smw

end of blog/end

2009-07-22T08:40:00.006-04:00

This blog has really been a dead zone for a while. I try to revive it but never seem to maintain interest for more than a few days; I've got facebook to satisfy my urges to chat about stuff. Consider smw closed, this time for good.

(When the urge strikes to blog again -- and it will strike, that's a given -- I'll go wreak havoc elsewhere.)

The one thing this blog was half good for was the cover albums project, which I'll leave posted here, along with a more recent post I'd one day like to flesh out into -- well, I'm not sure what exactly. But again, not here in this space. See ya.

1969 or 1970 to 1991: a chronology of sorts {sans explication, sans revisionism, ridiculously incomplete}

2009-01-16T09:16:00.030-05:00

--->Tommy Roe/ Paul Revere & the Raiders Greatest Hits
--->Through the Past Darkly/Beggars Banquet
--->Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine/Doors 13
--->Sgt. Pepper/The White Album/Abbey Road
--->Heavy Cream
---> "Papa Was a Rolling Stone"/"Nights in White Satin"
--->First 45: "You're So Vain"
---> "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)"/"Run To Me"/"Dancing in the Moonlight"
--->CJBK 1290 vs. CKSL 1410
--->Ziggy Stardust/Aladdin Sane/Pin Ups
--->Roxy Music/For Your Pleasure/Stranded/These Foolish Things
--->Slayed!/"Personality Crisis"/"Hello New York"
--->"All the Young Dudes"/"All the Way to Memphis"
--->Love it to Death/Killer/School's Out/Billion Dollar Babies
--->First Purchased LP: Brain Salad Surgery
--->Dark Side of the Moon/Wish You Were Here/"Echoes"
--->Lamb Lies Down on Broadway/"Supper's Ready"
--->"Knock Three Times"
--->Lester Bangs/Creemettes
--->First Concert: Blue Oyster Cult/Utopia, London Gardens June '76
--->Supertramp/Styx/Alan Parsons Project
--->This Years Model/Armed Forces
--->Talking Heads 77/More Songs About Buildings and Food
--->"Anarchy in the UK"/"God Save the Queen"
--->"Heroes"
--->Boomtown Rats/Motors/XTC/Cars/Blondie/Stranglers/B-52's
--->Trouser Press/NY Rocker/NME
--->Darkness on the Edge of Town/Tom Petty/Some Girls/Rust Never Sleeps
--->Assassination/The River/loss of virginity
--->Pazz & Jop/Consumer Guide/Stranded discography
--->Heatwave Festival
--->Remain in Light
--->Dirty Mind
--->"O Superman"/"Love Will Tear Us Apart"
--->"That's the Joint"/"Rockin' It"/"Genius of Love"
--->"The Message"/"Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel"
--->London Calling/Sandinista!
--->Kid Creole/Parliament/"One Nation Under a Groove"
--->"Good Times"/Real People/Jacksons' Triumph
--->5 LP Motown box set/Velvet Underground & Nico/Entertainment
--->"Homosapien"/Dare/Bangs R.I.P.
--->Specials/Madness/Beat/Stray Cats
--->Black Uhuru (+ Sly & Robbie)/Bob Marley/LKJ
--->George Jones/Hank Williams/X
--->Spandau Ballet/Rip Rig & Panic/Pigbag/Psychedelic Furs
--->Imperial Bedroom
--->Rock & Roll Confidential/Donna Summer
--->Blasters/Los Lobos
--->Thriller/Madonna/Cyndi Lauper
--->Buddy Holly/Aztec Camera/Culture Club
--->Spinners/Stylistics/Al Green/Sly Stone/"You Can't Change That"
--->"Jump"/"Missing You"/"Perfect Way"
--->Replacements/Husker Du
--->K-Tel
--->Disco
--->Chuck Eddy/Led Zeppelin/AC-DC/Aerosmith
--->Run-D.M.C./Beastie Boys/Jesus & Mary Chain/Nerve
--->Don't Look Back/Highway 61 Revisited/Joni
--->King of America/Best of Dolly Parton
--->Mean Streets
--->Wanna Buy a Bridge?
--->"Word Up"/Control/Brotherhood/Faith
--->A Love Supreme/King of the Delta Blues Singers
--->CIUT/Dufferin Gate
--->Pet Shop Boys
--->Rob Base/Technotronic/Milli Vanilli/Tone-Loc/Young MC
--->Takes a Nation of Millions/"Teenage Riot"
--->Nu Shooz/Al B. Sure/New Jack Swing
--->"Can You Party?"
--->Soul II Soul/"Funky Drummer"
--->Radio On/Why Music Sucks/KLF

cover albums conclusion (full list w/final comments)

2007-09-01T11:01:00.000-04:00

Time to wrap up this cover albums survey. What follows is the full list, with some notes on stuff I didn't mention the first time around (plus a few towards the end I hadn't gotten to). Song titles in red are my pick tracks, at least where applicable (there are probably 10-15 albums below I still haven't heard, and 20-25 I've only really flipped through or listened to once in the background).

