That's When I Reach for My Revolver" (Mission of Burma cover)
I can take or leave Coxon's solo stuff, but he sure is dreamy.

Toy Dolls "Livin' La Vida Loca" (Ricky Martin cover)
I didn't even realize the Toy Dolls were still around to release albums in the new millennium. Wonders never cease. I think more punk songs need kazoos. You?

Backmask "Genie in a Bottle" (Christina Aguilera cover)
Oh, death metal. How I love your pop leanings. This is death metal, right? You'd think two episodes into Battle for Ozzfest I'd be an expert on the different metal genres, but no. All I know is that that lawyer with the freaky contact lenses gets on my last nerve and I hope he gets axed soon.

There is a light that never goes out.

John Peel is dead. This is by far the saddest celebrity death that's had an impact on me in years. I'm certain my love of music (and covers) would not be as strong as it is if it weren't for John Peel's relentless dedication to exposing new and often strange musicians to a public who'd have otherwise never discovered them. His influence on performers, journalists and fans is immeasurable. I hope that my fixation on the new in music and culture continues into my 60s (and beyond, if possible) as his did. I can't imagine living my life any other way.

Rest in peace, friend.

Flaming Lips "Life On Mars (Peel Session)"(David Bowie cover)
Edit: Sorry about this cutting off at the end. I suck.

Mogwai "Don't Cry (Peel Session)" (Guns N' Roses cover)

Kinda like the Michael Moore of the music world.

Petra Haden & Bill Frisell "I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever)" (Stevie Wonder cover)
I've been meaning to post some Petra since Fluxblog posted about her unreleased acappella version of The Who Sell Out. (!!!) I had a brief obsession with that dog. in my early twenties and loved me some Rentals shortly thereafter. I love that sweet-voiced girl twee crap. You know, songs that remind you of breaking up with your teenage boyfriend at summer camp and then going out with your best friend to wallow in self pity over a chocolate sundae? Or songs whose lyrical basis is seeing a cute guy at a show? That kinda shit.

I'm not sure if Petra's jazz connections (her dad's Charlie Haden, you know) were at all involved in the Frisell collaboration, and quite sadly, I'm too lazy even to do a quick Google search to find out, so look into that on your own if you want to know. Heh. Sorry.

Anyhow, their Petra Haden & Bill Frisell album is available as a Canadian import and is chock-full of sweet little covers of very diverse songs like the Foo Fighters' "Floaty," Tom Waits' "I Don't Wanna Grow Up," Coldplay's "Yellow" and songwriter Henry Mancini's "Moon River," among others. Check it out.

Oh, and this Stevie Wonder song, while very pretty and uplifting, always reminds me of working music retail when the soundtrack to High Fidelity was released and hearing it constantly and wondering why everyone seemed to love that movie (or book, even) so damned much. And that it was filmed in Chicago only annoyed me more. I swear to God, I was walking in Wicker Park one day last year and overheard some yuppie girl excitedly tell her out-of-town friend, "High Fidelity was filmed right around here. You could be walking where JOHN CUSACK WALKED!!!" and go on to giggle maniacally as I looked on, cynically nonplused.

Marianne Faithfull "What Have They Done to the Rain?" (Malvina Reynolds cover)
This folk staple has been covered by Joan Baez and Melanie and The Searchers and The Seekers (Searches and Seekers? '60s folk combos were really hunting for truth and solutions to the world's ills, weren't they?) and probably many others. Most importantly to me, though, is that the Lili Taylor character in Dogfight sings a very tentative rendition to the lovable asshole as played by River Phoenix, thus inspiring me to hunt out every version I could find, original or otherwise. And because I caught a Marianne Faithfull concert last night on Trio, it's her version I chose to share with you today. And, yes, almost all of my decisions are based on things I see on TV.

The Ataris "A New England (Live)" (Billy Bragg cover)
Speaking of TV ruling my decisions, in the most recent episode of The Surreal Life (which lives up to its name more this season than ever), former American Idol wannabe Ryan Starr whines about singing a pop single penned by Jordan Knight because it's not the kind of music she's into, and if it gets played on the radio (shah, right!) her fans (?????) will think she's "selling out." Um. Did her publicist not inform her that she's the lowest rent "celebrity" on The Surreal Life and that being a part of this show is, indeed, a greater form of selling out than singing some crappy song? Apparently so. Aaaaaanyhoooooo, while our fair Ryan is crying and pleading her case (and eventually totally giving in, by the way), she happens to be wearing an Ataris shirt. And that reminded me that I had this live acoustic cover of Billy Bragg's fantastic song, which—for a version by your standard pop-punk act that only knows three to five chords—isn't really half bad. Much better than their god-awful cover of "Boys of Summer," by far. "A Black Flag sticker on a Cadillac"? Whatever you say, kids.

Dr. Ammondt "Quate, Crepa, Rota (Shake, Rattle, and Roll)" (Big Joe Turner/Bill Haley/Whoever cover)
To help cope with his divorce in the late '80s, Dr. Jukka Ammondt, a 50-something Finnish ethnomusicologist, decided start recording Finnish tangos. Who knew such a thing existed? Subsequently, he paired his love of '50s rock 'n' roll with his love of dead languages, bringing us a Latin Elvis tribute as well as Rocking in Latin, from whence this track comes. His most recent effort features three songs sung in Sumerian. Ah, academia!

On his site, he acknowledges:

Despite that my singing career is at the same time an intellectual joke, I have also a serious message to the people: "Don't stop, find always new ways to break the borders- your own and the others." I think that's the most important thing in the creativity.

