Cover Commissions: John Dissed

Posted by Ray Padgett at 7:46 pm No Responses »

Oct 162009

Cover Commissions is a monthly series in which a featured artist produces a special cover for this blog. The song to be covered is usually chosen by blog readers via a poll or suggestions form. Any artists interested in participating in a future installment, please email me at the address on the right.

October may be half over, but at Cover Me we’re making up for lost time by announcing a true cover artist extraordinaire to take on this month’s Cover Commissions. His name’s John Dissed, and this guy knows covers.

Based in Los Angeles, John’s been recording his tunes since 2007 (many of which are available at his website), but has been earning a reputation as a songwriter par excellence for longer than that. In 2006 “Mr. Madness,” a song he co-wrote for Manda Mosher, earned the “Rock Single of the Year” accolade from the Los Angeles Music Awards. Check out Mosher’s glam-folk video at the ‘Tube.

As tends to happen here, it was his cover songs that first caught our ear. And this guy’s got cover songs coming out the…well, he’s got a lot of them. He’s taken on everyone from the Rolling Stones to Duran Duran, each time with stripping down the song to lyrics and melody. We’ve got a few choice picks for ya here, but dozens more Dissed covers can be had just by giving him your email address at his website.

John Dissed – When She Comes (Ginger Wildheart)
John Dissed – C’Mon and Love Me (KISS)
John Dissed – Prove It All Night (Bruce Springsteen)

Dissed has got a special cover up his sleeve just for Cover Me. What song, you ask? As always, the choice is yours. Below are eight songs, each linked to their YouTube video. Listen to Dissed’s tunes, listen to these originals, then pick which one you’d like to hear him do in the poll on the right! The winner will be posted exclusively on Cover Me in a month or so.

Berlin – Take My Breath Away
The Cars – Candy-O
The Cure – Doing the Unstuck
Dead or Alive – You Spin Me Round
Kings of Leon – Use Somebody
The Outfield – Your Love
Social Distortion – So Far Away
T. Rex – Bang a Gong (Get It On)

Voting closes in one week, so get deciding! Vote on the right.

And Out Come the Wolves

Posted by Ray Padgett at 3:49 am 1 Response »

Oct 132009

Halloween is still three weeks away, but everyone has already had it up to the neck with vampires (har!). Hopefully after the Twilight/Jennifer’s Body/True Blood fervor runs its course Dracula and his nocturnal ilk will slink off for a long sleep. When that happens, it’s the werewolf’s time to rise.

The Pluto Tapes – Wolf Like Me (TV on the Radio)
TV on the Radio pulled off the rare feat of scoring a mainstream hit with this one without selling their souls. Andy Hicks of the Pluto Tapes strips back the jagged funk of the original for some slow-burn harmonies and crunchy crooning. [Buy]

Adam Sandler – Werewolves of London (Warren Zevon)
Adam Sander’s music career is as bipolar as it is bizarre. He’s covered Bruce Springsteen, with predictably terrible results (watch the video and laugh), but then again he’s covered Neil Young with shocking decent results (watch the video and be surprised). Happily, this Zevon cover falls into the latter category. [Buy]

Jordan Galland – Hungry Like the Wolf (Duran Duran)
This may be the most popular result from our monthly Cover Commissions, and it was only a bonus track! Still, it’s a killer. Which reminds me, October’s Cover Commissions coming soon! [Buy]

By a Girl – Furr (Blitzen Trapper)
The best wolf-song of the bunch. It’s the same old story: A guy wanders into the woods, spontaneously turns into a wolf, runs around for years that way, then sees a girl and becomes a man again. You know, the usual. [Buy]

Yann Gallice – A Wolf at the Door (Radiohead)
Hail to the Thief gets its share of ire from Radiohead fans. For goodness sakes, Pitchfork only gave it a 9.3! This gorgeous hum-happy cover may make you rethink. [Buy]

Joel Martin – Wolf Among Wolves (Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy)
I’m not quite sure what Will Oldham did to deserve the thirty-track tribute album I Am a Cold Rock, I Am Dull Grass, but fellow freak-folkniks like Iron and Wine and Calexico understand. Joel Martin delivers a high point of an already soaring album. [Buy]

Chester French – She-Wolf (Shakira)
Shakira on writing this 2009 hit: “The image of the she wolf just came to my head, and when I least expected it I was howling and panting.” No comment. [Buy]

The Meteors – Little Red Riding Hood (Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs)
As a kid I always adored this tune on the rare occasions it graced oldies radio, but the Meteors amp it up another notch with a singer who actually sounds like the (sexually aggressive) wolf. [Buy]

Stiff Dead Cat – Dire Wolf (Grateful Dead)
First discovered this bluegrass cover when researching our Workingman’s Dead album post. This lesser gem deserves another look. [Buy]

Ellie Goulding – The Wolves (Act I and II) (Bon Iver)
Covering Bon Iver is like covering heaven. That explains why this is so angelic. [Buy]

Shuffle Sundays: Mama Tried

Posted by Ray Padgett at 6:13 pm No Responses »

Oct 112009

Shuffle Sundays is a weekly feature in which we feature a cover chosen at random by my iTunes shuffle. The songs will usually be good, occasionally be bad, always be interesting. All downloads will only be available for one week, so get them while you can. After you listen, discuss this week’s tune in the comments.

