I have to let that raga drop.

Sorry again for not hosting my own tracks yet this week, my ISP at home has been having issues, to say the least. [And I recently acquired a DVR unit and a record player, both of which have been monopolizing my time of late.] Until my ISP fixes itself, I hope you don't mind that I keep directing you elsewhere. For instance:

Reader Nik directed me to Music for Maniacs, an MP3 blog dedicated to outsider music which, as such, features a ton of weirdo covers. How I was unaware of this awesome blog previously is beyond me, since it's right up my alley. Right now, there are some pretty cool offerings, including but not limited to Rachid Taha's excellent cover of "Rock the Casbah," which I've been meaning to post myself for a while.

Reader Jonathan alerted me to the existence of Like a Version, a compilation of live covers recorded by Australian youth radio station triple j, which I hope to acquire soon.

Alos, I suspect many of you do this already, but if you're not getting the Coverville podcasts, you're really missing out.

A light that never goes out.

I'm not sure why I've waited this long to hip all you Smiths/Morrissey fans to Our Frank's serious obsession with amassing the largest database of Smiths/Moz tributes and covers, but better late than never, yes? I've been stealing helping myself to his files for years now on my preferred P2P, and I don't see why I should hold back on alerting you to the vastness of his collection. Impressive. And a little scary. But fucking awesome.

Baby, check this out, I've got something to say.

Sorry about the lack of posts, time keeps slipping away from me. I've been planning on posting a handful of relatively popular songs that are covers that no one seems to know are covers, but I got sidetracked.

That idea, however, was partially inspired by They Might Be Giants' version of "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)," which a friend referenced the other day as "the greatest song TMBG ever wrote." Yeah, well, except it was originally a quirky little hit from the '50s and they didn't write it.

Then I started thinking about how much I used to love TMBG, and started some random Googling that led me to a few TMBG-related covers already available on the ol' Internet.

For instance:

Here you can download a reworking of "Istanbul (Not Constantinople" entitled "The Disarmament Song" as sung by Ellen Bernfeld, who was the voice of the Misfits' Pizzazz on Jem and the Holograms.

The downloads section of the Media page over at the celtic/bluegrass/pop-rock band Carbon Leaf's site is full of covers, including a live version of "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)."

If you scroll down to "Non-Album Tracks" on this page, you can find a scary, off-key version of "Older" by the Snot Patties. There's a Modest Mouse cover there as well.

A band called Very Low Sodium has a pretty good cover of "Destination Moon" on its site.

There was a tribute CD available at one time called We Might Be Giants Too, which I believe began as a downloadable album via TMBG.org and which I don't have. Then there was a rumor that a second was coming out. Don't know if that ever happened, but you can hear one of its potential tracks—"Moving to the Sun" as performed by Father Bingo and the Legion of Decency (as well as a Dead Milkmen cover)—here.

A hip new TMBG tribute CD is hitting the streets soon, and you can hear snippets of a few of the tracks by visiting its My Space page. I'm particularly excited to see that the CD's producer has recorded his own poppy version of my favorite TMBG track, "Narrow My Eyes." And the Hotel Lights are doing another fave, "The End of the Tour." Exciting.

On a weirder tip, I wish I had the money right now to buy steel-drum cover band (who knew?) Apocalypso's album, because I am positively dying to hear their version of "Man, It's So Loud in Here." (You can hear a few of the other non-TMBG covers over at CD Baby.)

So, yeah, that's what I have for you today. Hopefully I'll get a minute tonight to post some actual tracks for you, TMBG-related and otherwise. Hope this tides you over a bit.

We can be like they are. Come on, baby!

I've spent a good part of the weekend making my friend Jovan a multi-disc compilation of "the gayest stuff in Liza's PC"—see here and here—and I just realized I should post some stuff here too. My holiday weekend was the lamest ever. I'm sure there were barbecues and get-togethers and goings on, I just happened not to be invited to any. So, lest you believe me "cool," now you know the truth. I'm a sad, sad soul. And I will die alone. But Blue Oyster Cult knows how to console me and ready me for the end, yes? (Sorry for the lack of umlauts. I'm lazy about my HTML, yo.)