Damn. Just when I wanted to kinda mock him, he acknowledges his "intellectual joke" and gets all positive and inspirational on me. This album cover is still fair game though, yes?

Re: Moon River

Maybe lack of sleep is making me extra cranky, but I feel the need to tell everyone that I KNOW HENRY MANCINI WROTE MOON RIVER!!! I've had a few comments and a handful of e-mails about it. I KNOW!!! I knew when I posted it that he wrote it. But, since we're talking covers here, I went for the Andy Williams reference because his version is plausibly the most famous.

Please, forgive me for the mini-rant. I do appreciate your feedback, but after the 10th or so person submitted his or her "correction," it started to bug me.

So, um, yeah. My next post, which will hopefully occur later tonight or early tomorrow, will feature some actual MP3s. Promise.

Significant back-scratching.

If you missed it back in the day when I posted the Macha & Bedhead cover of Cher's "Believe" and The Mountain Goats' rendition of Ace of Bass' "The Sign," get thee over to Oct. 17 post at The Of Mirror Eye now. There's an O'Jays song as covered by the Sun City Girls there as well. Thanks for the homage!

Thanks to Israeli fan Dovi for the heads-up on The Girls, an Israeli band who covers Blancmange's "Living on the Ceiling," which you can download, along with a few of their non-cover tracks, on this page.

Jon, of the new Lestermix, just found out that his old band's cover of Gary Numan and the Tubeway Army's "Oh, Didn't I Say" is available for download here.

Spin might not want my input, but Keith at PWI does. Head over to that link, where you can download a song (not a cover, sorry) from one of my favorite obscure '80s acts, The 27 Various, and read my "sick" cover suggestions.

I can’t tell you, but I know it’s mine.

I just found out (from my Live Journal friends page, of all places!) that I was not quoted or mentioned at all in the Spin article on the MP3 blog phenomenon, despite having rambled on to the interviewer for about an hour. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe I doled out any astute or otherwise worthwhile insights or anything, but I was hoping to maybe make a tiny "here are some sites to check out" sidebar or something. But, no. I guess that means I'm still officially cool. You know, all under the radar and shit.

So, yeah, don't worry about me. I'll be okay. I'm as jovial as Babs is while she sings this:

Barbra Streisand "With a Little Help From My Friends" (Beatles cover)

For reals, yo.

There's such a lot of world to see.

No rhyme or reason to today's selection. Just stuff that's hitting my shuffle play lately.

The Frogs "Vacation" (Go-Go's cover)
Holy God, the Frogs are insane. But you gotta give it up for a cover I started off hating but wound up liking the more I heard it. The playful irreverence grew on me, what can I say? As for the bulk of the vocals: I won't tell on them for kidnapping the cast of a grammar-school production of Oliver! if you won't. Definitely one of the most unique covers available on Unsealed: A Tribute to the Go-Go's. "Whatever!" indeed.

Elbow "Independent Woman" (Destiny's Child cover)
An interesting novelty, I guess. Not even half as impressive as their original work, of course. Click here to see Joel Veitch's all-kitten band version.

The Innocence Mission "Moon River" (Andy Williams, among others, cover)
I can't believe this Christian-rock Sundays sound-alike is still together. This is my friend Ray's favorite version of this song. It's pretty.

Also: Thanks to all those who've sent e-mails or left comments of support and/or information about songs I've posted in the past. Though I might not be able to respond to everyone individually, I do quite appreciate it.

Will you recognize me, call my name, or walk on by?

Remember me? What seems like four years later, I keep my promise for covers of songs from John Hughes movies. Of course, I'm doing so from work so I hope you'll forgive the slapdashness of it all.

Billy Idol "Don't You (Forget About Me)" (Simple Minds cover, The Breakfast Club)
Maybe it's just me, but I have a difficult time buying Billy Idol singing a song like this. When the Billy Idol who resides permanently in my mind as an aging punk with an attitude sings a slow song, I want it to be about sex or drug trips, a la "Flesh for Fantasy" or "Eyes Without a Face." While I'm sure Idol is emotionally multifacted, desperate longing is not an option on my Idol menu. No substitutions, please.

Automatic 7 "Pretty in Pink" (Psychedelic Furs cover, Pretty in Pink)
Modern pop-punk is not my cup of tea and this version is not different enough from the original to make any real impact on me. And yet, here it is.

Halo Benders "Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want" (Smiths cover, Pretty in Pink)
A quirky little indie-pop whine of a version from the Halo Benders, a side project of Built to Spill's Doug Martsch and Beat Happening's Calvin Johnson, among others. I like geeky rockers and I like this cover.

Free Loan Investments "If You Leave" (OMD cover, Pretty in Pink)
This twee, influenced-by-'60s-orchestral-pop track comes from a "synthpop" (a modifier which confuses me a bit given this bands sound) tribute to OMD called Messages and is reminiscent of the stuff from Tullycraft and the Softies and others on that out-of-print Double Agent 1980 comp I love so.

Edit: The reason the Free Loan Investments track doesn't sound as if it should be on a synthpop tribute to OMD is because, um, it isn't. I got my OMD tribute albums mixed up, and this track is actually from Pretending to See the Future: A Tribute to OMD. My bad.

Shed a tear 'cause I'm missin' you.

This is just a note to say that I'm sorry for posting so sporadically. I've been kinda sick this past week and hope to post in the next few days.

xo

I can't believe I gave my panties to a geek.

