Dec 012023
 

Blimey, but hasn’t George Ivan been busy. He’s churned out four albums in the past three years; Accentuate the Positive is the second one this year to catch our eye. If Moving On Skiffle was his skiffle album, Accentate the Positive is Van Morrison’s homage to rock and roll, or the roots thereof. A wedge of tunes largely from the late ’40s into ’60s, this is the the sort of stuff that must have caught his ear as he was starting off himself, as a fresh faced r’n’b shouter from Belfast. And once more, by making this a parade of idiosyncratically offered cover versions, he avoids the problem that his recent streak of original material had in spades, that of his bluntly critical lyrical bombast. Which I, for one, salute, as this is mostly a joyous set of songs.
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Apr 182018
 

In the Spotlight showcases a cross-section of an artist’s cover work. View past installments, then post suggestions for future picks in the comments!

sex pistols covers

Our casual Sex Pistols stroll down memory lane concludes today with a look at the covers they performed themselves. If you’ve been with us through the series, we’ve presented their one-and-only studio album Never Mind The Bullocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols as a Full Album feature along with several single-artist tributes to the entire album. We’ve also covered the covers spawned from each of their four singles: “Anarchy In the U.K.,” “God Save The Queen,” “Pretty Vacant,” and “Holidays In The Sun.”

Covers performed by the band first started to appear on official commercial releases only after the Rotten/Jones/Cook/Vicious line-up imploded in January of 1978. However, like most new bands with limited original material, covers were part of their live sets from the start. And since the band’s break-up, several poorly recorded versions from those early shows have found their way to market. But the bulk of any discussion about cover versions performed by the punk icons will focus on The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, the early 1979 double soundtrack album from the “mockumentary” film about the band of the same name. Continue reading »