The Beautiful South "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" (Blue Oyster Cult cover)
Fey British jazz-pop death.

Clint Ruin and Lydia Lunch "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" (Blue Oyster Cult cover)
Punk-staple death.

Apollo 440 "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" (Blue Oyster Cult cover)
Techno-pop death.

Unto Ashes "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" (Blue Oyster Cult cover)
Pretty, ethereal, folk-goth death.

H.I.M. "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" (Blue Oyster Cult cover)
Hard-rock glam-goth Finnish death.

Andy McCoy and Pelle Miljoona "Kuin Romeo Ja Julia [(Don't Fear) The Reaper]" (Blue Oyster Cult cover)
Mainstream Finnish death.

Goo Goo Dolls "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" (Blue Oyster Cult cover)
"Grunge" death. (Surprisingly slightly more punk-sounding than the Ruin/Lunch cover.)

Oh, and thanks again for all the Threadless love. By the way, they have a few brand-new geektastic designs up now, if you're interested. The $10 sale ends Sunday.

Other voices, other rooms.

The Live Journal Audiography community is having a covers theme right now. Head over there to find lots of people posting covers, some of which I've posted here previously and many I have not. Be warned, however, that most users in that community use You Send It to host their files, so the extraction can take a while.

Also, thanks to all of you who are still buying stuff at Threadless' $10 sale. My friends who will be getting free shirts as a result thank you.

The only thing I ever really wanted to say was wrong.

Scrawl "Public Image" (P.I.L. cover)
I used to really have a thing for Scrawl (and P.I.L., come to think of it) back in the day.

Killing Heidi "Tomorrow" (Silverchair cover)
Australian band I'd never heard of covers Australian band I wish I'd never heard of.

Tin Tin Out "Here's Where the Story Ends" (Sundays cover)
Not different enough from the original (or good enough to exist). But whatever.

Morgan Fisher as Hybrid Kids as British Standard Unit "D'Ya Think I'm Sexy" (Rod Stewart cover)
Former keyboardist for Mott the Hoople asks some friends to help him create wacky covers and makes up band names to go along with them because we needed a industro-synth version of this so desperately.

Stephan Eicher "Sweet Jane" (Velvet Underground cover)
Most covers of "Sweet Jane" are syrupy and not at all very different from the original—most of them.

That's what I'm paid for.

Themes are great and all, but I prefer random smatterings. (That and I apparently feel like testing the true strength of my bandwidth.) So here goes ...

The Konki Duet "Il Fait Tout Gris (Fade to Grey)" (Visage cover)
Electronic J-Pop with 1960s-era honey-dripping French vocal stylings? Don't mind if I do.

Bruce Willis "Under the Boardwalk" (comp. Resnick/Young)
Help us.

Shivaree "The Fat Lady of Limbourg" (Brian Eno cover)
I've been aware of Shivaree for a while now, but man, did their presence on the Kill Bill Vol. 2 soundtrack give them a real boost or what? Good for them. Any band who covers this track is at least a little okay in my book.

Shiina Ringo "Yer Blues" (Beatles cover)
I want more hard-rocking, guttural Japanese goddesses to cover songs like this.

Manic Street Preachers "We Are All Bourgeois Now" (McCarthy cover)
The band McCarthy was but a blip on my radar during its heyday in the mid to late '80s, but I liked this cover enough to reinvestigate them. Jangly and fun. Check 'em out.

Emilie Simon "I Wanna be Your Dog" (Iggy Pop cover)
I know I've been Iggy-heavy lately, but I suspect you love it.

Ronnie Ong "Buttons and Bows" (comp. Ray Evans)
WFMU says the liner notes of this one refer to Ong as "Singapore's answer to Trini Lopez." Did any one ever ask? Whatever. I'm always down for 1960s Asian fuzz rock.