I don't have any concluding statement about this--I think I said most of what I wanted to say about the cover albums phenomenon over the course of the first dozen or so LPs covered (the survey starts here, btw). The interesting (not necessarily the best) year for this stuff remains 1973; everything before that was a precursor to the genre, everything that followed just kind of an afterthought.

'60s

1. Sam Cooke, Hits of the Fifties (1960) - Cooke covers Nat 'King' Cole, the Platters, and "Unchained Melody" (failing to turn it into the massive hit the Righteous Brothers would end up having with it a few years later). Haven't heard it, but the AMG review notes: "...having him cover pop hits of the previous decade wasn't a terrible idea on its face, but Cooke was still getting accustomed to working at RCA, and he wasn't inspired by the material or the way it was chosen, and the result is an album aimed at what the label thought the white teenage market was all about (and what the company thought the parents of those kids would be most comfortable with them buying from a black recording artist)..."

2. & 3. Ray Charles, Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music & Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music Vol II (1962) - The most glaring oversight of this survey--an r&b giant breaks new territory in the pop crossover sweepstakes by delving into material by Hank Williams, the Everly Brothers, Eddy Arnold, etc. Albums whose importance and excellence cannot be overstated, and which you're no doubt familiar enough with that you don't really need me to tell you that. ("Bye Bye Love")

4. The Supremes, A Bit of Liverpool (1964) - In which Berry Gordy Jr.'s top tier girls take on "Can't Buy Me Love," "Bits and Pieces," "House of the Rising Sun," and, er, "You Really Got a Hold On Me"--that last one, of course, a Smokey Robinson tune covered by the Beatles, which I guess was Motown's way of bringing it all back home? Either that or by 1964 Gordy & Co. could no longer even keep track of which hits were theirs anymore. One missed opportunity on this collection: no Stones cover. "He Said Yeah" could've been amazing!

5. Beach Boys, Beach Boys' Party! (1965) ("Alley Oop")

6. Everly Brothers, Roots (1968) - Strong set of country covers (I've only listened once, however) by Merle Haggard, Jimmie Rodgers, and Glen Campbell. In spots it reminded me of the Byrds '68 country-rock release, Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Ten years prior (not listed here) the Everlys released Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, a cover album of "sparsely arranged traditional songs."

7. George Benson, The Other Side of Abbey Road (1969)

'70s

8. Booker T. & the MGs, McLemore Avenue (1970)
9. Isley Brothers, Givin’ It Back (1971) ("Fire and Rain")
10. Dr. John, Dr. John’s Gumbo (1972)
11. The Band, Moondog Matinee (1973) ("Third Man Theme")
12. Leon Russell, Hank Wilson’s Back (1973)
13. Harry Nilsson, A Touch of Schmilsson in the Night (1973)
14. Bob Dylan, Dylan (1973)
15. John Fogerty, Blue Ridge Rangers (1973) ("Today I Started Loving You Again")
16. Bryan Ferry, These Foolish Things (1973) ("A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall")
17. David Bowie, Pin Ups (1973) ("Don't Bring Me Down")
18. Don McLean, Playin' Favorites (1973)
19. Bryan Ferry, Another Time, Another Place (1974) ("What a Wonderful World")
20. John Lennon, Rock 'n' Roll (1975) ("Do You Want to Dance")
21. Todd Rundgren, Faithful (1976)
22. Bryan Ferry, Let's Stick Together (1976) ("Let's Stick Together")
23. Bryan Ferry, The Bride Stripped Bare (1978) ("What Goes On")
24. Willie Nelson, Stardust (1978) ("Stardust")

'80s

25. Grace Jones, Warm Leatherette (1980)
26. Grace Jones, Nightclubbing (1981)
27. Joe Jackson, Jumpin' Jive (1981)
28. Elvis Costello, Almost Blue (1981) ("Good Year for the Roses")
29. Chaka Khan, Echoes of an Era (1982)
30. UB40, Labour of Love ("Cherry Oh Baby")
31. Replacements, Shit Hits the Fan (1985) ("I Will Follow")
32. Pussy Galore, Exile on Main St (1986) ("Rocks Off" - Like anyone's ever made it past track one...)
33. Siouxsie & the Banshees, Through the Looking Glass (1987)
34. Metallica, Garage Days (1987)

