Under the covers with the Counting Crows

It’s been raining covers and rarities on the Counting Crows‘ MySpace page lately, and right now they’ve got up 4 great studio tracks from their so-called “Under The Covers” sessions. Their distinctive touch on each of these songs is thoroughly enjoyable, even on the Rod Stewart/Faces ditty (a man who, in general, I cannot abide, due to flagrant violations such as these).

Adam Duritz fills us in:

To celebrate what a great week we had in the studio, I decided this was going to be Covers Week on our Myspace page, so all the songs will be from the unreleased “Under The Covers” we recorded by ourselves one weekend during the “Hard Candy” sessions when Lilywhite was out of town.

Dig it cats, these are the songs we love. Hope you love ’em too.

You Ain’t Going Nowhere (Dylan cover) – Counting Crows

Ooh La La (Faces cover) – Counting Crows

Blues Run The Game (Jackson Frank cover) – Counting Crows

Start Again (Teenage Fanclub cover) – Counting Crows

My PS – I think I prefer the breathless purity-of-the-moment with this live version of Blues Run The Game, even though I can’t complain on the good studio version:

Blues Run The Game (live) – Counting Crows

Someone bring it on home, already :: Sam Cooke gets covered

“Bring It On Home To Me” is probably my favorite song that Sam Cooke ever penned and recorded. Even though it’s self-flagellating sad sap fare, it always sounds to me like slow dancing barefoot on a dusty front porch somewhere. I am not alone in my love.

Spurred on by the recent cover that Britt Daniel (of Austin band Spoon) contributed to the Bridging The Distance album, I decided to borrow a page from Dodge and started investigating the high points and travesties in the history of covers of “Bring It On Home To Me.” The versions are legion. The good ones . . . are few. It’s nearly impossible to improve upon the original, so I was pretty hard to please with these.

WOULDN’T HURT TO ADD THESE TO YOUR COLLECTION
Bring It On Home To Me – The Animals (in their distinctive rising sun style)
Bring It On Home To Me – Britt Daniel (of Spoon) (clapping, egg shaker, minimalist)
Bring It On Home To Me – Eddie Floyd (big bassline, flirty keys, that Stax sound)
Bring It On Home To Me – Otis Redding & Carla Thomas (worth it just to hear Otis sing “bring your little self –fine foxy self– on home”)
Bring It On Home To Me – The Ramones (live, more sedate than I’d think – no “1234!”)
Bring It On Home To Me – Rory Gallagher (wailing fuzzy Stratocasters and blues harp)
Bring It On Home To Me -The Von Bondies (winsome garage-girl rock)
You Really Got A Hold On Me/Bring It On Home To Me – The Zombies (hey, that’s smoooth)

THE BEATLES GET THEIR OWN CATEGORY
Bring It On Home To Me/Oh! Darlin – The Beatles (snippet in studio, A/B Road, 1-27-69)
Bring It On Home To Me – Paul McCartney (from his Choba B CCCP album)
Bring It On Home To Me/Send Me Some Lovin’ – John Lennon (fantastic)
Bring It On Home To Me/Remember – George Harrison (messing around in the studio)

WHICH LEADS TO SOME MERSEYBEAT VERSIONS
Bring It On Home To Me – The Big Three
Bring It On Home To Me – The Merseybeats