Sufjan Stevens "The One I Love" (REM cover)
Dear Sufjan: Marry me. Or just meet me for coffee. Or something.

June Tabor "Pharaoh" (Richard Thompson cover)
I'm shocked by how much I like this.

Visage "2525" (Zager and Evans cover)
Before "Fade to Grey" [see above] became their biggest hit, Visage released this cover as their first single. Oh, new wave! If only it would make a comeback...

Donovan's Brain "Smothered in Hugs" (Guided by Voices cover)
This is the worst GBV cover I've ever heard. And that's saying something.

Not lame.

Sheesh. Between Comcast (whose service has been iffy at best lately) and Blogger (whose service seems to have been in and out as well) and power outages during thunderstorms, it's taken me three or four days to make this damned post. If it weren't for the fact that I was able to spend the last few days watching Freaks and Geeks DVDs, I'd have gone postal.

Aaaaaanyhow ... local reader/photographer/general cute geeky type Peter sent me these tracks from a new Cars tribute—click here to hear sample MP3s, read band descriptions and buy the disc—he helped wrangle. Nice. Many of Not Lame's cover comps (as well as it's bubblegum, psych and powerpop comps) are pretty worthwhile. I've long been a fan of Right to Chews and the like. And the 1984 Cars cocnert was the first concert I actually chose to go to.

Damone "Just What I Needed" (The Cars cover)

The Argument "Hello Again" (The Cars cover)

Bleu "You Might Think" (The Cars cover)

Not Cars-related: Parents, kids at heart and furries might be interested in checking out the Wormseye video for the Kidz Bop version of "Since U Been Gone" found here. (Thanks, Don!)

Seis de Mayo*

The Beat Boys "O Meu Tamborim (My Green Tambourine)" (Lemon Pipers cover in Portuguese)
Love it! This is from one of the Brazilian Nuggets comps, which are, for the most part, completely awesome.

Capital Inicial "O Passageiro (The Passenger)" (Iggy Pop cover in Portuguese)
If this were an American band covering this in English, I'd probably find it predictably "alternative." But Brazilian rockers are cuter, so this is much better.

Roberta Miranda "A Mulher Em Mim " (Shania Twain cover in Portuguese)
Sigh. Nothing good can come from the mediocre covering the mediocre. Even in a foreign tongue.

Rebekah Del Rio "Llorando (Crying)" (Roy Orbison cover in Spanish, from Mulholland Drive)
Even though I've read what it was all supposed to mean, I still don't really get it.

Los Rockin' Rebeldes "Danny Boy" (Traditional song in Spanish—people are still debating its original composer)
This is freaky, It starts off with a Mexican Scott Walker/Rufus Wainwright vibe and jumps into garage psych. Que sorpresa!

Los Locos del Ritmo "Hey Joe" (Jimi Hendrix cover in Spanish)
This has more a sense of immediacy to me than the original. Or maybe I've just had too much tequila. (This track as well as the one above are from Mexican Rock and Roll Psych-Out, which rules.)

Paralisis Permanente "Quiero Ser Tu Perro (I Want to be Your Dog)" (Iggy Pop cover in Spanish)
Apparently Latin American and/or Spanish grupos love Iggy. And who can blame them?

Braun (and the Mob) "Da Flash an da Funk (Flashlight)" (Parliament cover in Spanish)
Yay for glitchy funk from Germany sung in Spanish!

Selena "Fotos Y Recuerdos (Back on the Chain Gang)" (Pretenders cover in Spanish)
Ah, fair Jennifer Lopez Selena! The Spanish lyrics of this song replace the "Chain Gang" idiom with "photos and memories," thus changing the entire tone of the song—a fate I'm sure has befallen many today's selections. Pretty annoying. Had I a chance to see her perform live before her terrible fate, I'd have spent the duration of this song staring at her midriff.