In a recent Rolling Stone, Merle Haggard says Johnny Cash once told him, “Hag, you’re the guy people think I am.” Leaving aside the somewhat adorable fact that Cash called Merle “Hag,” it’s an accurate statement. You know the Johnny Cash live prison classic At San Quentin? Well Merle Haggard was there too…in the audience.

Haggard had been in and out of jail most of his young life, finally inspired to mend his ways after several encounters with execution-bound prisoners. He was pardoned in 1972 by Governor Ronald Reagan, but to get there he had to get famous. He used Cash’s show as inspiration, but did him one better by writing about a hard-bitten life he actually knew, not just imagined.

One of his early hits was “Mama Tried,” a semi-autobiographical song where he imagines the pain he put his mother through while incarcerated. The song first came out in 1967, become Haggard’s fifth number-one single on the country charts. Twelve years later, he talked about it in the book Lost Highway:

“I don’t know what I’d have done with me if I had been the parent,” he said. “I was a child that needed two parents and there was a period that came up that my mother just couldn’t handle. My dad wasn’t there and my older brother tried to step in and of course I resented that. It just got all confused and messed up. Mama certainly did try.”

Bob Weir has never been in jail, but performing of this song with the Grateful Dead he sings like he has. According to DeadBase the band debuted the song in June 1969, performing it two months later during their set at Woodstock. Here’s a video:

Weir kept belting this tune all the way until its final performance 6/25/95, barely over a month before Jerry Garcia’s death. Along the way it received 302 performances, which I’d wager is probably almost as many times as Haggard himself has done it. I’m not sure when this performance is from, though it sounds similar to that Woodstock one.

The Grateful Dead – Mama Tried (Merle Haggard) [Buy]

What do you think? Discuss this song in the comments section below.

Full Albums: Radiohead's Kid A

Posted by Ray Padgett at 4:00 pm No Responses »

Oct 052009

The first post of the month always features a look at songs covering every track on a famous album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!

There was never really any question which album Pitchfork would pick as its #1 of the 2000s. However, a predictable conclusion to their countdown shouldn’t distract from the merits of the winner, Radiohead’s Kid A. As the follow-up to their massively successful OK Computer, Kid A’s glitchy electro beats and spacey reverb washes elicited mixed reaction at best. Suffice to say, fans and critics have come around in the ensuing nine years, these ten artists in particular.

Sonos – Everything In Its Right Place
I’m sure a cappella Radiohead has been tried many, many times. I’m sure it has failed just about every one of them. This is the rare exception. If Thom Yorke produced a cappella himself, it would probably sound like this. [Buy]

John Mayer – Kid A
The guy responsible for “Your Body Is a Wonderland” taking on the man who gave us “Karma Police”? Surely a disaster waiting to happen. The fact that it isn’t furthers my theory that Mayer may actually be a talented musician hiding it well. [Buy]

paradigm – The National Anthem
The Louisville four-piece did an almost exclusively Radiohead covers set in ’06, all instrumental, all ass-kicking. This one comes out of a lengthier medley with the Beatles’ “Come Together” (hence the abrupt ending). Click the link to get the whole show: [Buy]

Eliza Lumley – How to Disappear Completely
Many Radiohead fans claim this as their favorite song. It’s one of my least favorites. Eliza’s quiet piano lament may make me reconsider though. [Buy]

Vitamin String Quartet – Treefingers
I’ll be honest here: I tried hard to find a cover of this not churned out by the ubiquitous string quartet. I failed. This anonymous group has literally hundreds of tribute albums out (here’s a partial list), so their street cred in the cover community is below even Richard Cheese’s. Still, the original here is instrumental, so their approach works. They cover the whole album. [Buy]

Hanson – Optimistic
Going from the Vitamin String Quartet to Hanson? If this is my last blog post, it’s because I was chased off the internet. I won’t push my luck by saying the “MMMBop” boys do a good job here. But I’m not saying they don’t either… [Buy]

Sa-Ra – In Limbo
Techno, dance, crunk. Sa-Ra combines just about every genre Radiohead isn’t and inexcusably makes it work. [Buy]

We Versus the Shark – Idioteque
The slow grind of We separates this from the many folksy covers out there, giving it a hefty call-and-response churn that ably substitutes for the schizo drum pattern of the original. [Buy]

