covered inglory: the complete top ten

over the past couple of weeks GMS has identified the ten best cover versions of the century so far. we haven't heard them all, and sometimes we weren't concentrating, so they might be wrong. but then again, they might be right.

anyway, here they are, all in one place!

1. easy star allstars - 'no surprises' (radiohead cover, from radiodread)
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2. richard hawley - 'some candy talking' (jesus & mary chain cover)
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3. ukulele orchestra of great britain - 'wuthering heights' (kate bush cover)
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4. joan baez - 'motherland' (natalie merchant cover, from dark chords on a big guitar)
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5. bonnie 'prince' billy & tortoise - 'thunder road' (bruce springsteen cover, from the brave and the bold)
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6. wondermints - 'the porpoise song' (monkees cover, from the wonderful world of)
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7. six organs of admittance - 'thicker than a smokey' (gary higgins cover, from school of the flower)
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8. absentee - 'my dead wife / you're the one that i want' (grease cover, from donkey stock)
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9. rodrigo y gabriela - 'wish you were here' (pink floyd cover, live)
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10. wilco - 'comment (if all men are truly brothers)' (charles wright cover, from kicking television)
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covered inglory #10 - wilco 'comment'

a few months ago, sasha frere-jones caused a bloggish furore (no animals or real people were harmed) when he identified a parting of the ways between lascivious, bass-heavy black music and uptight, strangled, funk-free indie. he laid most of the blame on dr. dre and (good lord!) pavement's second drummer. to illustrate the parlous state of music in 2007 he used arcade fire as his favoured sorry-ass lame-o pale-faced whipping-boys. but wilco, whose records have dominated year-end lists and marked the shifting tastes of indie fans for almost fifteen years, could have fitted just as easily. this year's sky blue sky, though one of the best records of 2007 (yup), is entirely devoid of groove, opting instead for stark white album production, splintering guitar noise and cautious, self-conscious lyrics. their previous release, kicking television, was that most-feared expression of chin-stroking jam-band self-indulgence - the double live album.

flying in the face of this manichean musical moan is wilco's version 'comment (if all men are truly brothers)', the final track on kicking television. fans of six degrees of separation (music nerd edn.) will be glad to know that 'comment' was originally recorded by charles wright and the watts 103rd street rhythm band, more famous for 'express yourself', as sampled by dre for NWA (and, earlier this year, by statik selektah, with termanology, talib kweli and consequence).

'comment' is a rich, warm, social-protest soul ballad. its uplifting sentiments are just as mawkish as those of 'wish you were here', though (mercifully) they are far more direct and don't aspire to the status of bong-addled poetry. i'll be in trouble for posting it, as last time i played it in GMS HQ i got shouted at for putting on "plodding earnest crap". it does feature a sleigh-bell solo.

but in its context, coming after more than an hour of wilco's awkward, downbeat indie-prog workouts, it's a redemptive triumph, sending the crowd off with a deliberately overblown sense of solidarity and brotherly love (i think chaps make up the majority of wilco audiences). no matter how far bands like wilco drift from frere-jones' dream of miscegenation, listeners are still drawn in by the same sorts of communal sentiment, and are still listening to black and white music without (too much) prejudice. 'comment' joins the dots. it makes me smile.

wilco - 'comment (if all men are truly brothers' (from kicking television: live in chicago)

buy charles wright

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covered inglory #8 - absentee - 'my dead wife / you're the one that i want'

absentee pitch themselves somewhere between the maudlin restraint of current indie favourites the national and the the lavish melancholy of british veterans the tindersticks. their calling card is to inject a streak of bitter, black humour into this elegant mix, spicing their red-wine-sodden romanticism with references to alcoholic indiscretions and grubby toilet-sex.

both elements work together on 'my dead wife' from 2005's donkey stock ep. the first section is a barely coherent, mumbled fragment from the perspective of a mourner - "some kind of memory, you were beautiful, or at least that's what i recall ... i just need more time". it's subverted - but somehow made even more moving - by the song's sudden transformation into a somnambulant cover of the grease standard 'you're the one that i want'.

there's a seam of darkness in a lot of the sort of late 50s and early 60s pop records that inspired grease, and absentee tap into that tone here. the purity and innocence of their teenage emotions need very little alteration to come across as an unsettled, delusional single-minded statements of intent. phil spector's brassy, grandiose productions covered a weird, deranged, reputedly abusive temperament. many of the beatles' early songs of innocent devotion contain a vicious, possessive, misogynistic streak. in buddy holly's moral universe, favour and faithlessness are matters of life and death, or are at least for the line between sanity and unmitigated, unpredictable desperation.