Los Abandoned "Como la Flor" (Selena cover)
Speaking of Selena, she is not above reproach! Chilean/Los Angelean post-punkers rework one of her big hits (the sole track today that was originally performed in Spanish) so you can mosh to it. Or do whatever dance people at Blink-182 concerts do.

*All songs featured today are not solely by Mexican performers, but there are a couple.

I miss you like crazy.

Hey, kids, sorry about the dearth of MP3s this week, I've been a bit queasy the past few days and my priorities shifted. I'll post some soon, I promise. To tide you over until then, you might want to scroll through some of the comments people have left in my past few entries. There you should find a handful of links to strange sites sharing covers.

I never said I wasn't gonna tell nobody.

Oh my god. New Copy, Right? reader Brad Walsh (thanks, ultragrrrl for linking me so he could find me!) has made me ecstatic by letting me in on his electro covers. That anyone would cover Stacey Q's "Two of Hearts" in the first place makes me giddy. That it's actually cool makes it even better. (Does anyone remember Stacey's stint as Cinnamon of The Facts of Life? That was the shit.) And though Crystal Waters' "100% Pure Love" is one of my most hated songs (still not as much as the homeless song), his cover is amusingly refreshing. Check out those covers as well as a few more on his music page. And, while you're there, why not try some remixes and originals too?

I'll probably post some new tracks by Tuesday night.

I know just what it takes to make a pro blush.

Mini Pops "Bette Davis Eyes" (Kim Carnes cover)
Decades before Kidz Bop came along and tried to convince us that kids responded better to today's pop hits when an untalented non-famous adult sang it with a group of kids cheering in the background, there was a group of actual British kids rerecording hits of their era. Apparently the group's producers (go K-tel!) thought getting 8-year-olds to seductively sing songs about a manipulative woman who fucks guys on the floor of her apartment was an awesome idea. And they were so wrong they were almost right. Seriously, if has anyone out there has Mini Pops LPs (or 8-tracks!) and can convert them to MP3s and send them to me, I'd ... well, I don't know what I would do. But I'd be ecstatic. (Thanks, Mark, for this one!)

Gwyneth Paltrow "Bette Davis Eyes" (Kim Carnes cover, from Duets)
And this version is even more disturbing!

Also—not related to kids (or celebrities) singing adult themed-songs but related to covers in general—Steve over at Domino Rally has the Bad Plus doing Iron Man, y'all.

I have people all over the world working for me for free!

Reader Tarek just alerted me that local emo types Canasta have a handful of covers, live and otherwise, available on their audio page—including a pretty little cover of one of my favorite '80s one-hit wonders, Peter Schilling's "Major Tom (Coming Home)." (Actually, I quite enjoyed his "World of Lust and Crime" as well, but no one I know seems to remember that.)

Reader Skott sent a track my way that's kinda interesting (especially if you, like me, are a fan of the Vocoder): David Torn's sons Elijah and Cody covering Alicia Keys' "Falling."

And, you're not going to believe this one, but a record label rep actually sent me something covers-related! Usually I get the standard "Hi, my name's Schmo and I'm a big fan of your site. Please check out [insert sucky band who has no covers available] and consider promoting them for me" crap that I suspect all MP3 bloggers get. But Sean from Redder Records let me in on a few new Kind of Like Spitting (whose covers I quite often enjoy, even!) covers available here. Wonders never cease!

They never wanted to kill; they are not naturally evil ... such things they do just to make themselves more attractive to you. Have they failed?

Alison Moyet "There are Worse Things I Could Do" (from Grease)
I can think of no blue-eyed soul songstress I'd rather hear cover this bad-girls-have-hearts-too classic.

Dogstar "Superstar" (Carpenters cover)
Ah, Keanu. You know it's bad when you're playing bass for a band that probably could've been as successful as Matchbox 20 if only they had half an ounce of charisma. Or a quarter ounce of eyeliner.

J. Church "Last of the Famous international Playboys" (Morrissey cover)
I don't care for this punk cover, but I am glad to see bands covering my favorite Morrissey song.