Flash Hawk Parlor Ensemble – Amnesiac / Morning Bell
Technically this pairing is off the Amnesiac album, but the “Morning Bell” portion first appeared on Kid A. This twee-folk ditty from the Decemberists’ Chris Funk may make you forget that either album exists. [Buy]

Christopher O’Riley – Motion Picture Soundtrack
It seems fitting to close out with O’Riley, the solo piano cover artist extraordinaire. He’s got two discs of Radiohead covers out, both worth getting. [Buy]

Shuffle Sundays: The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze

Posted by Ray Padgett at 11:01 pm No Responses »

Oct 042009

I first discovered this song when Bruce Springsteen played it live with his folk-revival Seeger Sessions Band (watch that F-bomb-laden version here), but it goes even farther back than Pete Seeger, the Band’s inspiration. When I say this song is an oldie, I’m not talking “Rock Around the Clock” oldie, I’m talking Great Expectations oldie.

“The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze” comes straight out of 1867, the same year that brought us Nebraska, Alaska and Frank Lloyd Wright. The inspiration: Jules Léotard, the famous French acrobat for whom the one-piece spandex outfit was named. British lyricist George Leybourne wrote the words, while Gaston Lyle composed the tune.

The song didn’t get its first recording until 1934 though when comedian Walter O’Keefe (the first man to host the Emmys) made it his trademark tune. Kid-friendly renditions by Burl Ives and the Chipmunks soon followed and it’s become a sing-along standard into the twenty-first century.

However, I’ve never seen it presented better than in this amazing Popeye the Sailor short from ’34. Olive Oyl gets seduced by said daring young man and Popeye, spinach in hand, fights back in a flying-high fight sequence worthy of the next James Bond or Jackie Chan movie. They don’t make ‘em like this any more.

The Earthlings Electric Washboard Band can’t boast the same cinematography, but this southern Florida duo gives it a traditional take with guitar and mandolin, suitable for the kiddies but enjoyable for romantics of all ages.

Earthlings Electric Washboard Band – The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (Leybourne/Lyle) [Buy]

What do you think? Discuss this song in the comments section below.

Cover News: October 2, 2009

Posted by Ray Padgett at 12:21 pm No Responses »

Oct 022009

Cover News is a weekly feature keeping you up to date on the goings-on in the world of cover tunes, tribute albums, etc. Plus, at the bottom we post our array of cover tunes we’ve been sent in the past week. Have you recorded a cool cover? Send an mp3 to the email address on the right!

This Week’s News

Couple new features here in the righthand column. First there’s a spanking new search bar. Type in an artist, a word, a theme and see everything we’ve posted on it. Catch up on any downloading you missed.

Right below that I’ve divided the blog into sections by Feature. Want to see all the Cover Commissions we’ve done? There’s a link for that. Interested to see what’s hit the iTunes in past Shuffle Sundays? That’s there too. Check it out (Crayola would describe the links as “marigold”-colored.)

Our Twitter followers know that I frequently tweet cover downloads just for them. Get in on the action here, and suggest a theme for me to tweet about next week. Use that little @covermesongs function, whatever you call it, to toss in your idea.

Bruce Springsteen turned sixty last week. Philly’s WXPN station put together a tribute concert of brand-new Boss covers you can listen to here. While you’re at it, check out all the Bruce covers (22!) we’ve posted here in the past.

The always cover-friendly Bruce (check out my review of his Elvis Costello taping last week) joined Phish this past Bonnaroo for a take on “Mustang Sally” as well as some originals. Well Phish Phans know they have a Halloween show coming up this year, which means a full-album cover set. What album you ask? Well Phish are letting you guess, giving the hatchet to one album a day. Literally. The last one standing on 10/31 wins! Pretty fun to watch.

There can be a bit of an in-crowd feel with Phish, but Warren Haynes’ Gov’t Mule is a jam band everyone can get behind. When they’re doing an Alice Cooper cover? Even better.

Warp Records is celebrating its twentieth year with a cover orgy. Check out the 21-song track list at Stereogum along with downloads of Grizzly Bear and Boards of Canada covers.

Here’s a funny idea: What if Neil Diamond covered Adam Sandler? That would be so ridiculous that…wait, he has? Ew.

Though he’s been around forever, Andrew Bird’s profile has risen enormously this year. Everyone calling him the next Harry Nilsson (no one has called him that) won’t be shocked to hear him covering Nilsson. This download is from a new disc of Nilsson children’s covers.

Lou Barlow I have heard of, Franklin Bruno I have not. What matters though is that Lou Barlow has heard of Franklin Bruno, enough to cover “Sit Back and Watch.”

Karl Blau covers WHY? I don’t know. Third base!

This Week’s Submissions

The City Streets – Nikki (The Dream)

Port O’Brien – Halo (Beyoncé)

Rifle Recoil – Prototype (Outkast)