innumerable am-dram productions of grease have bled any possible tension out of 'you're the one that i want', and to a great degree, absentee's cover works as broad, grim humour. but it also goes some way to reclaiming the weird falseness of the original, a late-70s pastiche sung by ludicrous non-school-age hollywood stars, one an aerobics instructor, the other a balding scientologist, for a middle-aged hen-party audience.

absentee - 'my dead wife' (from donkey stock)

john travolta & olivia newton-john 'you're the one that i want'

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covered inglory #7: six organs of admittance 'thicker than a smokey'

sometimes, and only very occasionally, something unexpectedly poignant appears on an album's sleevenotes (no, i don't mean "peace to my dead homies"). on slint's spiderland there was an appeal for female vocalists to get in touch for auditions - something that never happened, as slint disbanded and committed themselves to mental institutions on completing the harrowing record. i'd love to know what they'd have sounded like with a proper singer.

a similarly poignant story, but with a happier outcome, appeared on the sleeve to psych-folk outfit six organs of admittance's 2005 album school of the flower. lead organ-admitter ben chasny put out a missing persons appeal for gary higgins, the author of the haunting blues number 'thicker than a smokey', whose whereabouts since serving two years for possession of marijuana in the early 1970s were unknown. like other recently-rediscovered freak-folk progenitors like vashti bunyan and karen dalton, higgins had released some tantalisingly brilliant music in the early 1970s, before retreating into obscurity and ebay notoriety.

in an age when every artist is a potential myspace buddy, and every public indiscretion is memorialised on youtube, higgins' disappearance had a strange, romantic allure, particularly given the mysterious, mystical concerns of 'thicker than a smokey', with its haunting refrain of "what are you gonna do, young man? where are you gonna go?". the search for higgins also had a refreshingly dated and quixotic feel: chasny and drag city head-honcho zach cowie got a tip-off that higgins was still in his native connecticut, and decided to send a letter to every gary higgins in the region.

eventually they got lucky. unlike the drifter in 'thicker than a smokey', higgins hadn't headed down to mexico. he'd done his time, settled down to earn a living, occasionally playing music in local venues, never expecting to be rediscovered. he replied to cowie, leading to a few live appearances with six organs and a reissue of red hash, a beautiful, calm set of hippie spirituals, which stand alongside like-minded projects such as bunyan's just another diamond day, chris bell's i am the cosmos, david crosby's if i could only remember my name and skip spence's oar.

six organs of admittance - 'thicker than a smokey' (from school of the flower)

gary higgins - 'thicker than a smokey' (from red hash)

interview with higgins at splendidzine

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covered inglory #6: wondermints - 'the porpoise song'

currently brian wilson's backing band, the wondermints made their name recreating the sound of the beach boys, circa pet sounds. what elevated them above similarly myopic musical revivalists like ocean colour scene (a 1990s bluesbreakers) or cat power (currently failing to update dusty in memphis) was their nerdy love of the sounds of mid-60s LA, wantonly and unconditionally uncool but all the more joyous as a result. plus, they had the ability to write songs that could rub shoulders with the originals.

2000's wonderful world of the wondermints made the logical step to a covers album. the band recorded faithful, starry-eyed covers of familiar songs by abba and pink floyd, as well as several more obscure tracks, with the emphasis on cheery, cheesy pop rather than nuggets-approved classicism, and one of their own - 'tracy hide', possibly the best of the bunch.

opening track 'the porpoise song' was originally written by carole king, and recorded by the monkees, who used it in the opening sequence of their crackpot film project head, which features mickey dolenz jumping off a bridge after disrupting an opening ceremony. the wondermints' version is pretty much exactly the same as the original, but this time it doesn't matter. everything about both songs is brilliant.

wondermints - 'the porpoise song' (monkees cover) (from wonderful world of ...)

monkees - 'the porpoise song'

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covered inglory #5: bonnie prince billy & tortoise - 'thunder road'

will oldham's collaborative covers album with chicago's beard-stroking raised-eyebrow post-rock jazz-boffins tortoise came in for some stick on its release in 2006, especially for their cover of bruce springsteen's 'thunder road'.

