Cover Songs and Album Covers

Once upon a time, we had a brief volley of posts here waxing eloquent on our favorite cover songs. A week ro so ago, in passing, Arum mentioned he had further thoughts on the subject, but I'll beat him to the punch with this brief post to state my love of the previously mentioned cover of Townes Van Zandt by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss.

Here's Van Zandt's "Nothin'" as performed by Plant and Krauss.

And speaking of covers, here's a pretty genius collection of photos that brings both a literal and figuartive spin to the notion of "doing a cover." My faves are Jay-Z, Ted Nugent, and Johnny Mathis with a teddy bear.

Galaxie 500 was kick ass at at delivering covers to the people

About Lydon, I never liked the Sex Pistols, but I loved PIL.

Galaxie 500 does a wonderful cover of Submission, though, on a Peel Sessions release. Also of a song called Moonshot, but I don't remember who that's by.

~Arum
now listening to Black Postcards by Luna, which propelled him to write this

And Then I See. . . A Hard Life

Past posts have me thinking about covers. I’ve probably got about 6 or 7 thoughts on the subject, but here are my top three.

I keep coming back to the 2003 album Master And Everyone by Will Oldham. It took years to fully sink in, but I think it’s a near perfect record, and I love so many things about it – beginning with the lyrics and their delivery, but also the recording and the instrumentation, and even the cover art. It’s a mature piece. I used to think he was pretty hit or miss, but I find that with enough time to digest, I can see the intelligence and artfulness and complexity in most of his released.

There’s a number of near perfect songs on that record, not the least of which is titled “Hard Life”. Johnny Cash is dead, and it’s doubtful there’s an unreleased cover of this sitting on a reel somewhere, but lord, he could’ve delivered the lyrics well. Of that I’m certain.

And it's a hard life
For a man with no wife
Babe, it's a hard life
God makes you live

But without it,
Don't doubt it
You don't even have
Your tears to give

I wake up and I'm fine
With my dreaming still on my mind
But it doesn't take long, you see
For the demons to come and visit me
And I've got my problems
Sometimes love doesn't solve them
And I end each day in a song

And it's a hard life
For a man with no wife
Lord, it's a hard life
God makes you live

But without it,
Baby don't doubt it
You don't even have
Your tears to give

I know I'm a hard man
To live with sometimes
Maybe it ain't in me
To make you a happy wife of mine

And maybe you'll kill me
Honey I don't blame you
If I were in your place,
Maybe that's what I would do…

The Bauhaus treatment.

Bauhaus is one of the bands that led me to play music. That’s no secret. Maybe there’s a little shame in having a goth-y past, but really, I still think the world of Bauhaus, and always have. I retain a lifelong affection for them, and each era in my life I’ve seen them as having sustained value, whether or not they were in vogue at the moment.

Their approach to covers seems unique to me. Maybe not so much their approach, but their relationship to them. First off, they nailed them. They’re uniformly wonderful to me. Specifically, T Rex’s Telegram Sam, Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, Eno’s Third Uncle, and Cale’s Rosegarden Funeral of Sores. They weren’t digging deep into their LP collection and turning new people onto some rare strenturengt artist. They went at the songs with their own energy, but didn’t reinvent them, like say, M Ward’s version of Let’s Dance that I mentioned earlier. Just from listening to them, and the uniform energy they have, I feel in the center of them a great enthusiasm. Raw, genuine enthusiasm. I imagine them loving playing them in practice, the way I loved playing Moonage Daydream or Gary Numan songs or Sonic Youth songs with Chris Fuller, and then deciding there was nothing wring in sharing that enthusiasm with their fans. There’s a sincerity there I really like. And while they didn’t reinvent these songs, they didn’t just duplicate them, echo them. The way I’d phrase it, they gave them their own unique treatment.


The iPod changes everything. One thing is does is releases the gems from sketchy un-uniform compilations, including comps themed on covering an individual artist.

I remember the first of these I heard – the Heaven and Hell VU comp with Wedding Present coving She’s My Best Friend (a great song for a wedding by the way) and Nirvana doing Here She Comes Now’ the Bridge Neil Young comp with Winterlong performed by the Pixies.

