Sep 292010
 

Song of the Day posts one cool cover every morning. Catch up on past installments here.

B-sides are a wonderful thing. With iTunes and the vinyl revival independently bringing back the single, bands promote songs as much as they do albums. Problem is, when iTunes makes everything a single, how do you convince a fan to pay attention? Why, you press a 7” and slap something else on the B-side. Often that something is a cover.

We saw one yesterday from the Dirty Projectors. Here’s another. In August, when noise-pop duo Crocodiles pressed “Sleep Forever” onto wax, they threw an unexpected tune on the flip side. It’s a cover that melds Deee-Lite’s super-cheesy hit “Groove Is in the Heart” with the slightly-more-classic “California Girls.” It winds up sounding very little like either. Continue reading »

Sep 282010
 

The word “pioneer” is tossed around far too often. So-and-so pioneered the post-industrial-folk genre. Some other guy pioneered the playing-guitar-like-violin technique. Heh? If anyone has earned the title though, it’s Jesse McReynolds. This 81-year old mandolin player has been performing bluegrass for decades. He’s won just about every award there is to win and is currently performing his 45th year in the Grand Ole Opry.

McReynolds still tours and still releases albums. His latest is titled simply Songs of the Grateful Dead: A Tribute to Jerry Garcia & Robert Hunter. It contains twelve Dead songs both famous and obscure, transformed into mandolin-picked bluegrass. David Nelson and Stu Allen, both veterans of Jerry Garcia’s non-Dead bands join in, but McReynolds has an even bigger card up his sleeve: Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, who wrote final track “Day By Day” with McReynolds. Continue reading »

Sep 282010
 

A few months ago we heard Dirty Projectors cover “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine.” Well, the Brooklyn indier-than-thou sextet must really dig Bob Dylan’s John Wesley Harding, because they’ve returned with another album cut: “As I Went Out One Morning.” The tune comes from the expanded edition of their 2009 breakout Bitte Orca, released today.

“As I Went Out” takes more risks than “I Dreamed” and each one works. The vaguely nasal “aaaaah”s initally sound like a chorus of female Dylan impersonators. When the ladies hit the serious harmonies though, it sounds…well, not so much like Dylan. Listen below. (via We All Want Someone) Continue reading »

Sep 282010
 

Song of the Day posts one cool cover every morning. Catch up on past installments here.

The point of the Song of the Day series is to spotlight a cover worth hearing. Generally, “worth hearing” means “good.” Not today. Sometimes something can be so bad, so horridly unpleasant, that it hits instant gold. Judas Priest covering Joan Baez falls into that category.

On the one hand, you gotta give them some credit. The cardinal sin of cover songs is carbon-copying the original. Judas Priest steered well clear of that pitfall. Too bad they hit every other. They might have even invented some new “Cover Don’ts” with this one. Continue reading »

Sep 272010
 

Last week we saw three videos from John Legend and the Roots’ Spike Lee-filmed concert. Since, JohnLegendVEVO has upped many, many more. You can watch them all here. One, however, deserves its own post.

The Legend/Roots album Wake Up! was originally inspired by them covering the Arcade Fire song of the same name. Ironically, that song was cut in favor of a protest-soul theme. We wondered what the heck their cover of “Wake Up” would sound like. Now we know. Epic. Continue reading »

Sep 272010
 

“Songs for Teenagers” could be the name of pretty much any Gaslight Anthem album. But it’s not the name of any of them. Now it never has to be. The Anthem covered their current tourmates’ actual song “Songs for Teenagers” for the A.V. Club. The Club’s Undercover series may be over, but those Onion funnymen haven’t let up on the cover premieres a bit.

“Fake Problems took us on our first tour,” Gaslight frontman Brian Fallon said. “Their new record Real Ghosts Caught On Tape came out [last Tuesday], so we did a cover of ‘Songs For Teenagers.'” Continue reading »