THEN THE “EH” VERSIONS
Bring It On Home To Me – Al Christian (Georgia harmonica & gospel soul)
Bring It On Home To Me – Aretha Franklin (bring that big band)
Bring It On Home To Me – Back Porch Blues (sleepy harmonica and female vocals)
Bring It On Home To Me – Ben Mills
Bring It On Home To Me – Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd St Rhythm Band
Bring It On Home To Me – The Commitments (from the movie)
Bring It On Home To Me – Cool Jerks
Bring It On Home To Me – Dave Mason (of Traffic)
Bring It On Home To Me – Diana Ross & The Supremes (too cloying and sappy – no angst!)
Bring It On Home To Me – Dixie Chicks (pre-Natalie Maines, very twangy)
Bring It On Home To Me – The Drifters
Bring It On Home To Me – George Benson & Al Jarreau (contemporary gospel/soul-lite)
Bring It On Home To Me – James Cotton
Bring It On Home To Me – Lou Rawls
Bring It On Home To Me – Louisiana Red (dirty straight blues)
Bring It On Home To Me – Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels (beautiful guitar intro)
Bring It On Home To Me – Percy Sledge
Bring It On Home To Me – Robson & Jerome
Bring It On Home To Me/You Send Me – Rod Stewart & Faces (live)
Bring It On Home To Me – Sam & Dave (brassy Stax soul)
Bring It On Home To Me – Shirley Ellis (as we would expect, peppy and clappy)
Bring It On Home To Me (live) – Van Morrison (yeah, not so fond of this one, Van)
Bring It On Home To Me – Wilson Pickett
Bring It On Home To Me – Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band
Bring It On Home To Me – ZZ Hill (add a little rasp to it)
Addendum: Bill Janovitz (Buffalo Tom)’s cover

IN GENERAL I OBJECT TO REGGAE-LITE VERSIONS OF THIS SONG
Bring It On Home To Me – Cornell Campbell
Bring It On Home To Me – Jimmy Clarke

WHAT IS AND NEVER SHOULD BE
Bring It On Home To Me – Michael Bolton (no comment)
Bring It On Home To Me – Millie Small (deviant chipmunks on crack?)
Bring It On Home To Me – Rita Coolidge (Waaay too pretty and sappy)
Bring It On Home To Me – Rita MacNeil (0 for 2 on the Ritas. Showy gospel vocals that grate me)
Bring It On Home To Me – Sonny & Cher (because it’s Sonny and Cher)

. . . But the grandpappy OG sweet fantastic:

Bring It On Home To Me – Sam Cooke

Bring It On Home To Me (live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963) – Sam Cooke
(I think that the first time I heard this version was the first time I realized Sam Cooke wasn’t all sweetness, smoothness, and Cupid)

After screening all these cover versions, all I really want is Sam.
Dang, what a flawless song.

Friends, lovers, and bread.

I literally woke up with this Josh Rouse cover in my head this morning, and laid there barely half-awake with the sun streaming in between that crack in the blinds, these crystalline opening notes running on repeat. It really is a sunrise kind of song. So I decided to temporarily preempt what I was going to post in favor of this cover-licious compilation.

What would possess a bunch of modern-day indie rockers to contribute to a cover album of ’70s AM-radio deluxxe group Bread? All of their stuff forever sounds like it should be listened to on a big ‘ole 12″ vinyl LP whilst wearing platform espadrilles and a loudly patterned shirt. Or maybe just nothing at all. But if you can get past the overarching soft-rockness, the harmonies are tasty, the music has definitely affected the generation of fine music that I like now, and there is a laid-back goodness oozing all over this stuff.

Josh Rouse’s lovely cover is pretty much note-for-note faithful of this ridiculously sad-sap, “please walk all over me because I love you, you goddess” song, but it absolutely works with his striking tenor, and is nice to wake up to on brain radio:

It Don’t Matter To Me (Bread cover) – Josh Rouse

It Don’t Matter To Me – Bread
(add that to the list of worst band names to Google, along with Cake and Live)

Friends and Lovers: The Songs of Bread was released in 2005 (actually, two years ago to the day as luck would have it) and in addition to Rouse also features Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer of The Posies, Cake, Erlend Oye (of Kings of Convenience), Oranger, Rachel Goswell (of Mojave 3), and Bart Davenport (of Honeycut).

Friends and Lovers (Bread cover) – Erlend Oye

Man alive, listening to this stuff –the originals and these covers– makes me feel like an 8-year-old again, riding my bike really fast, or sitting on the cracked tan vinyl backseat of my dad’s dusty green Datsun with the radio on. You don’t realize how much Bread you’ve probably passively absorbed in your childhood. Rhino Records recently released a Best Of Bread album as well, if you just can’t get enough.