'90s

35. Yo La Tengo, Fakebook (1990) ("Can't Forget")
36. Joan Jett, The Hit List (1990)
37. Warren Zevon w/R.E.M., Hindu Love Gods (1990) ("Raspberry Beret")
38. Peter and the Test Tube Babies, The $hit Factory (1990)
39. Bob Dylan, Good As I Been to You (1992) ("Diamond Joe")
40. Everything But the Girl, Acoustic (1992) ("Love is Strange")
41. Erasure, Abbaesque (1992)
42. Bob Dylan, World Gone Wrong (1993) ("Love Henry")
43. Bryan Ferry, Taxi (1993) ("I Put a Spell on You")
44. Ramones, Acid Eaters (1993) ("Can't Seem to Make You Mine")
45. Guns 'N' Roses, The Spaghetti Incident (1994) ("Ain't It Fun")
46. Gloria Estefan, Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me (1994)
47. Al Green, Cover Me Green (1995) ("I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry")
48. The The, Hanky Panky (1995)
49. Annie Lennox, Medusa (1995) ("No More I Love Yous")
50. Moog Cookbook (S/T) (1995)
51. Dwight Yoakam, Under the Covers (1997)
52. Todd Rundgren, With a Twist (1997)
53. Metallica, Garage Inc. (1998)
54. Paul McCartney, Run Devil Run (1999)
55. George Michael, Songs From the Last Century (1999)
56. Bryan Ferry, As Time Goes By (1999) ("The Way You Look Tonight")

'00s

57. Cat Power, The Covers Record (2000) ("Wild is the Wind")
58. Rage Against the Machine, Renegades (2000)
59. Robbie Williams, Swing When You’re Winning (2001)
60. Tori Amos, Strange Little Girls (2001)
61. Luther Wright and the Wrongs, Rebuild the Wall (2001)
62. Dump, That Skinny Motherfucker with the High Voice? (2001) ("When You Were Mine")
63. Joan Osborne, How Sweet It Is (2002)
64. Mandy Moore, Coverage (2003)
65. Erasure, Other People’s Songs (2003)
66. Easy Star, Dub Side of the Moon (2003)
67. Michael McDonald, Motown (2003)
68. Rod Stewart, It Had to Be You... The Great American Songbook (2002)
69. Rod Stewart, As Time Goes By... The Great American Songbook: Volume II (2003)
70. Cyndi Lauper, At Last (2003)
71. Rod Stewart, Stardust... The Great American Songbook, Vol. III (2004)
72. Chaka Khan, Classikhan (2004)
73. Rod Stewart, Thanks For The Memory... The Great American Songbook IV (2005
74. Martina McBride, Timeless (2005)
75. Bruce Springsteen, Seeger Sessions (2006) - Based on what I've heard of this (it seemed to be playing in Indigo Books for months when it came out), I have to agree with Robert Christgau here: "We shall overkill, he means."
76. Rod Stewart, Still the Same... Great Rock Classics Of Our Time (2006) (This is far worse than the eighteen previous standards collections btw.)

77. Yo La Tengo, Yo La Tengo is Murdering the Classsics (2006) - Haven't listened to this all the way through yet, but I like their description of it: “They said it shouldn't be done, but we did it anyway. Starting in 1996, we've made an annual visit to WFMU during their fundraising marathon. People who pledge money to the station while we're on get to make a request, and we try to play it. And guess what? It's not that easy. Yo La Tengo Is Murdering the Classics is a 70-minute compilation drawn from 1996-2003, a Best-of, or Best-of-the-Worst, or Worst-of-the-Best, or... oh, what's the use, it's dreadful.”

78. Diana Ross, Blue (2006)
79. Matthew Sweet and Susannah Hoffs, Under the Covers, Vol. 1 (2006)
80. Jody Watley, The Makeover (2006)
81. Patti Smith, Twelve (2007)

82. Bryan Ferry, Dylanesque (2007) - If not his worst album, certainly his weakest set of covers. There's some musical drama in the two openers ("Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" and "Simple Twist of Fate"), and Ferry's singing is good throughout, but something here just doesn't click--the thing feels directionless, flabby. I rarely get the feeling that he's driven by the material, a problem exacerbated in particular when he takes on ho-hum played-to-death classics like "All Along the Watchtower," "Knocking on Heaven's Door," and "The Times They Are-a Changin'" (the latter maybe the worst idea he's ever had for a song to cover). Whereas Ferry used to get lost in his best covers of other people's songs--whereas he used to inhabit those songs until they were him--here he sounds merely lost. Not lost in the rain or lost in Juarez, just simply lost.

cover albums#68: martina mcbride

2007-08-21T07:58:00.000-04:00

68. Martina McBride, Timeless (2005)

McBride runs through classics by Buck Owens, Ray Price, Hank Snow, Hank Williams, Tammy Wynette, et al. I haven't heard this, and I've only intermittently included country titles in this survey (the most notable being Willie Nelson's Stardust), so I'm not sure why I've arbitrarily decided to add this one. (I'll try and include more country titles in the roundup at the end.) Maybe I include it because McBride has always done well with rock critics, so it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch? Regardless, what I'm really wondering right now is does she not look suspiciously like Mandy Moore in that photo?