Seemingly like all [okay, maybe not the Amish] women of my generation [and Kevin Smith], I once had an unhealthily obsessive relationship with the movies of Illinois' own John Hughes. I saw myself in all the freaky female protagonists and longed for the day when my handsome, popular prince charming would lure me out of my black nail polish and tattered clothes and lead me to the promised land of open-mouthed kisses and makeup the color of things actually found in nature. And guess what, my pretties? That shit doesn't happen. The wiry geek with headgear doesn't get to fuck the prom queen. The dreamy wrestler never makes out with the bi-polar liar with dandruff. It's all a sham. And, despite all these inexplicably doe-eyed Gen Xers who in retrospect still give Hughes icon status, ultimately Hughes' little fantasies were no more significant to me than all millions of cheesy Cinderella stories out there today. Well, except for the fact that I know the dialogue of every Hughes flick by heart. (Seriously, Hollywood, I don't care about presidents' daughters and how tough it is for them to find romance, so just stop!)

But there's one thing about John Hughes movies I still appreciate: the music. That's not to say that all of the music he used was good, by any means, but at least it was different from the pop machine utilized in other movies of the era, most of which were stuffed full of Kenny Loggins, Carly Simon and Bob Seger. And, as connoisseurs of Hughes' soundtracks well know, he and his minions loved the covers.

Some Kind of Wonderful:
SKOW is, ostensibly, my lingering favorite of Hughes' films, if only because it's far more realistic for two outcast friends to eventually hook up when one's nonsensical dreams of dating the popular gal fail. And that "practice" kiss scene between Eric Stoltz and Mary Stuart Masterson still makes the 12-year-old inside me completely melt.

March Violets "Miss Amanda Jones" (Rolling Stones cover)
Ah, the energy that's building when this song plays. Amanda is getting ready for her date with Keith, which she really has no desire to attend. She's flicking her hair around under her dryer and Keith's dad is riding him about college, which he no longer has the savings for because he spent all of his damned money trying to impress this dopey, spineless sycophant Lea Thompson expertly plays.

I was not previously familiar with The March Violets when this movie came out, nor am I quite down with them now. The quick Internet research I performed a minute ago leads me to believe that many people consider them a goth band, but having only heard this cover, I have a difficult time believing that since this sounds only slightly darker than Katrina and the Waves' "Walking on Sunshine." But whatever. It is what it is.

Lick the Tins "Can't Help Falling in Love" (Elvis Presley cover)
I think I have to credit this cover with introducing me to how distinctly different a cover can sound from its original and, thus, spurring me on to investigate other cover songs. This quirky, dancey little Celtic folk version of Elvis' ubiquitous ballad always made me picture Leprechauns dancing around a May pole on a glenn somewhere. Or maybe I was just having "Safety Dance"-video flashbacks.


Ferris Bueller's Day Off:
When I was in the 8th grade, I took a weekend painting class at the Art Institute of Chicago. One day, the instructor didn't show up and I wound up wandering around the museum (past some of the same paintings Ferris & Co. pondered in the film) trying to find my mom and my friends who'd come up with me that day. After doing the Museum thing, we headed off to do the shopping thing. But as we neared State Street, there was unexpectedly a mass of people milling about. It looked as if there were a parade, but nothing was moving. We asked a random passerby what was going on and, lo and behold, we were told, "They're shooting a new Matthew Broderick movie." Of course, we promptly joined the crowd and wound up spending the day as unpaid extras in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and at one point found ourselves toward the front of the faux float about a foot away from Broderick as he lip-synched "Twist and Shout" about a hundred times. Eventually, we wound up toward the back of the float, and, of course, are not seen at all in the movie, but it was a cool experience.

Dream Academy "Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get what I Want (Instrumental)" (Smiths cover)
Hughes apparently really liked this song, as versions of it wound up in both of his 1986 films. The original was in Pretty in Pink, which Hughes wrote but didn't direct and this pretty instrumental cover was in the aforementioned Art Institute scene of FBDO and was pretty and perfect.

Pretty in Pink:
Yes, I related to Andie in PIP. Yes, I thought she should've gone with Duckie instead of Blaine. Yes, I liked this movie at the time. Yes, I still watch it from time to time when I catch it on cable.

Now for the "but": But its message sucks. Sure, Andie doesn't change who she is to get Blaine to fall for her, but the coolest character in the damned movie, Iona [Annie Potts], has to become a fucking yuppie in order to find love. And what about Blaine is so appealing? Yeah, Andrew McCarthy's kinda cute in that dopey, dough-faced way, but the Blaine character in no way deserves Andie. In the version of this movie that exists in my mind, the movie doesn't end with Andie and Blaine kissing in the parking lot. It my version, it ends about a month later when they break up because they have absolutely nothing in common. Then Andie dates Duckie a while until he comes out of the closet. Then she goes away to college and has her heart broken a million more times by people she actually had real connections with. You know, like guys in bands.

Yes, I'm bitter. No need to point this out to me, I already know.

But, again, the chosen music was pretty good for the most part. Indeed, it introduced me to New Order and, therefore, Joy Division. Ditto Echo and the Bunnymen. So, there's merit there. (And others agree, as the PIP soundtrack has at least two cover tributes, see here and here.) I remember reading an interview with Hughes and Ringwald before the release of the movie in which they discussed how none of the music in the film was an afterthought. They also discussed Hughes' decision to use Ringwald's favorite band, The Rave-Ups, in the club scenes. Curiously, however, those tracks were not offered on the soundtrack, which always kinda pissed me off.