Then came a landslide of them. And of dubious quality. There were often some standout tracks among the trash, though. And some releases had some really priceless takes, like the Beck and M Ward songs on the Daniel Johnston comp, most of the Grievous Angel Graham Parsons comp (surprisingly, Sheryl Crow doing Juanita with Emmylou Harris is amazing), and a lot of the Townes Van Zandt comp (Lucinda Williams doing Nothing there is unbelievably haunting).

Anyway, in the iPod age, these cover songs I like to listen to are so much more accessible and easy to blend into my listening habits. They’re liberated from their original, uneven, often poor context.

~Arum
currently listening to The Slits, Vindictive

Various, Sundry

I saw my friend Matt Hohmann’s band Bully Pulpit play over the weekend at a crazy, ancient Czech restaurant in Cicero on Saturday at a show my friend Mark put together. Man, they were incredible. Once again, complete left turn for them. Three guitars + bass + soft & somewhat jazzy drums. Intricate fingerpicking on one lefthanded guitar upside down and Hohmann arpeggiating oddness and playing weird, sometimes atonal yet fitting chords, little distortion involved, so you could really hear the intervals. Kinda Californian sounding to me (someone, I’m not saying who, likes Slovenly). Mostly instrumental at first, then some softly sung vocals, then some shouted ones. Lots of personality, lots of originality. Me likes.

Poster Children also played. Rick and Rose are such interesting people. I saw Rick’s art since then, as I check up on everyone I meet on the Internet, to prove they have not suddenly become criminals. See this.

The new Lucinda Williams release, West, is incredible in my book. Her immediately previous effort didn’t ring so true to me. Lyrics and vocals and arrangements on West are all clearly superior. Come On and Wrap My Head Around That are my favorite tracks so far.

She also did an outstanding cover of Nothing on a Townes tribute record. Man. Crushing. Go find it. It’ll break your heart & spirit in two, and singularly pull together your attention and not let it go for a few minutes.

Slint plays Spiderland and Sonic Youth Daydream Nation and that’s a neat idea and all, but too bad you can’t buy the final final performance’s guitar on eBay, (I say sarcastically). Great piece on it in the SF Weekly by Michael Goldberg. They would’ve been better off without 2005 happening, what with the $55 hoodies and the eBay auctions and all. Reuniting to play Spiderland all the way through, once, and that’s it would’ve been a smarter move, but then, what do I know. I haven’t ripped them off in a couple of years, so I’m clearly out of the loop.

I’ve not watched TV much for the last few years, but coming back from Chicago two weeks ago I saw the drummer from Trenchmouth Fred on the TV at the rest stop on the gas pump TV monitor. That’s crazy and kinda cool. Trill has a DVD of Christopher Walken that has him on it, too. For the record, I never listened to Trenchmouth because I thought the name was stupid. That’s just how it works sometimes. I saw him later on in a salsa band, though, and he was a great drummer.

I wish I could find Fred’s SxSW video on the web. Poo. I can’t.

Ray LaMontagne has a CD at the Milwaukee Public Library called Till the Sun Turns Black and between the cover art and CD and song titles I decoded to give it a shot. Man, great stuff. Country meets Tim Buckley. Good lyrics and orchestration. But it all may be a matter of expectations. I was expecting crap, but it was a free listen and I was in a good mood. Funny how that works, eh?

~Arum
Currently listening to Joy Division, Transmission

More on covers...

Johnny Cash went out in style. His fertile pairing in those last years with Rick Rubin tapped a rich vein of soulful performance, recorded in a way in tune with the moment, and yet that I think will prove timeless.

Johnny Cash is a commanding performer and a deep, historied , dark personality, a known symbol in an of himself in American culture.

Whether he or his management put together this pairing of Rubin and Cash, it’ll preserve his legacy, and it was an extended parting shot at extending his songbook, and cementing his name across generations in popular culture.