cover albums#67: chaka khan

2007-08-21T07:40:00.000-04:00

67. Chaka Khan, Classikhan (2004)

Standards, and we'll leave it at that, though I should note that I missed an earlier Khan set in here: 1982's Echoes of an Era, which also has her running through a set of oldies. (If I didn't already mention this, I'll try and catch all the titles I missed in this survey to wrap things up at the end--hard to believe there's even more, I know.)

cover albums#66: erasure

2007-08-20T22:51:00.000-04:00

66. Erasure, Other People's Songs (2003)

Erasure's ABBA tribute set, regardless of what I may think of it, was without question a good fit for the duo; they captured something in those songs, clearly, and I'd never deny them that (it just doesn't really work for me, especially a decade-and-a-half removed). This, on the other hand, is entirely strained--at least the parts I managed to sit through. Among the coverees: Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Peter Gabriel, the Buggles, Steve Harley, the Righteous Brothers. Which kind of reminds me... I'm still waiting for the Pet Shop Boys to do their cover album. In an interview some time back (I think around the time of their U2 cover) Neil Tennant said, with some seriousness I think, that they were planning an EP containing a classic rock song from each decade. Obviously it never materialized. Just as obviously it would possibly have been (note tense) the greatest EP in the world ever. Shame.

cover albums#65: mandy moore

2007-08-20T22:19:00.000-04:00

65. Mandy Moore, Coverage (2003)

Do people actually have opinions on Mandy Moore? Unlike the evil teen pop contemporaries Stephen Thomas Erlewine knocks down in a strainingly "positive" review of this record in AMG--no need to click through, really, you already know the suspects: Britney, Jessica, et al.--I can't think of anything at all to say about Moore beyond "she's not dislikable." She was not dislikable in the barely likable movie Saved a few years back; she's not dislikable on this set of '70s and '80s songs, most of them blandly catchy new wave tunes by the likes of XTC, the Waterboys, Joe Jackson, John Hiatt, Joan Armatrading... still there? The AMG review uses the phrase "mature pop" twice to describe it (once as an adjective, once as a hyphenated sub-genre), which is maybe all you need to know.

cover albums#61-64: rod stewart

2007-07-31T11:18:00.000-04:00

61. It Had to Be You: The Great American Songbook (2002)
62. As Time Goes By: The Great American Songbook 2 (2003)
63. Stardust: The Great American Songbook 3 (2004)
64. Thanks for the Memory: The Great American Songbook 4 (2005)

"I don’t think these are sweet, horrible songs at all," Stewart says of the new album. "It's obviously not 'Hot Legs,' but they are all beautifully well-crafted songs." (NPR)

"I think Rod Stewart is causing Billie Holiday to turn in her grave..." (Amazon user review)

"I've liked-not-loved all three of these career-reviving blockbusters from first hearing. But that puts me in a major minority among the few critics who've deigned to notice them at all. Reading Rod's reviews, many by older guys I respect, is a disquieting reminder of how personal these calls can be. Howard Cohen of The Miami Herald thinks his 'Embraceable You' is 'wobbly'; I think Stewart nails it like he's nailed no standard before, which is why it leads the album. NPR's Ken Tucker claims a 'whiff of desperation' is all that makes Rod's songbooks interesting; the Toledo Blade's Richard Paton feels, as I do, that he 'sounds comfortable.'" (Robert Christgau)

"Though The Great American Songbook is bad, it’s not shamefully bad--if only because it’s too tasteful to risk sinking that low. Most jazz singers, for instance, see 'They Can’t Take That Away From Me' as a chance for mischief, hitting a sour note on the line 'the way you sing off-key.' But Stewart is too busy honoring the legend of Tin Pan Alley to notice that he’s singing a funny song; he never cracks a smile, much less the scale. And that’s what really hurts." (Jeff Salamon, Blender)

"Stewart brought his unique form of sweetly nostalgic warbling to the Robin Hood Foundation's annual dinner at the Javits Center last night, where very rich people stood up and offered excessive amounts of money for silent auction items like trips they didn't need and dinners at fancy restaurants." (Roger Friedman, Fox News)

"Bring over a few old Rod Stewart records
Put them in a pile already drenched with gasoline
Light a match and listen to them burn until
Soft rock stations can't play them again"
("The Rod Stewart Song")

"Someone has to successfully curb his dependency for recording every published song in America. Does Rod really want to join the ranks of Frank Sinatra jr. and company. Rumours abound on the east coast, that Rod's next project is recording all of Elvis Presley's soundtrack music 1963-69. There's also talk on the street that a box set, American Songbook vol.6-66, the Lost Recordings, are being scheduled for a 2007 holiday release." (Amazon user review)