Danny Hutton Hitters "Wouldn't It Be Good?" (Nik Kershaw cover)
This cover always seemed pointless to me. I was aware of the Nik Kershaw version only because, after seeing its video the first time on Friday Night Videos at my friend Sherie's house in Bloomington, Sherie promptly ridiculed me for never having heard it. I guess what's big in Southern Indiana isn't always what's big in major cities. Go figure. And, Sherie's ridicule aside, I didn't get what the big deal about it was. I found it to be mediocre pop snoozefest on par with John Waite's "Missing You," which I likewise hated despite its obviously ironic lyrics.

Anyhow, this version isn't much more exciting than the original except, I guess, that it's performed by the band of a former Three Dog Night singer. If that's the sort of thing you find exciting.

Next time: I'll post covers of some of the original songs from Hughes soundtracks.

Get these hard times right on out of our minds.

The track from the last entry should be working now. Sorry about the delay.

In a blizzard he was lost.

Langley Schools Music Project "Wildfire" (Michael Martin Murphey cover)

I know, I know. Everyone and their brother posts Langley Schools tracks. But A) the Langley covers are pure pop wonders and B) I was recently reminded of my favorite (read: only) "Wildfire"-related story, with which I will now bore regale you:

About seven or so years ago, I was working as a lead clerk in a Borders music department. Um, yeah. So my Christian-rock co-worker Gretchen started a monthly open mike event and kept begging me to attend. Hesitant to perform any songs I had written in front of other human people, I kept "accidentally" forgetting. Eventually, I went just to watch.

Now, the store at which I worked was (and possibly still is) the largest store in the chain and it had some deal with a local halfway house from which it hired people for the "Operations" staff (read: janitors). These folk were, for the most part, former alcholics/drug addicts and most were quite tolerable. Then there was Joe Star.

Man, Joe was the bane of my existence for years at that place. He was simple-minded and right-wing (well, he would have been right-wing had he known much about politics) and always said really inappropriate things that would've gotten anyone else fired, but since he was, uh, special, the higher-ups always seemed to look the other way.* But, seriously, he was often overheard in the breakroom commenting on a female employees' breasts, ranting about "faggots," talking about how he wanted all cops dead, etc. I often made a game of listening to his rant and then telling him something like "um, my dad's a cop" just to watch him backtrack and apologize. (My dad is not a cop.)

Another thing Joe talked a lot about was music. He was really into people like Aliotta, Haynes & Jeremiah and the like. He'd often interrupt me while I was helping actual customers by shouting things like "hey, hey, Liza ... have you heard anything about this Kenny Loggins album?" and I'd respond exasperatedly with something along the lines of "um, no, Joe ... not in the past 20 years anyhow." [As you probably know, most music retailers make you sign a contract to be a total snot to practically everyone.] Joe once told me he aspired to and was successful at buying himself a new piece of musical equipment every time he got a paycheck. I was forever wondering how his one-room, dorm-style apartment (he described it, I never saw it for myself, of course) was able to fit all the guitars, amps and keyboards he supposedly had.

So, fast forward to the open mike. I finally decided to attend when Joe, tan as ever and wearing his trademarked tapered-at-the ankle jeans with his super-shiny dyed jet-black hair, approached me in the breakroom and told me he'd be singing there. This I had to see.

The open mike progressed as most do ... uncomfortably. Gretchen sang some God songs, a few other people played, and then it was Joe's turn. And, oh my God, was an irony-lover's dream come true!

I noticed as Joe approached the mike, he did not have an instrument. My pulse raced and my thoughts quickened: "Holy shit. Is Joe going to sing acappella? Fuck. Somebody hold my hand, or I'm going to explode with laughter."

But that was nothing compared with what really happened. Joe stands before the mike, backpack in hand. From said pack, he produces a fucking Walkman. He places the earphones of said fucking Walkman over his sparkling black mane and presses play. Yes, my friends, Joe Star proceeded to belt out "Wildfire" along with his tape deck, despite the fact that none of us in the audience could hear the music.

It was unadulterated outsider-art brilliance!!! My favorite part was that, during the non-vocal parts of the song, he stood staring out at the audience completely expressionless.

I swear, it was so funny I almost came. I managed to hold in my ecstatic laughter by clenching my hand hard into Gretchen's thigh. But it was difficult.

And even though I went on to continue despising almost everything about Joe Star—especially the strange cosmic joke that has him currently living somewhere in my neighborhood area so I see him ALL the time and he ALWAYS feels the need to try to talk to me—"Wildfire" has been special to me ever since. I really wish video camera cell phones existed back then. (And, of course, that I'd have had one on me at the time.)

I swear, if I were a performance artist that's the kind of shit I'd do all the time.

*Actually, he was eventually fired for some inappropriate comment he made to a customer, I think, but it took years.

I don't have to dream alone.

My latest horoscope via the awesome Free Will Astrology:

Cancer:
Young rock bands often do cover tunes, copies of songs originally performed by well-known musicians they admire. Art teachers sometimes give their students the assignment of reproducing the great paintings of the old masters. To take maximum advantage of the current astrological influences, I suggest you use this strategy in your own unique way, Cancerian. Pick a hero, either dead or alive, either famous or unsung, whose approach to life you admire. Find out as much as you can about that person, and then engage in a flurry of imitation. Dress, talk, think, and dream like your hero. In every situation you're in, ask yourself what he or she would do. Have imaginary conversations, fantasize abundantly, and move through your days and nights as if you are that person.

Today I choose Wendy O. Williams.

I remember perusing my father's seemingly infinite record collection as a child and stumbling on not one but two Plasmatics albums. At the time, I'm not sure what perplexed me more: the fact that this band existed at all or the fact that, should this band actually exist as it appeared to, my father would own two of its albums. Then again, the late '70s and early '80s were heady times for my dad and his friends, whom he often entertained while I was supposed to be asleep in the back bedroom.