And if you’re still too insecure to fully bask in side of your brain that wants to love Bread, let John McCrea of Cake excoriate you as he defends their cover of “Guitar Man”:

“Yeah, why make fun of a well-written song unless you’re an insecure person that needs to use music almost like insecure middle-age people use fine wine,” he said. “You’re using music as a badge. And simultaneously I think what you do is drain the actual joy out of it, and it becomes somewhat of a calcified exoskeleton of your pathetic and, I guess, not fully defined ego.”
– John McCrea, Cake

So there.

.

Oakland’s Street To Nowhere covers Leonard Cohen

Last Tuesday I saw Street To Nowhere again, opening for Rocky Votolato. Turns out this was kind of the third time I saw them because they opened for that awesome Format show I was at last year at the Cervantes. But I was either late or not paying attention that night, so my loss. They put on a really good set this time around, showing more of their “singer-songwriter” side due to the nature of the following acts, and less of the Weezer-meets-Bright-Eyes rock. Drummer Joey still broke both snare drum and drumstick by song #3, a foreseeable mishap if you were watching the pounding he was giving to those bad boys. Sweet.

In any case, one of the songs that STN included in their set was a surprising Leonard Cohen cover of Chelsea Hotel #2 (I mean, what are the kids covering nowadays from Cohen other than Hallelujah?). After the show, leadman Dave Smallen told me that at the above-mentioned Denver show last year they were kind of off, partly because Dave’s entire extended family was there to distract him. I asked if he was embarrassed or otherwise discomfited by singing Cohen’s lyrics about “giving me head on the unmade bed” in front of his mom and family. He just shrugged — and tells me that his cool mom is actually the one who introduced him to the music of Leonard Cohen. Props to Dave’s mom. My mom introduced me to hippie folk and countless lullabies with three-part harmonies, but no Cohen.

Chelsea Hotel #2 (Leonard Cohen cover) – Street To Nowhere

This version was recorded in bassist Bryce Freeman’s basement in Oakland. And a word of correction: In my previous post, Dave says I called him a 17-year-old. Ladies, let it be noted that he is actually 22.

Check out their album Charmingly Awkward, out now on Capitol. All the kids love it, ’twas selling like hotcakes at the show last week. And look who wrote something nice about them way back when. Chris posted “Boxcars Boxcars Boxcars” [listen], but they did a smashing job on this one Tuesday night, a real crowd-pleaser that’s fun to sing along with:

The King sits there brooding, giving his blessing over your music scene as you feed him quarters.

Vedder surprise solo set at The Croc last night

Ed Vedder (didn’t play – see note) a small surprise solo set last night at The Crocodile Cafe in Seattle. I ate breakfast there the last time I was in Seattle (mostly I was being a musical stalker, but in my defense I was also hungry and they make really good omelettes).

Some interesting cover choices, especially the Nick Cave one (which they’ve not previously done that I am aware of) and the awesome “Don’t Wanna Grow Up.” I can’t wait to hear this boot –surely someone was taping it?

AMENDED: Someone with too much time on their hands seems to have made up this appearance, but I am leaving up the good mp3s and we can all close our eyes and pretend it happened anyway.

SETLIST
Happy Birthday (to guitarist Mike McCready’s new baby girl)
I Don’t Wanna Grow Up (Tom Waits/Ramones cover)
You’re True
Can’t Keep
cover/improv/new song?
Gone
Hide Your Love Away (Beatles cover)
cover/improv/new song? (tag: Modern Girl/Sleater-Kinney)
Porch
Where The Wild Roses Grow (Nick Cave cover, duet with unknown female singer)

BONUS EAR CANDY
Here are some other live versions of a few of these great songs; this mp3 of “You’re True” is one of my very favorite PJ boot songs ever:

You’re True – Ed Vedder solo 2/26/02 @ Wiltern
Can’t Keep – Ed Vedder solo 2/26/02 @ Wiltern
Gone – Pearl Jam @ 10/22/06 Bridge School
Modern Girl – Pearl Jam 9/20/06
You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away – Ed Vedder solo 2005 Tsunami Benefit @ Wiltern
*

You know I can’t let you slide through my hands

Dodge keeps up his blue streak of cover song finery with the latest collection: all the versions of the Stones’ classic “Wild Horses” you can imagine.

So the Chipmunks have possessed this post. The streaming feature doesn’t work (it’s all sped up, and oddly enough, Mick’s first words are “We’re gonna slow it down a little bit for you.”) but the downloaded mp3 should play just fine.