Rabbit in the Moon "Waiting for the Night" (Depeche Mode cover)
It's a cheesy thing to admit, but I'll have you know that Depeche Mode's Violator was the soundtrack to nearly all of my masturbation from the end of my senior year of high school through to the beginning of my freshman year of college. What a dork I was. [Ponders a blog dedicated to teenage alt.Liza's masturbation songs ... thinks better of it.] This version from Florida's most popular [only?] trancesters is pretty good for what it is. Especially if you've just taken two Vicodin and have a lot of candles burning.

Sexy Sadie "Moonage Daydream" (David Bowie cover)
Speaking of sex:

Dear hot Spanish boys,

You may serenade me with David Bowie anytime. Then we will dance on the beach and have a menage a trois. Or tres. Or quatro. Or cinco. Or whatever. I'm perpetually ready and willing to be tu mama tambien. [Pardon the lack of accent marks. I'm too lazy to look up the proper HTML.]

Love, Liza

Toonces "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" (Cyndi Lauper cover)
I can't find any info online about Toonces. Are they Japanese? German? Finnish? Or simply the product of a Cover Fight? Anyone?

I'll never understand why so many people prefer to be catty when it's just as easy to be nice.

So, someone is calling me out in another blog's comments because, supposedly, the files I'm sharing have viruses. This, of course, is news to me. Hell, I didn't even know it was possible for MP3s to have viruses in them. Does this mean I'm stupid? Perhaps. But I scan my computer (including the folders with MP3s in them) for viruses on a regular basis with regularly updated anti-virus software and I've yet to have anything alert me to viruses. So, if you can shed some light on how this all works by letting me know directly or by giving me some solutions to remedy any perceived problems so that I might fix them, that would be most appreciated. Or maybe you could tell me what proof you have that my files have viruses or tell me which files they are. Or, if you prefer, you can choose the less friendly, totally prickish route and just go badmouthing me elsewhere for something I was completely unaware of.

So, yeah. I would be grateful for any helpful input on this matter.

Let me walk down the highway with my brother in peace.

Hey, kids. A random insomnia-inspired Googling of an old friend—who was once in my best pal Ryan's band back in the day in Bloomington, Indiana—led me to her current band's website, where you can download a cover of her singing Bob Dylan's "Let Me Die in My Footsteps." I knew she was in Chicago since I ran into her a year or so ago at a sushi bar, but haven't made it out to see her band yet. It's now on my to-do list. So, yeah, check it out. Ami has a fucking fantastic voice.

And, while we're talking about my old musical pals from my days in Bloomington and their cover songs, PJ from Sardina—a band I've talked about at length in past entries—has a slew of covers available for download here. (A selection which includes the "Me and My Arrow" cover I once posted last year.)

Oh, and as for friends of the online variety, it's Joy Division cover season over at Spoilt Victorian Child.

It's the best I can do.

It's not my intention, really, to keep up with the one-band megasong entries, but I've had Abba in my head the past few days and, seriously, Abba has to be one of the top three most-covered acts of all time and it's hard to narrow it down to one or two tracks. (Plus, I've been so busy the past few weeks, I haven't been able to post as much as I'd like in general.) I could start an Abba cover site and post eight songs a day for a year and there'd still be millions more. Metal, country, new age, Broadway, teen pop, rockabilly, goth, indie acts? They all cover Abba.

Lush "Hey Hey Helen" (Abba cover)
One of my favorite Abba covers by far. I miss Lush.

A*Teens "Our Last Summer" (Abba cover)
The original version of this song was the one stuck in my head earlier this week. As a child in the late '70s, I wore my Abba albums out and quickly tired of the bigger hits. This song was my first introduction to the pronunciation of Parisian landmarks and may well have been what prompted me to study French instead of German or Spanish once I hit middle school. This song is super-sappy, hence its appeal to an 8-year-old. But, even at 8, the line "and now you're working in a bank/ the family man, the football fan/ and your name is Harry" perplexed me. Had he changed his name since that summer in Paris? I chalked it up to English not being Abba's first language. Aaaanyhow, this song is more obscure than most Abba songs covered, so of course it would be done by one of the most perplexing Abba tribute acts. It seems these young Swedes wanted to experience the same level of fame as their elder countrymen and chose to do so by paying homage to Abba by totally ripping them off. And to think I missed the opportunity of posting this on March 7, which—according to various fan sites— was "International Day of A*Teens World-Wide"!