Anyhow, a few years after finding the albums, I remember reading about Wendy O. Williams and crew and knew instantly that I felt then what I feel now about most seminal art-punk-metal outfits: I'm glad that bands like this exist, but I'm not particularly interested in listening to them.

Still, getting arrested multiple times on obscenity charges and regularly attacking guitars with chainsaws while wearing nothing but black electrical tape over your nipples and leather bikini bottoms is pretty fucking badass.

In the mid-1990s, I was hanging out with Syd Straw at an Iris DeMent show and she introduced me to the Plasmatics' bass player Richie Stotts, who was in Bloomington working on, I believe, a master's degree in geology at IU. I was drunk and probably said stupid things to him about my dad's record collection, but later that night I felt pretty fucking cool for having met the giant former blue-mohawked guy from the album covers.

So, yeah, Wendy O. Williams was hardcore and today I feel fucking hardcore. But, luckily for everyone, I have no plans to head out sans shirt. Rather, I'll just keep my tape-obscured nipples at home and scream profanities at anyone who calls me and maybe set fire to all the laundry I don't want to do. And dye my hair. And drink a lot and get really high.

Just remind me not to off myself when the adrenaline wears off.

The Plasmatics "Dream Lover" (Bobby Darin cover)

Lumber up, limbo down.

Hole "Hungry Like the Wolf" (Duran Duran cover)
You know, I was pulling for our, uh, fair Courtney for a long time. You have to admit that for a few years there she was pretty bad-ass. When Hole was on MTV's Unplugged, from whence this track comes, back in the late 1990s, I really thought she was going to get her shit together. Still, I thought it would've been nice had she taken the time to actually learn the lyrics of this ubiquitous DD tune before performing it. I guess I'll never understand that punk/grunge/insert-whatever's-cool-now penchant for covering songs you don't really know and whose lyrics you can't be bothered to investigate.

Melissa Auf der Maur "Love Is the Drug" (Roxy Music cover)
This live cover of ex-Hole (heh) Melissa Auf der Mar is significantly more worthwhile than Courtney's mutilation of Duran Duran. And that she's covering a band that influenced Duran Duran rather than covering Duran Duran itself increases her indie cred tenfold.

The problem is, for many years, I've lived my life publicly.

Telly Savalas "If" (Bread cover)
A holdover from last week's brief soft-rock fixation, this track comes straight from the William Shatner School of Spoken Covers. When I was a little kid, my grandmother watched a lot of Kojak, and I must admit his rumored sex appeal was lost on me. But I was only about 3, and I liked the idea of lollipops so it was all good. Now, thanks to the barrage of forced nostalgia that VH1 is consistently shoveling down our throats ad infinitum, I have to admit that, thanks to a few choice Kojak clips, for a while there I was starting to get it. Unconventionally handsome, tough, virile, bald? Lust seems a reasonable reaction to that to me at 32. Then I heard this.

Jamelia "Numb" (Linkin Park cover)
Nu metal, when in ballad form, is the new soft rock. Whiny geeks lamenting the fact that their girlfriends are smothering them? Cue the damned violins, my heart is soooo breaking for them. New run-of-the-mill dance/R&B chanteuse Jamelia's piano-heavy version is surprisingly pretty good. I think. What I can say for sure is that it makes me laugh a lot less than the original does.

Cat Power "Deep Inside" (Mary J. Blige cover)
Cat Power sings pretty songs, covers or no. This Peel Session cut of one of my favorite MJB tracks rules.

With you I'm not shy to show the way I feel.

As you're all well aware, I'm prone to sicknesses of the ironic variety. This blog merely showcases one of them. Most recently—in addition to my inexplicable desire to watch the worst movie ever, Stephen King's Dreamcatcher, repeatedly on cable—my guiltiest of guilty pleasures is currently the '70s soft rock hit.

It seems that in the '70s, men and women songwrights alike suddenly felt safe sharing the let's-work-through-this journal entries their therapists made them write by turning them into "deep" and "meaningful" ballads rife with metaphors and analogies and general "I'm OK, You're OK" wussiness. Gone was the ambiguity of the lyrics of the '50s and early '60s when everyone was dreamy and breakups were poppy. All of a sudden, it was okay to whine like a bassett hound, tell the truth, open yourself up to everyone and, subsequently, face severe ridicule from "real" rock stars. And all without any real vocal passion. Weird.

Until the past year or so, I actively ignored (that's possible, right?) the genre, primarily because it brought back memories of being trapped in a car with my chain-smoking mother on my way to the horror of nursery school and kindergarten in Crown Point, Indiana: the time I got in trouble for using my middle finger to guide my eyes as I read a book; the time I had to sit at the lunch table all day because I wouldn't eat the egg salad sandwich being forced upon me; being scolded for singing the "it's a bitch, girl" line of Hall & Oates "Rich Girl" ... all of these memories come flooding back the second I hear the beginning strains of any successful '70s sap.

I predict my temporary fascination with this once-despised genre will end within the next few weeks, but for now it's here and I'm its biggest fan. But I'm not the only one. Observe ...

Floorfilla "Sister Golden Hair" (America cover)
Next to country and smooth jazz/R&B, most soft-rock covers appear to be of the Eurotechno variety. Recipe: Hire someone who can summon a Jamaican accent for the spoken intro, speed up the beat, eventually throw in a carnivalesque, Vengaboysian (shut up, it's a word!) pipe organ and be sure to periodically give the chick's vocals that warbly effect initially popularized by Cher's "Believe." Et voila! You and your friends are unwittingly raving to the oldies. Helpful hint: Take the X a few hours before downloading.