"In hitching his comeback hopes to a collection of song standards, Manilow follows a trail blazed by another extravagantly moussed older star, Rod Stewart, who has sold millions of copies of his four-volume Great American Songbook series. The mastermind behind both projects is Clive Davis, a music mogul with a proven genius for channeling middlebrow taste, who correctly intuited that older record buyers would embrace standards recorded by '70s and '80s hit-makers. The result is a music biz boomlet, in which aging stars hoping for a career resuscitation are resurfacing with big bands and Café Carlyle-appropriate apparel. In recent years we've seen standards collections by Stewart, Manilow, Carly Simon, Bette Midler, and Cyndi Lauper, and it's a virtual certainty that several more are currently in the works. (Coming soon to a record store near you: Corey Hart Sings Jerome Kern.)" (Jody Rosen in Slate)

"I have all four of the Great American Songbook CDs, and each is very special. Anyone who says that Rod is not at the top of his game is blind and deaf. The man just keeps putting out great songs, proving that he and the songs are timeless... What a combination: Rod Stewart and Clive Davis. Wishing them great success in the years to come!" (Amazon user review)

"When will you make a real album--with your own songs--again?" (maggiejay, Billings, MT)
"Well, Bono keeps telling me that I’ve got to start writing songs again, so I suppose that’s the next one up. I haven’t written for a long time, but I’ve started picking up the old acoustic guitar again." (Blender, "Dear Superstar")

"For the REAL Rod Stewart, go listen to his: 'Maggie May,' 'You Wear It Well,' 'Reason To Believe,' 'You're In My Heart,' 'Tonight's The Night,' 'Every Picture Tells a Story,' 'Mandolin Wind.' THAT is talent! But this? This?! It's a shame he prostituted his wonderful talent in transforming the American Standards on this CD into a miserable compilation of heartless, soul-less, saccharine drivel." (Amazon user review)

"Every time he comes out with a new 'American Songbook' album, I buy it. I was never a fan of Rod Stewart's but I love what he has done with these songs. Since I am not a music 'snob' I ignore all the negative feedback." (Amazon user review)

cover albums#60: cyndi lauper

2007-07-29T23:28:00.000-04:00

60. Cyndi Lauper, At Last (2003)

Mostly standards, with a few sixties gems thrown in ("Walk On By," "You've Really Got a Hold On Me" et al.). "Nominated for a Grammy" and "Features a duet with Tony Bennett" says the CD sticker, but could she look any more glum in that photo?

cover albums#59: easy star all-stars

2007-07-29T23:17:00.000-04:00

59. Easy Star, Dub Side of the Moon (2003)

Companion piece to Luther Wright's bluegrass version of The Wall--these are dub versions of the songs from a much better album. Still seems kind of beside the point, though; most of those songs are trippy enough as is.

cover albums#57 & 58: michael mcdonald

2007-07-29T23:12:00.000-04:00

57. Michael McDonald, Motown (2003)
&
58. Motown Two (2004)

More Motown covers--two sets, in fact--from a former brother... a Doobie Brother, I mean.

cover albums#56: joan osborne

2007-07-29T23:05:00.000-04:00

56. Joan Osborne, How Sweet It Is (2002)

A set of mostly Motown covers + the Band ("The Weight"), Jimi Hendrix ("Axis: Bold as Love"), and Otis Redding ("These Arms of Mine"). Favourably reviewed at AMG.

cover albums#55: dump

2007-07-29T22:53:00.000-04:00

55. Dump, That Skinny Motherfucker With the High Voice? (2001)

A good and interesting if not particularly revelatory set of Prince covers by Yo La Tengo's James McNew. There are some misfires, for sure: "Erotic City" performed as a garage rock rave-up and "Dirty Mind" with its near-excruciating Suicide-inspired vocals are unconvincing. But a few are better than I would've imagined: "1999," "Raspberry Beret," and "When You Were Mine" have an appealing lo-fi dreaminess, and though none of them really widen the scope of the originals for me--indeed, "widening" seems contrary to the interior effect McNew aims for--they do reinforce just how strong those songs are. (Mind you, I think I've heard five cover versions of "When You Were Mine," and every single one of them has been good--not as perfect as Prince's, but nonetheless very good. It's apparently an impossible song to ruin.)

cover albums#54: luther wright & the wrongs

2007-07-27T16:03:00.000-04:00

54. Luther Wright and the Wrongs, Rebuild the Wall (2001)

Possibly too negligible to list, but what the hell. Wright and the, er, Wrongs, "[reimagine] one of the most recognizable prog rock artifacts of the late 20th century--Pink Floyd's The Wall--as a country/bluegrass album." I suppose it can't be much worse than The Wall itself (certainly, the very thought sends a chill down the spine).