But I feel Rubin’s fingerprints all over these song choices, or at least the ones we’re looking at, and while the old man wasn’t exactly propped up and asked to sing songs he didn’t know at all, sometimes, well, it feels kinda close to that. That the commanding performer Cash was, and the personality he established across decades, it carried him gloriously doing those Danzig, Nice Cave, Depeche Mode, Soundgarden, Tom Petty, Neil Diamond, NiN, U2 songs. And while I wouldn’t change it, it doesn’t seem like the same achievement that creating the persona was. I want to hear the Folsom prison record over and over again still, and I’m dying to see his TV show if it ever comes out on DVD.

Lately I’ve been listening to the Rubin-produced Neil Diamond CD, and honestly there’s more original material on that one disc that I like and see merit in than in the whole American catalog of Cash.

So I agree, I See a Darkness, a great song and a great cover, among many covers he did then, chosen for him or by him. I like the original and listen to it often honestly, and in the context of an amazing record Will Oldham conceived. Cash actually gave me more insight into the lyrics with his delivery and made me revisit it. But it was already a song I saw carried a lot of meaning.

I listen with wonder to inventive covers like Joel Phelps (whose vocal style admittedly could be gated and trimmed about 10% of the time) and his piano version of Guns of Brixton by the Clash, as he pulls that song into a while new context and light. Or M Ward doing his sensually acoustic version of Bowie’s Let’s Dance. Man, those are glorious reinventions. I could listen to those over and over again.

Cash didn’t really make art with covers that way for me in those last days. He added good songs to his songbook of competency, and a couple times his authority and delivery really brought new life and fresh eyes to a song for me, like with U2’s “One”, and all this work late in life was probably the best he could do at the time, and it’s often enjoyable as hell to listen to, and it’s a dignified parting shot-- but not the meat of the matter of Johnny Cash, and it’s not the kind of art that a weird, cool, perceptive treatment in a cover can be.

That would be my two copper.

~Arum

currently listening to "Save Me a Saturday Night" by Neil Diamond

I see a darkness

YES! I agree Johnny Cash really nailed it! The gravitas that he brings to this song
is majestic. Not that the Oldham version doesn't have its merits...it is good, but, like
Cash's reading of Cat Steven's "Father & Son" (a song slightly marred by the backing
vocals of Fiona Apple), it just packs a lot of emotional weight. As does "Hurt", and
coupled with the video, could be one of the saddest things I've ever seen. The Cash
museum closed, and the gold record with smashed glass frame accenting the words...
definitely reflects upon a lifetime of work...

It's like when I play my 1965 Gibson acoustic, a guitar I love dearly...and realize
that it won't be mine always...someday, somebody else will own it, not because I'll
sell it, but because I won't be here anymore, and I'm hoping it will go to somebody
who loves it and treasures it and I wonder what it's tenure here on earth is, something
I wonder more about than my own time on this planet. Johnny's, end of career song
selections really bring home our finiteness...

Cash in Spain, pt. 2, or, Go Where The Music Leads You

I was going to put this in the newly enabled "Comments" section, but it kept getting longer and longer....
___________
Nice! Cash's 'Spiritual' really is an amazing performance, and definitely tops Spain / Haden's.

Interesting that you should mention that. Bonnie Prince Billy's I SEE A DARKNESS (the album) and Spain's THE BLUE MOODS OF SPAIN are closely linked in my mind, because they were both staples on the stereo that blizzardy winter on the floor with the first girlfriend I mention in my Cash post.

I went back and listened to that record after I read your post, and I still like it, though it's definitely best suited to "mood listening." (Amazing, isn't it, how music can evoke memories so completely.)

Josh Haden is the son of Charlie Haden, who, for those of you who don't know, is one of the MONSTERS of jazz bass. Also, Charlie Haden's daughter, Petra, used to play with The Decemberists. But I digress. My point is that Charlie Haden also covers "Spiritual" on a record he did with Pat Metheny called BEYOND THE MISSOURI SKY.