Mad Heads "Money, Money, Money" (Abba cover)
Ukranian psychobilly, eh? Okay.

Yngwie Malmsteen "Gimme, Gimme, Gimme" (Abba cover)
Aaah, Yngwie! Always rousing us with his lick-filled covers!

Therion "Summernight City" (Abba cover)
Another Swedish band paying homage to their forefathers via gothy Ozzy-influenced death metal.

Gheorghe Zamfir and Dana Dragomir "Chiquitita" (Abba cover)
It's spring in Chicago and you know what that means: Any day now you can expect to hear pan flute wafting up the city streets into your office from the arts and crafts tent fair below. But Zamfir, it ain't. Pan flute at Chicago street fairs is usually South American. This is pan flute from my Romanian brethren. (Although Dana, the world's first female professional pan flautist, currently resides in Abba's Sweden.) Bow before Zamfir, master of the pan flute!

Sensitive New Age Cowpersons "Dancing Queen" (Abba cover)
The scariest four-word combination in the world: Australian bluegrass comic musicians.

Evan Dando "Knowing Me, Knowing You" (Abba cover)
I've made lots of fun of Evan Dando in my day. I'm guessing this is because everyone I've met who looks like him has been either an asshole or a total freak (or both) and because everyone I've ever met who lists the Lemonheads as a favorite act has been either an asshole or a total freak (or both). But that's not really Evan's fault. Is it?

He hit me, but I knew he loved me.

Twice now I've begun writing my newest post, only to have the following message pop up as I'm attempting to save the drafts:

"The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, support@blogger.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error."

Um. Blogger has a lot of nerve trying to blame me.

Let them know we tried.

You know, so far I think the best Google search term with the potential to lead people to my site is "Blake Babies slash." Also, I appreciate all the cover suggestions I've been receiving lately, but—at the risk of approaching the height of snobbery—keep in mind whom you're dealing with. You have to search long and hard to find covers I don't already have or know about. I mean, really, I talked about Dokaka's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" almost a year ago. It's the covers equivalent of commenting to Matthew Perpetua and trying to turn him onto a "new" acts like LCD Soundsystem or the Bloc Party. /end good-natured tongue-in-cheekiness

Yeah. I'll probably start posting again on a more regular basis after the weekend. I just had insomnia so I thought I'd check in.

Aw, what the hell, here's something with which to horrify yourselves:

Mark Oh "When the Children Cry" (White Lion cover)
See, Darwin? Those techno-trance freaks will co-opt anything.

Load up on guns and bring your friends.

A week ago today marked the 11th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's suicide*. (Or murder, if you're one of those irrational freaks in the "Courtney killed him" camp.) Yeah. I don't really care—since depsite liking them I was always shocked at how immensely successful they became and because it annoys me when people with unlimited financial resources are somehow incapable of finding help—but here are a slew of Nirvana covers anyhow. Man, there sure are a lot of Nirvana covers. It was difficult to narrow it down to these lucky 13. (I figure I might as well celebrate my webspace by testing it with as many downloads as possible!)

*And, sadly, this prediction appears not to have come true.

"Smells Like Teen Spirit"

The Bad Plus

Nonex

Rumal Noorkuu

The Scala Choir

"Come As You Are"

Dani Siciliano

Pink Freud

"All Apologies"

Herbie Hancock

Sinead O'Connor

"Verse Chorus Verse"

Scout Niblett

"Breed"

Steve Earle

"On a Plain"

Rogue Wave

"Rape Me"

Richard Cheese

"Heart-Shaped Box"

Evanescence