58 "Alone Again (Naturally)" (Gilbert O'Sullivan cover)
If half of Bran Van 3000's members were ex-heroin addicts and Baz Luhrmann was producing their album, this could be the product. Instead, we've Nikki Sixx, Barry Gibb's son and a few other rock weirdos to blame for this. Not as bad as I thought it would be, but not necessarily good.

Millie Jackson "Just When I Needed You Most" (Randy VanWarmer cover)
Oh, yes, Millie! This is how this song should sound. I mean, the motherfucker is leaving you. Just when you need him most! I need to hear the ire, and the often-blunt Millie couldn't resist adding her own little "fuck you" asides because she wants you to feel what this song is really about. Much better than the Japanese boy-band [name unknown] version of this track that literally took me seven hours to download the other night. And much more strong and passionate than the original, although I will say that "VanWarmer" is an all-too-apropos name for someone who writes touchy-feely '70s ballads.

Matthew Sweet "Magnet & Steel" (Walter Egan cover)
I love Matthew Sweet, but he doesn't really do much with this. I'd rather hear a terrible cover that tries something new than a competent cover that's not different enough from the original to matter. Luckily, this is from the Sabrina the Teenage Witch soundtrack CD (there's such a thing?), so until now, no one had to hear it. Heh.

Rockell "We Just Disagree" (Dave Mason cover)
Zzzzzzzzz. Cheesy freestyle "diva" Rockell is only nominally talented. Dave Mason's association with Steve Winwood, a soft-rocker whom even irony will not allow me to enjoy, ensures my disinterest. [Shudder.] In my opinion, a true case of the bland leading the bland. [Note: For a great Rockell-related cover, Rufus Wainwright covers the originally-recorded-by-Rockell track "Instant Pleasure" on the Big Daddy soundtrack and gives it a depth you'd never expect upon hearing the original.]

Yesterday don't matter if it's gone.

I spared you the Julian Lennon version.

Fleming Pie "Ruby Tuesday" (Rolling Stones cover)
Somewhere between J-Pop and J-indie falls Fleming Pie, a Japanese outfit with a handful of cover-only, out-of-print maxi CDs that are nearly impossible to find physically in the US or anywhere. On this track, they futz a bit with the timing, stretching out the words into a bizarre twee warble. Marginally interesting.

Melanie "Ruby Tuesday" (Rolling Stones cover)
Ah, Melanie! I was so happy a few years back when the always insane "Brand New Key" made it onto the Boogie Nights soundtrack, thus introducing its aforementioned insanity to a new, younger, unsuspecting audience. And don't get me started on her high-pitched folksy ire on "Look What They've Done to My Song, Ma." There are points in this track in which she sounds so impassioned—and not unlike a cat in heat—that I can't tell whether or not I should be laughing at it. But I do.

Sex Mob "Ruby Tuesday" (Rolling Stones cover)
Improv jazz quartet that performs mostly covers. I'd say this is my favorite version posted today, if only because it's the most unique.

Thelma Houston "Ruby Tuesday" (Rolling Stones cover)
Houston's "Don't Leave Me This Way" is, in the wake of the '70s revivals that happen every five years or so, one of the only ultra-ubiquitous disco tracks I can stomach. Donna Summer's always impressive vocal range notwithstanding, Houston's deep, powerful voice lends a sincerity to songs—cover and otherwise—that, to me, wins out over the "Ring My Bells" and "Do Ya Think I'm Sexys." (Somewhat related: Did any Chicagoans catch the PBS special about the Steve Dahl-fueled "Disco Sucks" demolition riot at Comiskey in '79? I remember seeing that on the news as a kid and thinking it was pretty cool, despite the fact that I liked disco. Now I think it's pretty damned stupid.)

Oliver "Ruby Tuesday" (Rolling Stones cover)
Some say Oliver's 1969 version of Hair's "Good Morning Starshine" is one of the worst singles ever to make the charts. But you gotta admit the X-Files-y Mr.-Burns-as-alien episode of The Simpsons that pays homage to it rules. I kinda like dippy '60s pop covers. Sue me.

Jad Fair & Daniel Johnston (& Chris Bultman) "Ruby Tuesday" (Rolling Stones cover)
Ugh. Go figure. Work is keeping me busy. Read about the album from which this comes here.

I lead you to moonlight only to burn you with the sun.

I'm sick today and don't feel much like writing, but that shouldn't mean you have to be deprived of covers insanity.

Ze Malibu Kids (Jeff and Steve McDonald from Redd Kross with their wives Charlotte Caffey [Go-Go's] and Anna Waronker [that dog.], respectively) "You're So Vain" (Carly Simon cover)

Baxendale "(Keep Feeling) Fascination" (Human League cover)

X DJ Bass* "She's Like the Wind" (Patrick Swayze cover)
*That's the name that the file says, but I can't find any evidence of such a DJ. I know it's not the Jan Wayne or Phonkillaz version, among others. Who knew there were so many techno remakes/remixes of this schmaltzy, uh, classic?

Humppa!

You've been craving it your whole life without even realizing it: Finnish polka/oopmah (humppa, to those with Finnish leanings) covers of the hits of yesterday and today. And, lemme tell you, Erkelaiset will give them to you in spades. It's just up to you to rifle through their immense catalogue and listen to the songs repeatedly in order to try to discern what's what. (A procedure I've still not completed. You'd be surprised how difficult it can be to suss out even the most familiar tunes when rendered in a foreign language by an oompah band who changes all of the titles to incorporate the word "humppa.")