cover albums#53: tori amos

2007-07-27T15:53:00.000-04:00

53. Tori Amos, Strange Little Girls (2001)

A decently middlebrow track list, taking in 10cc ("I'm Not in Love"), Depeche Mode ("Enjoy the Silence"), the Velvets ("New Age"), and Eminem ("'97 Bonnie and Clyde"). Sorry, but the thought of Tori "providing commentary" on that last one kind of makes me gag. What were we saying about "music to slit your wrists to"?

cover albums#52: robbie williams

2007-07-27T15:40:00.000-04:00

52. Robbie Williams Swing When You're Winning (2001)

The follow-up to Williams's Sing When You're Winning, which I actually (haphazardly, to say the least) reviewed in the Voice. Cute pun-title aside, I had and still have zero interest in this standards set. And the truth is, I don't think I've ever gone back to its predecessor, either, though I have enjoyed a couple recent collaborations Williams has done with the Pet Shop Boys. (Speaking of which, where's their cover album?)

P.S. Thinking of Williams's punny title, it dawned on me that I skipped a really terrible "swing" covers set from '97: Todd Rundgren's godawful With a Twist, possibly the most demoralizing artifact of this entire sub-genre.

cover albums#51: cat power

2007-07-27T15:20:00.000-04:00

51. Cat Power, The Covers Record (2000)

A cover album whose source material is mostly obscure to me. The only songs I'm (otherwise) familiar with are "Satisfaction," Phil Phillips's "Sea of Love" (the Cat Power version of which was once requested as a bride and groom first dance; one of those choices that screams, "we're different"), the Velvet's "I Found a Reason" (which Jackie and I almost chose as our first dance, and we're both very glad we didn't), and Tiomkin & Washington's (don't know who they are either) "Wild is the Wind," which I'm of course familiar with from Bowie's version on Station to Station (it was also on George Michael's cover album).

Cat Power's someone I've tried on at least three or four separate occasions to get into, with no luck whatsoever. Well, pretty much; I do recall liking a version she did of Robert Johnson's "Come On In My Kitchen," which isn't on this collection. I'm sure there's something there that time and patience would reward--just as I'm relatively certain there's more to her music than what Nude Music allude to as "music to slit your wrists to"--but it hasn't reached me yet. This album was well received, if that means anything to you.

cover albums#50: rage against the machine

2007-07-25T09:01:00.000-04:00

50. Rage Against the Machine, Renegades (2000)

And thus we trudge, into the current decade, with exhibit #50 and a head full of rage. This survey kicked off in 1965, with Beach Boys' Party!, but really, despite whatever arguments I made for that album initially, cover albums didn't become a bona fide mini-phenomenon until the early seventies. 50 albums in 30 years a sub-genre makes, no? Well, if nothing else, that ratio lends a bit of credibility to this exercise. Not that I need it, because things get really out of hand in the 2000s. By my latest count, I have 26 albums ahead to bring us up to the present day; that's half of what we've covered in this survey thus far, and we're still (I'm talking real time now) only three-quarters of the way through the decade. So clearly, cover albums, more than just some quirky sub-genre, are now something closer to their own sub-industry--not a particularly reputable or even (usually) very interesting sub-industry, but a sub-industry just the same.

All I intend to do from this point forward is list individual titles and attach a few descriptive notes, usually based on other sources. If I've already put in some listening time with a title, I'll probably have something to say about it myself; if I haven't listened to something, I'm not going to force the issue.

So, uh, Renegades... Produced by Rick Rubin, and the last RATM album with singer Zack de la Rocha, this contains the sort of cover material you'd expect these guys to cover: "Street Fighting Man," "Maggie's Farm," "Kick Out the Jams," "Renegades of Funk." (Sounds a bit pushy, doesn't it?) The critics responded favourably overall, as evidenced by the album's metacritic score of 78. Milo Miles, in his glowing Voice review, takes an interesting detour, at least for my purposes here (I'm going to quote this at length):

Unless you consider the British Invasion an onslaught of cover bands that got played on the radio where the originals didn't, the first modern albums in the remake mode were Dr. John's Gumbo in 1972 and the Band's Moondog Matinee and David Bowie's Pin Ups in 1973. In an era when yesterday didn't matter if it was gone, these were defiant moves—history, how freaky. But although Dr. John had reinvented himself as an LSD shaman in the late 1960s, in fact he was a secret r&b veteran revisiting the New Orleans foundation of his career. The Band were already obsessed with the past, though their rehabilitations outclassed those of the hokey '50s-revival groups in vogue at the time. Bowie's camp trip had its Sha Na Na side, but a spaceman futuroid doing vintage tunes made the gesture seem cooler and less decrepit. The next year Roxy Music's Bryan Ferry ran roughshod over Bowie's pirouette into the past with These Foolish Things. Ferry advanced toward Renegades in that he grabbed not just Dylan, Lennon-McCartney, and the Stones but the Brill Building and Tin Pan Alley and gave them roles in his glitter-lizard cabaret while trashing the niceties of the original music. Style sense, and Ferry's puce-velvet voice, conquered all. You could tell he loved these songs even as he throttled them.