And now, a cover that is vastly better than the original

I’d go on a limb and say that on most days my favorite David Gray song is “Say Hello Wave Goodbye,” the beautiful, winding, 9-minute behemoth from White Ladder. It’s not catchy, no chorus that sticks in your head; it reminds me more of a confessional poem of a complicated relationship. I have a hard time articulating exactly why I love it so much, but from those opening notes (do it, click the blue arrow) it just seems to encapsulate some ephemeral longing and an intangible sadness.

Say Hello Wave Goodbye – David Gray

The nine minutes give the lyrics time to unfold and breathe –it is long enough to tell an intricate, sad story with the brutal refrain of “Take your hands off me, hey. I don’t belong to you, you say. Take a look at my face for the last time. I never knew you, you never knew me. Say hello, goodbye . . .”

To me, it’s about a mismatched pair that nonetheless feels that inexorable pull: “We tried to make it work, you in a cocktail skirt and me in a suit, but it just wasn’t me. You’re used to wearing less, and now you’re life’s a mess, so insecure you see.” And perhaps I like the line about how he claims to want “a nice little housewife who’ll give me the steady life, and not keep going off the rails” — but the subtext of the song tells me that he really wants her and not that at all.

My jaw dropped to the floor when I learned that this is originally a Soft Cell song (yes, they of the Tainted Love fame), and it is horrific, clunky, and synthy. In retrospect, perhaps I should have known, though — do songs get any more ’80s than one that starts with the lyric, “Standing in the door of the Pink Flamingo crying in the rain”?

I had that recent post about cover songs that are awful, this is one cover that actually redeems the original.

Say Hello Wave Goodbye – Soft Cell

Gray also adds his own outro to the original lyrics, and it always gets to me:

We were born before the wind, who are we to understand?
We were born before the wind . . .
Say goodbye
Through the rain, hail, sleet and snow
Say goodbye
Get on the train, the train, the train and
Say goodbye
Say goodbye
Say goodbye
In the wind and the rain my darling . . .
Say goodbye

In the wind and the rain my darling . . .

And with that, as you listen you can almost picture the train start moving on the tracks and pulling away from the station. It’s cinematic.

*************************************************************
And just since the mood kind of fits, here is one other interesting cover, from Embrace‘s Ashes CD single (the b-side):

How Come – Embrace

How Come – D12 and Eminem
(the original – ha!)

Worst cover songs ever

Stereogum has a post today pointing the way to the Cracked.com list of worst covers ever recorded butchered. They suggest the following abominations:

20. “You Shook Me All Night Long” — Celine Dion and Anastasia
19. “Downtown Train” — Rod Stewart
18. “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” — Guns N Roses
17. “Demolition Man” — Manfred Mann
16. “American Pie” — Madonna
15. “My Generation” — Hilary Duff
14. “It’s My Life” — No Doubt
13. “Video Killed The Radio Star” — The Presidents of the United States of America
12. “Walk this Way” — Macy Gray
11. “Another Brick in the Wall” — Korn
10. “I’m A Believer” — Smash Mouth
09. “Satisfaction” — Britney Spears
08. “Sweet Child O Mine” — Sheryl Crow
07. “Big Yellow Taxi” — Counting Crows
06. “911 Is a Joke” — Duran Duran
05. “Anarchy in the UK” — Motley Crue
04. “Behind Blue Eyes” — Limp Bizkit
03. “Feel Like Making Love” — Kid Rock
02. “Dock of the Bay” — Michael Bolton
01. “And It Stoned Me” — Bob Dylan

I would like to respectfully submit the following addendum, which is really, really, insultingly bad. You may think it’s awful when it starts. Just wait. It gets worse as it goes along, peaking with the gospelly backup vocals on the chorus and the peppy brass instruments.
Cigarettes and Alcohol (Oasis cover) – Rod Stewart

It dovetails nicely with the crystal-vivid dream I had last night that I was at the 1995 Oasis show at The Fillmore in SF (it showed up in this picture I took; maybe it came from there to color my dreams). I was hanging out backstage with (no lie) Screech and A.C. Slater. Seriously, I’m not making this stuff up, kids. It’s too good.