Also covered on that record are two Ennio Morricone pieces from Cinema Paradiso. Morricone is one of my favorite contemporary composers, and Cinema Paradiso is one of my all time favorite movies. The final montage of kisses is breathtaking. There are two versions of the film, the original European release, and the US release, which the American distributor cut down by about an hour. Contrary to what is normally the case, the 'more commerically viable' US version is actually the better film, as it more effectively captures the Romantic (capital R) soul of the film. Morricone's soundtrack, by the way, is absolutely essential to this film, and is a shining example of how important the right music is for a film. Please, if you've never seen this film, go rent or buy it. It's packaged with both the US and the Europena version. Watch both, but watch the US version first.

UPDATE: apropos of nothing...THIS is amazing, disturbing, hilarious, depressing, and unfortunately not surprising in the least.

Cash in Spain

I'm not a huge Spain fan, but I'd like to include Johnny Cash's cover of "Spiritual" in this discussion, because I'm a big fan of Midnight Choir's version of the song, which sounds closer to Cash's than to Josh Haden's original.

I have almost nothing in iTunes, so digging up long tracks would be painfully manual. The Psyche is my favorite Revolutionary Ensemble album and just a big favorite all around.

And I did find Internet in the desert, at least for now.

Recent listening of note, from the other night, John Martyn One World. Bless the Weather and Solid Air from the early 70s are the obvious classics, sort of a smoky, jazzy twist to Richard Thompson. One World, from the late 70s, makes far less sense. The production is weirdly polished and slick and of its era (recorded by Phill Brown, shortly before his work on Roxy Music's Manifesto), but it manages to suit the songs. The strange drum machines (I think that's what they are) and other hard-to-identify sounds are incongruous, but somehow also make sense in the end. And the songwriting is strong and interesting, even if the lyrics sometimes seem a bit tossed-off. The crazy 7 minutes of guitar across the pond that ends side 1 (sorry, no record in front of me here) is really pretty special. Not the first place I'd start for John Martyn assuming I was looking for his canonical "best" work, but an engaging and very distinctive record with great moments.

You know how much I love you

Just listened to the podcast of last week's Sound Opinions which was dedicated to cover songs that are better than the original. Johnny Cash came up when a listener proposed that his version of Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus" was superior. Needless to say, when the subject of Cash covering contemporary "alternative" artists came up, there were many accolades for his version of Nine Inch Nails's "Hurt." But for my money, the Johnny Cash cover that puts both those to shame is his version of "I See a Darkness" by Bonnie Prince Billy.

Oldham's version is great. No doubt about it. He approaches the song with melancholy and it seems to be sung to himself in a kind of interior monologue, despite the fact that the lyrics are addressed to "You." And oddly, the chorus of "i see a darkness...." seems somehow triumphant. Like so many Oldham performances, there's a mysterious and otherworldly quality to it. I remember when I first heard that record, lying on the floor with a former girlfriend on a cold and snowy winter afternoon. In that scene, at that time in my life, lying on the floor, the darkness was mine, and I knew the girl couldn't save me, in part because I didn't love her.

When I first heard Cash's version, it was many years later, in a claustrophibic attic apartment lying in bed on a hot summer night with a different girlfriend. This girlfriend had had a bizarre and difficult childhood, she struggled with depression, but she had a fragile, magic center to her that was beautiful and rare. I loved her. Cash perfoms the song not with melancholy, but with resignation.. the weight of his years, his sins, and his regrets infuse every word. He sings it to us, not for us, and when he sings the chorus, he projects pure dread at the darkness and a terrifying uncertainty at whether love can save him from the darkness. In that attic apartment, it was my girlfriend who saw the darkness, and my love couldn't save her.

Not only does Cash's version best Oldham's, it's probably the best song on any of the American recordings. It's an amazing song. Period. As I said, Oldham's version is really good, but it's Cash's world-weary and wizened delivery that best captures the strange cocktail of dread, despair, and hope, and that is the terrible magic of the song. I get goosebumbs just thinking about it.

To this listener, Cash's version is the definitive version. Man, I miss him.

Go to Hype Machine and do a little compare and contrast. Here...I'll even make the link for you.