Covering your contemporaries
I love covers. I love playing covers; i love figuring out how to flip someone else’s song to make it your own. I love listening to covers. In preparation for this post i went through my collection and made up a playlist— according to iTunes i have 82 covers, 5.1 hours of folks playing other folks’ music! So i had to do some trimming. First i cut that list down to only songs i absolutely love. Well, there were still 36 songs on that list. So i pruned that down by only keeping songs where the original and the cover were recorded by musicians working basically contemporary of one another. These are often the best covers i think. But there were still 14 tracks on my list, so i kinda arbitrarily weeded that down to five. I’ll post the others sometime in the future.
The first i just heard today via Copy, Right? which is a great covers-only mp3 blog that i think is out of Chicago, it’s Jon Auer (Posies, Big Star) doing the Guided By Voices song Gold Star For Robot Boy [2.5MB] [MP3]. This is what i love about contemporaries covering each other— it’s so easy to imagine Bob Pollard doing his dishes to a Big Star record or Jon Auer throwing Bee Thousand into the tape deck on the Posies tour bus. Aside from all the obvious reasons this cover is great, i love the single unchanging organ note that enters about a minute in and patiently waits for its charming little solo.
I’ve never heard the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, i, uh, tend to avoid things i’m pretty sure i’m not going to like. Sometimes i miss out on stuff surely, but there is so so so much that i do like and am curious about and there is so so so little time! Anyway, don’t know nothing bout the 3Yeahs but this Arcade Fire version of their song Maps [3MB] [MP3] is really great. By the way, the Arcade Fire recently overhauled their website and while i have no love for Flash, it is a thing of beauty.
I also know almost nothing about Kim Salmon. I heard a couple Scientists songs years ago, but that’s about it. This version of his song Obvious is Obvious [4.5MB] [MP3] by one of my longtime favorites the Dirty Three is utterly, profoundly gorgeous. The Dirty Three played a show in London last week that i fleeting considered buying airfare to… they performed Ocean Songs in its entirety! Remind me to tell you sometime about the 9 months i spent laying on the floor of our apartment with R’s cat on my stomach listening exclusively to the first side of Ocean Songs over and over, getting up only to place the needle back at the record’s start.
I adore the singing saw choir in the original version of Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, having that replaced by a really rich sounding cello and actual singing in Matt Pond PA‘s new version [4MB] [MP3] is a nice touch.
A few years ago, Silkworm put out a covers record called You Are Dignified, that was all songs by working bands they admired. I never knew Michael well, but we played together a couple times and i ran into him at Electrical once or twice. Fuller knew him pretty well and that’s how i was fortunate to spend a bit of time with him. I dunno if i’ve been thinking about him or his spirit or what, but i’ve been listening to You Are Dignified a lot lately. Let’s Kill Saturday Night [3MB] [MP3], which is a Robbie Fulks song, is my fave off that record… sloppy and mournful and i dunno… perfect.
And lastly, one from the under the bed. Atlas and i recorded this four or five years ago. If i remember correctly, she had a terrible cold at the time, but still sounds gorgeous and sad. I have no idea why i thought i need those little guitar solos between every verse, but the guitar tone is pretty hott. So, the Notes and Scratches & Atlas playing Turn it On [5MB] [MP3], by the Flaming Lips.
UPDATE: hey, except for our own, time’s up on these mp3s.