Come sail your ships around me

I’ve been pulling some songs together for a possible Glastonbury retrospective and smiled when I found a live version of Nick Cave‘s “Ship Song.” I used to have a cover of this by Pearl Jam on a mix tape that I made in 1995 of all the scorching shows from that tour.

To my unbounded joy, I was able to find it also on mp3, from their summer show at Red Rocks — I love impromptu covers that have that innocence to them, and this . . . well, this is just an enchanting few minutes.

The song is pretty off-the-cuff (Eddie acknowledges at the end, “Well, we need to work that one out one out a little bit”), but it was the only time they ever played it live, and I bask in the wavering simplicity of this moment. Combine it with the wistful, almost mythical lyrics and it is a song I’ve gotta listen to on repeat.

SHIP SONG
By Nick Cave
Come sail your ships around me
and burn your bridges down
We make a little history, baby
Every time you come around

Come loose your dogs around me
And let your hair hang down
You’re a mystery to me
Every time you come around

We talked about it all night long
Define our moral ground
But when I crawl into your arms
Everything comes tumbling down . . .

Ship Song (Nick Cave cover) – Pearl Jam
Live @ Red Rocks, Colorado, 6/20/95

The Ship Song (live) – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Glastonbury 6/28/1998

Monday Music Roundup

Dear lord, this site is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a loooong time.

I was laughing out loud (like, rest-your-head-on-the-desk, hope-no-one-hears-your-stifled-guffaws laughing). It was a thing of beauty. ThingsMyBoyfriendSays.com was new to me, and exactly what it sounds like, a gal documenting random funny things that her boyfriend says — no more, no less. Choice cuts:

“I think I’ll ask the dentist to install tusks in my face so I can fully embrace my orcish heritage.”

or

(When I finally made him shave his damn beard:)
“See, this is why I won’t let you have nice things. Because you won’t let me grow majestic facial hair.”

It’s voyeurism perfected in hilarious fashion.
Now for your recommended weekly musical allowance:

Big Chair
Travis
Here’s a radio rip from the BBC of the new one from Scottish rockers Travis — a driving bass line combines with some chattery electronic effects and the smooth vocal delivery of Fran Healy. This’ll be on their fifth studio album, Open, due in the Spring. Ben Stiller is rumored to have laid down some cowbell for one of the tracks; if I ever got to do that for a band, I think I’d die happy. Travis is also headed for the scenic Indio desert of Coachella in April, if you’re lucky enough to catch that fantastic line-up.

Rhythm & Soul (live)
Spoon
I’ve been listening a lot to uber-talented Austin indie/punk/rock/etc band Spoon lately, digging the eclectic combo of often-acoustic guitar, thumping beats, and funky confident vocals. I think this new track (performed live this past August at the lovely Greek Theatre in Berkeley) will sound divine with the full studio treatment. Hooray! [thx Matt]

All My Loving (Beatles cover)
The Smithereens
I am still a little unsure as to why this album was actually necessary; it’s a complete cover of the seminal Beatles’ album Meet The Beatles (1964) by New Jersey rock band The Smithereens. Overall it is interesting to listen to, as the band walks through a series of covers that are largely faithful to the arrangments of the originals but with an edge of their own; The NY Times says, “The album manages to scream Beatles 1964 and Smithereens 2007 all at once.” See what you think of this tune — for all the hype, I don’t exactly know why anyone would listen to this when the original is available.

Rocking Chair (The Band cover)
Death Cab For Cutie
DCFC covers familiar ground lyrically (“Oh, to be home again . . .”) in their reinterpretation of The Band‘s
grizzled soulful ballad, from the diverse new album of covers Endless Highway: The Music Of The Band (out mañana) which has some good stuff on it. Jakob Dylan’s contribution is interesting to me because The Band first came to prominence in ’65-’66 as the backing band for his pops, donchaknow.

Chasing Heather Crazy
Guided by Voices
I make myself a mix CD for the car every month. This is the first song on the next one. Just to entertain myself.

From GBV‘s Isolation Drills (2001).