Renegades' only equal, however, is Guns N' Roses' 1993 "The Spaghetti Incident?" Axl 'N Slash ('N sometimes Duff) played around with rock-clod and punk-neurasthenic archetypes like they didn't have a drug habit in the world. Any band that could make the connection between the Skyliners' "Since I Don't Have You" and the Damned's "New Rose" had way more smarts and humanism than nonzealots could detect in "Paradise City" and its ilk. "The Spaghetti Incident?" has become the G N' R album for those who don't like G N' R, but in 10 years it'll be more cherished than Appetite for Destruction.

Renegades shares the same sense of adventure and self-discovery, though it has more of Bryan Ferry's feral irreverence toward its musical sources...

I think Miles's point about Appetite for Destruction is a real stretch, to say the least (my own so-so response to the pasta album is here), but I admire any writer who's able to draw a connection between Bryan Ferry and Rage Against the Machine.

cover albums#49: bryan ferry (VI)

2007-07-24T20:37:00.000-04:00

49. Bryan Ferry, As Time Goes By (1999)

Capping off the nineties portion of this survey with the sixth (but not the final) Ferry entry. Here, alas, he dives headfirst into a dreaded collection of pre-rock standards ("dreaded" for reasons I've suggested elsewhere) with surprisingly excellent results. Or maybe it's not surprising at all: Ferry has always, even in those "futuristic" early Roxy sides, come across as an anachronistic lovesick sap--a "Sentimental Fool," by his own admission (and don't think it's only the first word in that song title that taps into what has made him such a seductive prospect all these years). Surely, if any pop star could perform credible versions of tunes by Porter, Kern, Rodgers & Hart, et al., he would seem to be the guy. Listening to this CD, there's little doubt that he invests as much of himself in "The Way You Look Tonight" and "Miss Otis Regrets" as he did in "It's My Party" or "The In Crowd."

Anyway, it's not like this collection hadn't been fully expected of Ferry for a long time, especially given that he'd nodded in this direction previously with "These Foolish Things," "You Are My Sunshine," and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." It'd be a mistake, however, to assume too close a link between, say, his version of "These Foolish Things" and the material on As Time Goes By. The former, for all its pretense of being a throwback, is nonetheless performed in a contemporary (for '73, I mean) vein: the beat pushes as hard as it does in any Roxy track (and is accented with a sugggestive reggae lilt), it contains an achingly beautiful synthesizer accompaniment, and Ferry's approach to the song is almost as irreverent as it is on "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" (he even does the sound-effects-matching-the-words thing in a couple spots). Not so on ATGB. The arrangements here mimic arrangement techniques in vogue well before Ferry would've started listening to the radio. The music, all brushed drums and stand up bass lines, is defiantly un-rock and roll.

And yet... this is to ignore what Ferry does vocally on ATGB, which, to my ears, contains some of the finest, most outré, singing of his career. The truth is, I didn't want to hear this album initially. I distrusted the concept, and found confirmation for my distrust in a two-sentence Salon pan by noted Ferry enthusiast Greil Marcus: "Bryan Ferry is a god. This is the most boring album of the year." But then, another noted Ferry enthusiast, Paul Woods--the same Paul Woods who changed my life when he brought home a copy of These Foolish Things in 1974--implored me to listen to it in the car with him one night, and, though still skeptical about the concept, I was floored by the shivery intensity of Ferry's voice--he emotes in a higher register than usual--and by how utterly glam he sounded. I was startled, first of all, by the fact that he was enunciating again, something he had failed to do in the previous 15 years.

The highlight here is "The Way You Look Tonight." Ferry sounds enamoured with his own voice--or rather, with what his voice is capable of--but not complacent. And as a result, the band, for all its surface banalities, works at a tear-it-up pace, and they come out of this sounding like a '30s niteclub combo catapulted by a time machine into Sun Studios, working behind Elvis and doing their damnedest just to stay afloat. I've played "The Way You Look Tonight" dozens of times at weddings in the last few years, during the background-dinner portion, and though it always sounds great to me, it also sounds a bit skewed in that setting. Beneath the jazzy veneer, there's something subtly off, something mildly discomforting about how fidgety Ferry sounds, not to mention how fruity. (Certainly this is the case when compared to Rod Stewart's much inferior standards collections, which I've also played frequently at weddings... but we'll get to those in greater detail soon enough.)