detractors complained that oldham's strangled, ghostly vocal performance, and tortoise's decision to replace the original's surging piano rolls with sterile guitar lines leeched all the passion and urgency out of the song. round gms' house, we reckon that's the only interesting way they could have taken it. the original 'thunder road' wasn't a straight-up, Born In the USA-style anthem - it gestured towards that, but the voice-and-piano arrangement reined in the more bombastic tendencies, while springsteen's lyrics never made it clear whether the speaker believed in his dreams of automotive freedom and redemption in "the promised land", or whether he's consciously "praying in vain", already aware that "we ain't that young any more".

as springsteen says in his storytellers performance, 'thunder road' is an invitation. the speaker tries to play up the attractions of his romantic vision, but the downsides and the risks keep edging in, and "the ride it ain't free". oldham and tortoise recognise that it's this dramatic tension that makes the song great. instead of replicating the same tension, they introduce new dimensions. like nick cave's reading of 'by the time i get to phoenix', their version has a bleakly ironic and fatalistic edge. the delivery points up the hollowness of springsteen's orbison fantasies, playing up the sinister qualities of lines like "i just can't face myself alone ... you know just what i'm here for", while still making those fantasies feel like the singer's "one last chance to make it real", if only the "scared" addressee would "show a little faith".

doing a springsteen cover is today's passport to hype machine plays and pitchfork approval. his songs have characters, drama, big hooks and an air of authenticity. but of the hundreds released since 2000, this feels like the only completely successful re-imagining. to illustrate the point, included below is badly drawn boy's version - faithful, reverent, pretty - but this is the one that really leeches the spirit out of the original. whose offer would you take? eh? EH? etc.

bonnie 'prince' billy & tortoise - 'thunder road' (from the brave and the bold)

bruce springsteen - 'the story of thunder road' (live on vh-1 storytellers, original on born to run)

badly drawn boy - 'thunder road' (buy some badly drawn boy)

bruce springsteen - 'thunder road' (live 1976)

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covered inglory #4: joan baez - 'motherland'

looks like the polls closed over at berkeley place for cover version of the century. but none of the top twenty coincided with anything i was planning to post, so on we go:

joan baez has spent more than four decades covering other folks' material. she's pretty good at it. her 2003 album, dark chords on a big guitar saw the 60-something-year-old covering songs by no depression-era alt. country songwriters like gillian welch, ryan adams, josh ritter and steve earle. the album stood out amongst a slew of old-legend-tackles-hip-songwriter LPs through its occasional political nods (including earle's bittersweet election-time lament 'christmas-time in washington' and a dedication to michael moore), and also because of its scrupulous avoidance of novelty selections, and because of baez' voice, still as pure and dignified as ever, but with a depth and warmth that's as affecting as johnny cash's geriatric croaking.

these three elements are at their strongest on baez' version of natalie merchant's 'motherland'. i'd always dismissed merchant as a hippy-skirted, doc-martens-toting early-90s also-ran, and her band 10,000 maniacs as grunge-era sleeper-blokes who fitted snugly into their role as house-band on shows like sabrina the teenage witch. this cover version suggests i might have been wrong - but then again, baez' ryan adams and steve earle covers are much better than anything adams or earle ever managed, so who knows? informed, informative ....

joan baez - 'motherland' (natalie merchant cover, from dark chords on a big guitar)

more fun

seriously strange, here's baez and GMS guest-blogger phil spector doing 'you've lost that loving feeling' (original by tom cruise), introduced by someone who looks like donovan. it doesn't quite work, but it is A CURIOSITY!!!!



and here's an excellent muppet show appearance:

Part 1 - Joan arrives dressed as Cam'ron
Part 2 - 'Honest Lullaby'
Part 3 - Joan does her Don Corleone impression, hilarity ensues
Part 4 - 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down' (with an interlude teaching rats about Gandhi)
Part 5 - 'Will The Circle Be Unbroken?'

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covered inglory #3: ukulele orchestra of gb - 'wutherng heights'

no introduction necessary. gigging tonight at the oxford c***ing academy.



incidentally, hands up anybody who remembers the lumpy oi-punk version of this by mid-nineties brit-rock also-rans china drum? radio 1's evening session's novelty cover of 1995, no less. shite.

covered inglory #2: richard hawley - 'some candy talking'

richard hawley doesn't really need cover versions - his recreation of a 'lost' sound somewhere between scott walker and duane eddy locates him obviously enough, the trick being that his original compositions are as good as most of the songs he loves.