As one who's only familiar with Latin-based languages and, of course, English, I have no idea whether the lyrics come even close to proper translations of the songs. I'm guessing not due to the aforementioned humppa in each title. Perhaps some of the Scandinavian readers (I know you're out there, I check my stats) can shed some light on the situation. Until then, this is all we have to go on:

Elakelaiset "Humppa (Zombie)" (Finnish Cranberries cover)

Elakelaiset "Humpatarzan (Monkey Wrench)" (Finnish Foo Fighters cover)

Elakelaiset "Heil Humppa! (Kids in America)" (Finnish Kim Wilde cover)

Somewhere in the crowd there's you.

I was going to host a copy of Salma & Sabina singing Abba's "Super Trouper" because,
along with Shaun Cassidy's Born Late and Pat Benatar's Precious Time, Abba's Super Trouper was one of the first albums I actually paid for as a child and listened to repeatedly. That explains a lot about my eclectic and often questionable taste in music, doesn't it? I digress. Anyhow. Abba is one of the most-covered acts out there (not to mention worshipped by a the slew of tribute bands that exist), presumably because they were brilliantly sentimental dance-pop craftsmenpeople.

Anyhow, luckily, I just remembered that this track (as well as the other Abba songs Salma & Sabina have done) is already featured on April Winchell's awesome multimedia page, along with many other bizarre delights, covers and otherwise. Get thee over there!

This strange little piece of outsider audio comes from the 1981 album, Salma & Sabina Sing Abba in Hindi. Scroll down to the April 3 post over at the 365 Days Project to read an excerpt from the cassette cover, as well as to take a gander at these lovely ladies in their convertible.

And stay tuned, I'll be posting other odd foreign stuff a little later today.

Edit: Winchell's site appears to be down temporarily, sorry about that. It was working fine when I wrote this post. I'd say check back later today or tomorrow to see if it's up.

Feeling so frustrated, even antiquated, 'cause you can't update me.

Many thanks to reader DK who turned me onto this downloadable cover album. (The page's intro says the tracks are no longer downloadable, but I didn't have a problem getting them.) I already had about half of the tracks featured there, but I didn't know from whence they came. Embarrassingly, one of the bands featured is my good friend Jason's (I once posted a song of his) band, The Danglers, so I feel as if I should've already been in the know about it. Likewise, former Zero Hour artist The Multiple Cat is there as well. Eh, what can you do?

Unrelated: VH1 Classics is my heroin. I never in a million years expected to see TMBG's "She Was a Hotel Detective" while randomly flipping channels. Likewise, earlier today I was stunned into silence by the horror of Rod Stewart's "Infatuation." Ah, I miss the days when stalking was cool. And don't even get me started on John Mellencamp's hair in "Cherry Bomb." Cover-related: I still see tracers from Three Dog Night's "Try a Little Tenderness" video. Yep. Heroin. Damn, a Ned's Atomic Dustbin video that's not "Grey Cell Green"? I, uh, gotta go.

I guess you're wondering how I knew.

Admittedly, thanks to my lousy slow computer, I'm a bit behind on my MP3 blog reading. Therefore, I missed Loki posting this classic punk cover by the Slits that, I swear, I was a day or two away from posting myself.

Similarly, Chris over at Fluxblog has posted a few new (Kate Bush and Outkast) covers here.

This ain't a song for the brokenhearted.

Welcome to all the new Rochester, NY, readers. I hope you enjoy your stay.

Ida "Everybody Knows This is Nowhere" (Neil Young cover)
Ida is one of my favorite bands and they have some of my favorite covers, so choosing which to use was difficult, but I was in a kinda country mood—well, until I stumbled on the last two tracks, anyhow—so this track won out. It's light and airy and folksy and pretty and, well, just plain Ida-esque.

Kelly Hogan & John Wesley Harding "I'm a Little Bit Country, I'm a Little Bit Rock 'n' Roll" (Donnie & Marie Osmond cover)
A perfect song choice from two decidedly more rocky of our alt-country/alt-folk superstars. JWH has been a long-time favorite of mine, and not solely because a few of his albums were released by Zero Hour, a former obsession I detail here. Actually, I think I first stumbled on JWH and his Billy Bragg-esque wit, cynicism and folkishness, via his track, "When the Beatles Hit America," which was on one of the Just Say ... comps back in the day. Kelly Hogan, on the other hand, despite being known to me for years, is someone whose oeuvre I'm just beginning to explore and enjoy. Her voice is that awesome combination of power and subtlety and Southern twang that makes me wish I'd been born to a musical family in Georgia. And if I ever want to meet her, rumor has it I can swing by the Hideout and watch her play or pay her for whiskey. Accessible artists rule.

This you-really-can't-do-much-with-a-song-like-this-but-it's-fun track comes from one of the three all-cover compilations released by Chicago's own Pravda Records, 20 More Explosive Fantastic Rockin' Mega Smash Hit Explosions! These comps mostly feature Chicago-area artists rehashing old K-Tel radio hits and is, as most all-cover comps are, full of hits and misses.

Pastel Vespa "Living on a Prayer" (Bon Jovi cover)
This is where the country ends. Brazilian-born (but currently living in Australia) chanteuse Pastel Vespa (her real name, it appears), is my new hero. I've long been waiting for the day in which I'd hear a Bon Jovi song rendered in an immensely listenable fashion. (Don't get me wrong, I was a big Bon Jovi fan back in the day, but most modern covers of their work are unbearable.) If you liked the Nouvelle Vague track a few entries ago and/or any of the loungey Japanese tracks I seem particularly obsessed with, this is for you.

