Monday, February 28, 2005

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)
  • Thursday, February 24, 2005

    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.
  • Tuesday, February 22, 2005

    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.
  • Monday, February 21, 2005

    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.
  • Tuesday, February 15, 2005

    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.
  • Wednesday, February 09, 2005

    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)
  • Saturday, February 05, 2005

    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.

    Wednesday, February 02, 2005

    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.
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