hawley's cover of the jesus and mary chain's 'some candy talking' is fish-in-a-barrel stuff, but that doesn't detract from its power. the original already had the doomed romanticism, the spector nods, the layers of harsh and melodic guitar. hawley's deep voice merely adds gravity, while the sinister edge of the lyrics save it from pastiche.

richard hawley - 'some candy talking' (jesus and mary chain cover)

jesus & mary chain - 'some candy talking'

more hawley on galactic mystery solvers

covered inglory #1: easy star allstars, 'no surprises'

three factors ensured that the easy star allstars' radiodread: a reggae tribute to ok computer rose above the status of summer 2006 blog novelty.

first was the quality of the source material - ok computer was the last great radiohead album, the last one that felt human and that mined interesting tension between the human and the mechanical, the last one that you could enjoy without buying into the myth of radiohead as 'transcendant' artistic visionaries.

second was the quality of the allstars themselves - featuring accomplished musicians such as horace andy, toots & the maytals, and on 'no surprises', the meditations. all of whom contributed to giving the project a warm, joyful, cohesive feel that works against the bleak textures of the original. the allstars' previous album, dub side of the moon, recognised that the vast, booming spaces in pink floyd's music would appeal as much to a reggae fan as to a prog-happy audiophile. as johnny greenwood's work with trojan records attests, there's something in radiohead's studio wizardry, fractured compositions, and underlying soulfulness that translates just as well.

third was the wit and intelligence of the project. both dub side and radiodread took middle-class white complaint-rock and relocated it in a working class black context that most listeners (and most middle class white musicians) feel has much greater authenticity. just as pink floyd unexpectedly became the soundtrack of choice for iranian dissidents a few years back, so radiohead's fears of mechanised language, "jobs that slowly kill you", and politics as marketing took on more weight, purpose and irony than was present in the originals.

apparently easy star are working on a follow-up. i vote the soft bulletin.

easy star allstars - 'no surprises'

bonus covers

radiohead do pink floyd. isn't that clever?

radiohead & sparklehorse - 'wish you were here'

ska pink floyd!

bim skala bim - 'brain damage'

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berkeley place's covers of the century

covered inglory

Ekko at Berkeley Place is running a poll to find the greatest cover versions of the 21^st century. Well done that man. Only time will tell if the results are interesting, or if they’re a Spoon-Postal Service-Death Cab-Feist-Bright Eyes blog-band clusterfuck, but I’m sure plenty of moral good will come of it either way. It’s certainly caused GMS to ruminate on the pros and cons, and on the popularity of covers, ironic or otherwise, in the blogosphere. I didn’t ruminate very much, mind, but below are a few thoughts, and a Pulp video that you ought to watch.

Thinking about it (a bit), it looks like GMS likes three sorts of cover version.

Firstly, there are ‘novelty’ covers of pop, rap or r’n’b songs by white indie types. Careful, though – these walk a fine line called irony, and only the ones that “cross boundaries of race and authenticity” and “ask searching questions about the creation and consumption of art” are any good: sorry, Travis’ ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’, Electric Soft Parade’s ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’, the Vines’ ‘Ms Jackson’, Magic Numbers’ ‘Crazy In Love’ and Biffy Clyro’s ‘Umbrella’. Duran Duran, please leave the room. This genre reaches its apex along the Will Oldham-R. Kelly axis. A sexy axis indeed.

Secondly, there are old men and women getting down with the kids. This started with Johnny Cash, whose American Recordings stuff is sure to feature on Ekko’s list, and has since been taken up by all manner of ageing pop types. Mavis Staples, Charlie Louvin, Joan Baez, Solomon Burke – well done. Neil Diamond – just stick to ‘Sweet Caroline’, eh?

Thirdly, there are hip youngsters discovering / inventing / challenging their roots. By “roots”, we mostly mean Bruce Springsteen. And occasionally ‘Hallelujah’ or ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’. The front page of Elbows and the Hype Machine will be full of these, making a few choice covers an essential marketing tool for up-and-coming interweb faves. Hence the recent tributes-cum-hipster-feeding-frenzies in honour of Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Pixies, John Fahey and (cut-and-paste style) Radiohead and Belle and Sebastian. None of those have made the grade, though the Dylan one sounds interesting.

Enough! Galactic Mystery Solvers will be posting and writing about its top twenty-something tracks over the next couple of weeks. Some of them may have been recorded before 2000 – the precise details are often hard to track down. In some cases, the originals are attributed to people like Elvis or Elton John, who didn’t write them, but made them famous.

In the meantime, watch Pulp – ‘Bad Cover Version’