I'd be lying if I didn't say there's still some distance between me and ATGB. The pace of "The Way You Look Tonight" is an anomaly, and most of the mid-tempo material passes me by (the slow ballads are overall more successful). It's not a record I play often at home. But every time I do play it, I'm struck by the voice, which is full of urgency and surprises and mild shocks. There isn't an easier record in Ferry's career to dismiss than this one, but there's much more behind this music than anyone could've expected, including, by the sounds of it, Ferry himself.

Um--onwards to the new millennium...

[For those keeping tabs, here are the earlier Ferry reviews: These Foolish Things... Another Time, Another Place... Let's Stick Together... The Bride Stripped Bare... Taxi]

cover albums#48: george michael

2007-07-07T12:37:00.000-04:00

48. George Michael, Songs From the Last Century (1999)

I've always had nothing but kindly feelings toward George Michael, but this standards yawner is just kind of meh. What I said early on in this survey about Harry Nilsson's cover album basically applies here as well: "Most standards collections aim for an authentic re-creation of the past, rather than merely absorb something from the past and set it in the here and now... In particular, there's something false-sounding about pop music that hews with precise diligence to the production and arrangement techniques of a bygone era; it almost always sounds at least a little bit ridiculous right out of the starting gate." In short, I've never been a big fan of drummers who use brushes instead of sticks--not outside of jazz, anyway.

Maybe an even better comment about my aversion to this collection, however (which I did listen to all the way through) comes from the AMG review, which states, "For the first time ever, Michael sounds relaxed." Stephen Thomas Erlewine, the reviewer, is saying this as a plus, and I get what he means, but in this case, I think it's a minus. A "relaxed" George Michael is just not as interesting to me as a pent-up George Michael (though oddly enough, one of my favourite songs from Faith is "Kissing a Fool," which is nothing if not an "authentic re-creation" of an earlier song mode; maybe because it was an anomaly on an album consisting otherwise of pent-up sexboy funk?).

cover albums#47: paul mccartney

2007-06-07T11:06:00.000-04:00

47. Paul McCartney, Run Devil Run (1999)

A quarter-of-a-century belated response to Lennon's Rock 'n' Roll, and though I barely spent more time on this than I did on the Yoakam album, it wasn't an unpleasant listen at all. First run-through, I'd wager that it's probably about on par with Lennon's LP, though its appearance in 1999 makes it a less novel item, for sure (the truth is, I didn't even know about this album until I started researching this piece). The song that stuck out as a particularly good one was a zydeco version of "Brown Eyed Handsome Man." On paper, anything preceded by the phrase "zydeco version of..." should probably not compute, but somehow it works. The beat, anyway, is terrific.

cover albums#46: metallica

2007-06-07T10:55:00.000-04:00

46. Metallica, Garage Inc. (1998)

Garage Days Re-Revisited, revisited.

cover albums#45: dwight yoakam

2007-06-07T09:58:00.000-04:00

45. Dwight Yoakam, Under the Covers (1997)

I gave this a fairly cursory once-through, I admit, but it certainly didn't compel me to come back for more. I was never a huge fan of Yoakam's voice, but even at that, some of the far-out arrangements here strike me as kind of ludicrous, from a country-swing version of "Train in Vain" (second "Train in Vain" cover in two years; cf. Annie Lennox), to a virtually unlistenable big band spin on "Tired of Waiting For You" (because I know that whenever I hear "Tired of Waiting For You," the first thing that comes to mind is "Cherry Poppin' Daddies"). "Wichita Lineman," "Things We Said Today," and "Here Comes the Night"--all impeccable songs--are rather bland attempts at rocking out, barely noticeable.

cover albums: interlude

2007-05-29T22:40:00.000-04:00

Yes, I've gotten lazy about all this again. Do want to mention that I received a book in the mail today, completely unexpected, that's rather timely given the theme of this blog of late:

Soul Covers: Rhythm and Blues Remakes and the Struggle for Artistic Identity by Michael Awkward is described as "an engaging look at how three very different rhythm and blues performers—Aretha Franklin, Al Green, and Phoebe Snow—used cover songs to negotiate questions of artistic, racial, and personal authenticity."

Sounds interesting.

cover albums#44: moog cookbook

2007-05-22T18:29:00.000-04:00

44. The Moog Cookbook, The Moog Cookbook (1995)

Ten alt-rock instant-standards, from Nirvana to Soundgarden to Lenny Kravitz, revamped as mostly-instrumental synthesizer blips--as much a nod to a number of like-minded albums that came out in the late '60s and early '70s as it is to the genre being parodied here. I don't recall the joke seeming that funny in 1995, and most of this is as pointless as it's supposed to be, but there's one moment of near-transcendence: Tom Petty's overwrought "Free Falling," scrambled and messed around with just enough so that its melody, freed from its author's nasally whine, has room to dance. I would consider sticking it on just the right compilation.