WTF covers

[davis]

us PE folks live in a different world where musical tastes are concerned.

Congratulations; you're almost as out of touch as I am.

I'm well aware of this/total agreement My sister says she knows nothing about popular music after the 70's, and at a family gathering when my wife mentioned Jonathan Richman, her/my sister-in-law didn't know who he was but said she, and this is verbatim: "figured he's some weird musician Dave likes." Any time I've played music for people, 99% of time the reaction has been "That's different." Even when I was a little kid and hadn't heard the Beach Boys yet, and my sister's boyfriend (now husband) played a Beach Boys Concert album and I said I really liked it, as much as I liked the Beatles, my sister blurted out "you just like that because it's different." So there you go. I'm an innate weirdo & music nerd, and that's okay with me. I'm comfortable with who I am. now on with the thread!

[No Pride]

Congratulations; you're almost as out of touch as I am.

I would be too if I didn't have to play contemporary pop tunes (amongst other stuff) to make a living. I didn't want to have a "real job" and playing music that I'd never even listen to on my own is part of the price I have to pay for that. I know it sounds like I'm complaining (and I guess I am), but I'd still rather make a living with my guitar in my hands than have to actually work.

We really wish you would.

Thanks, Bill. Whenever someone says that it makes me smile. I wish I would too, fwiw. It's just easier said than done.

[walt]

Tito Puente covers Brubeck's(Desmond's) "Take Five".

[GuitarGeek]

It's only recently in history that musicians were also songwriters. Those *are* two different disciplines. Some great players would be better off letting others write the songs (Yngwie Malmsteen, anyone?). So it's a bit silly to hate covers. SOME covers, I can totally agree with...

I still maintain the best record Yngwie ever played on was that first Alcatrazz album. I remember him bragging in Guitar Player about how he wrote every single word and note on the Rising Force records, except for the one that Joe Lynn Turner sang on, as if he had written some great songs or something.

[bill g]

It's just easier said than done.

Understood. All too well.

[No Pride]

Tito Puente covers Brubeck's(Desmond's) "Take Five".

Not bad, but he should've renamed it "Take Four."

Understood. All too well.

I figured you'd get it.

[progeezer]

Since I have zero writing & creating skills, I'll always be more than grateful that I had an 8 year hiatus from working a straight job to tour with a cheesey lounge cover band. I'm so old that this was before AIDS had found its way here from Haiti.

[JKL2000]

Most covers are bloody awful anyway. I don't ever want to hear covers. Doing a cover IMO demonstrates a lack of creativity or drive. It's a lazy thing to do.
Very few are better than the original anyway, and even when they are, they are still covers i.e. one artist simply using the creativity of another artist and the success of the track.

I assume you're including covers of traditional songs, like Traffic's John Barleycorn Must Die and Fairport Convention's Matty Groves.

[Dan Roth]

this is one of my favorite covers ever. EVER.

Totally agree with this - what a fantastic rendition. And the composer of the song plays the piano on it.


There was another very different take of this, a very Blood, Sweat & Tears-style by the group Chase which is pretty good in its own right:

[PeterG]

What a load of crap!

Same to you.

[Scrotum Scissor]

That purpoted "supergroup" with Neal Stolt renders every poor cover sound as lackluster as their own. "In Held 'Twas In I" - yeah, right.

[JKL2000]

Most covers are bloody awful anyway. I don't ever want to hear covers. Doing a cover IMO demonstrates a lack of creativity or drive. It's a lazy thing to do.
Very few are better than the original anyway, and even when they are, they are still covers i.e. one artist simply using the creativity of another artist and the success of the track.

You also must be including jazz covers of standards, like Coleman Hawkins' version of Body and Soul, or Art Tatum's All the Things You Are, but I think it's a crazy stance.

[trurl]

I personally think that Jose Feliciano's Light My Fire is definitive. Sue me

[Rarebird]

Me three.

The guys can play, but I still prefer the original. If I loose my prog credibility, so be it.

[progeezer]

Prog cred is massively overrated, Renate.

[bigjohnwayne]

Mel Torme covered a couple of the songs from Steely Dan singer/keysman Donald Fagen's solo album, The Nightfly



Here's that song about Cuba "The Goodbye Look" done with white-bread scat singing a-plenty

[JJ88]

That's a whole other topic, isn't it? 'Inappopriate' covers by crooners.