Boy Division "It's My Life" (Bon Jovi cover)
My friend Matt and I have had a few discussions about forming a band that solely performs covers but that isn't your standard cover band. You know, we'd just be a band who happens to sing other people's songs but is so innovative and experimental that we'd make each song our own. A lofty goal, to be sure, but one that apparently others have had. Yes, Germany's own Boy Division has beaten us to the punch. Fortunately, a quick sampling of their covers lends me to believe that they weren't as interested in making each cover sound different from one another, but it's all, um, interesting to say the least. Like what you here? Check out a few of their other covers here.

The next post will have a song, I promise.

Trust me, I don't want drama to be a regular part of this blog (I have a Live Journal for that kind of shit, thank you very much), but it appears some people are baffled by what is my apparent hypocrisy. Yes, I suppose it's bad karma for me to post songs without a copyright holder's consent and that I subsequently somehow cosmically deserve it when people hotlink directly to my files. Whatever. What bugs me most about discovering that fellow bloggers are hotlinking to my files is the fact that bloggers in particular should know the amount of time and effort it takes to find these and write about them. And I'd like an accurate as possible count of how many people are visiting and/or are downloading files. And while I'm not some wide-eyed, naive, hippy type, it still just seems rude to me to do purposely do something you know bothers someone else. Sigh. Maybe it's old-fashioned to be polite and expect people to return the favor, and maybe I'm somehow uncool because of it, but I don't care. It's what I think. But, until I figure out how, I can't stop anyone from doing it. So, go ahead, if you're happy being that sort of person.

It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it.

Perhaps this makes me seem uptight, which is fine since I often am, but I think it's in poor taste when other sites or bloggers link directly to my music files. So, yeah, I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't do that. A hyperlink to the specific entry takes the same amount of time to create and it brings people to my blog, which last time I checked, was the purpose of my creating it. I'd offer you the same courtesy.

It couldn't be me and be her in between without you.

If the covers I posted earlier aren't enough for you, Stereogum has some live covers here, as well as the John Eddie cover of the Cure that's in the sidebar and which is from one of the first all-cover various artist compilations CDs I ever bought, Elektra's now out-of-print 40th Anniversary Rubaiyat.

I'm a song written by the hands of God.

The following tracks come from a mostly charming little Irish benefit compilation called Even Better than the Real Thing, Vol. 1, which was put out by an Irish radio station and which is apparently still on the charts there. A lot of it reminds me of that Luka Bloom cover of LL Cool J's "I Need Love" in the early '90s. Maybe all Irish acts perform covers the same way. Maybe not. Either way, it's still better than the millions of god-awful hardcore or nu-metal tribute albums out there. If you feel you must have it—and are willing, if you're not in Ireland, to pay import prices—you can still find it at places like this. Volume 2 is forthcoming.

Maria Doyle-Kennedy (actress, ex Hothouse Flowers, ex Commitments, etc.) "How You Remind Me" (Nickelback cover)
One of the greatest pleasures in what I refer to as my "sickness," is the discovery of a song I completely hate performed in such a way that I reconsider and come to decide that it's not so much the song that's awful, but it's the band who wrote/originally performed it that I truly despise. Conversely, one of the greatest pains related to my cover addiction is that, once I've finished listening to the intriguing cover a few times and go on my merry way about my day, it is not the cool new cover that gets trapped in my head. Instead, it's the horrifying original and next thing you know, my co-workers, friends and family are subjected to repeated Nickelback impressions as I attempt to release the demon from my brain. This is how I remind me of who I really am.

Roesy "Breathe" (Blu Cantrell & Sean Paul cover)
Okay, I admit it—and I don't even know if this makes me cool or lame, since I'm practically dancehall illiterate—I like Sean Paul. And though this Blu Cantrell track would've probably had less of an impact on me had he not been involved, it's okay enough. Certainly more listenable to me than her gold-digger anthem, "Hit 'em Up Style." Roesy is, admittedly, new to me and I'm thinking I like what he's done. I've been ignoring a lot of modern Nick Drake-influenced artists lately, but this guy has such an interesting timbre to his voice that I'm very interested in checking out his latest album Only Love is real very soon. And he paints too.

Kieran Goss "Underneath Your Clothes" (Shakira cover)
Irish country/folk artist Kieran Goss is apparently fucking huge in his native land, and, until now, I'd never heard of him. Sigh. I'm so American. As for Shakira, I must admit I remained intrigued with her (and her hypnotizing ass shaking) even when she flicked her switch from Spanish angry-girl alt folk rock to English dance pop. Most likely because it's not often that English-language dance pop has lyrics like "lucky my breasts are small and humble so you don't confuse them with mountains." [See and hear the track below.] After listening to this halfway decent cover, however, I always get the Indigo Girls' "Closer to Fine" stuck in my head. Seriously, do their intros sound exactly alike or am I going crazy?

Mundy "Wherever Whenever" (Shakira cover)
Can't get enough Shakira covers? Neither can I or Irish folk stars, it would seem. I once took a Mundy promo home from work, gave it a listen, and promptly dubbed it borecore. I'm not sure my stance has changed, but I do enjoy a nice foreign mope singing about the aforementioned small breasts. Scarily enough, Mundy (I think) also recorded a poppier version of this song that I found whose lyrics were altered so they were about, presumably, football (read: soccer). Um. That's just weird.