Frank Sinatra has a particularly noteworthy one, his version of 'Mrs Robinson' is jaw-dropping- you can hear his contempt. Tony Bennett had an album of 'modern pop' in the 60s with him in flared trousers on the front, which he has decried many times over the years. I read somewhere about Jack Jones doing Randy Newman's 'Love Story' as well. The only one who I felt never disgraced himself in this category was Andy Williams.

[markwoll]

In that theme, don't forget:
Pat Boone's In a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy
metalmood.jpg
Allegedly got him in trouble with the Christians
Also Black Hole Sun has been covered many times by a wide range of 'stylists'

mark

[Oreb]

That's a whole other topic, isn't it? 'Inappopriate' covers by crooners.

I would be absolutely amazed if Fagen was anything other than really flattered by the Velvet Fog's attention.

Of course there are times when crooners shouldn't

(from 1:57:

[GuitarGeek]

In that theme, don't forget:
Pat Boone's In a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy
metalmood.jpg
Allegedly got him in trouble with the Christians
mark

Yeah, he was the host of a radio show that aired on Christian radio stations all over the country, and a number of them dropped him after that, though I'm not sure if it was the album itself or the appearance he did on some awards show where he came onstage wearing a leather vest, no shirt, and shades, which I think upset a lot of people as well.

I've never actually heard the whole album, but the songs I have heard I thought worked quite well. I think there were two reasons for that:

1. Pat learned how to sing the songs correctly. You can't croon rock n roll, the way he did when he sang Ain't That A Shame and Tutti Frutti back in the 50's. You gotta dig in and sort of deliver the songs with a degree of swagger, which he did.

2. The big band arrangements. They took the guitar riffs and translated them into horn charts, which I think worked perfectly. It's similar to the what Ella Fitzgerald did with her version of Sunshine Of Your Love, which I think also rocked.

BTW, I wish I could remember the name of the singer/pianist who I saw do a piano trio rendition on, I think the Craig Ferguson show a few years ago. It was a woman, and she did as a totally straight jazz ballad, and it totally worked. The best part about it was, except for a little vocal riff at the end, she dispensed with the guitar riff altogether, thus of course making the song completely unrecognizable, until she started singing. Brilliant!

[GuitarGeek]

But I'm thinking more of the 60s tendency to give the crooners 'modern' material. Good singers, good songs, but somehow it fell flat.

A lot of country singers too, and it wasn't just during the 60's. Tennessee Ernie Ford's yawn inducing white gospel rendition of Let It Be comes to mind.

Another one that offends one's sensibilities is Frankie Randall's attempt at I Can See For Miles. One wishes it had been Randall that Townshend kicked in the plums, not a plainclothes policeman!

And you also had people like Mae West doing Beatles songs and so forth. The Golden Throats series of comps that Rhino put out back in the late 80's pretty much gives a good overview of some of the worst examples.

And I think it was Sebastian Cabot who did a spoken word album, of Bob Dylan songs. Oy!

[JKL2000]

Fish has done some great covers. Yes , his I Know What I Like is not great, but his versions of these are:

Five Years - Bowie
Something in the Air - Thunderclap Newman
The Boston Tea Party - Alex Harvey

[Garden Dreamer]

I like when a band completely reworks a song from a different genre and puts its own stamp on it - great example = Humble Pie. Five of the seven songs on their smash Rockin' the Fillmore album are covers of old blues and soul tunes and some they never even recorded on studio albums.

I'm a lot less impressed when bands try to do sound-alike covers of music from within their own genre... like a prog band covering another prog band's tune.

And then there's this...

[Frankie]

Cover versions are or can be great but 'ironic' covers are the worst (eg 'Highway to Hell as an acoustic ballad and vice versa)

[Dan Roth]

There is a band out of Sweden called Hellsongs that specialize in re-working rock and metal songs into acoustic or "lounge" style with a female vocalist out front. Some don't work, but some are really good and haunting, imho.

This is their rendition of Iron Maiden's "Run to the Hills":


and their take on Slayer's "Seasons in the Abyss":