The Walkabouts Archives - Page 2 of 3

Full Albums: Bob Dylan’s ‘Bringing It All Back Home’

Posted by Ray Padgett at 11:48 am 1 Response »

Mar 222017

Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!

Bob Dylan’s 1965 Newport Folk Festival concerts is one of the most famous – or infamous – performances of all time, subject to numerous books, documentaries, and debates over why Pete Seeger threatened to cut the power cable with an axe. But the fact is, by the time he stepped on that stage, Dylan had already gone electric, four months prior. The first half of his 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home – which turns 52 today – is all electric. And not the sort of light electric augmentation other folk singers were experimenting with either. The first track “Subterranean Homesick Blues” may still be the loudest, hardest track of Dylan’s entire career. He’d already drawn his line in the sand; the folk-music crowd had just chosen to ignore it.

To celebrate this landmark album’s 52nd birthday, we’re giving it the full-album treatment. Our recent tributes to Dylan albums have covered underrated works like 1978’s Street Legal and 1985’s Empire Burlesque, but today we return to the classics. Such classics, in fact, that in addition to our main cover picks we list some honorable-mention bonus covers for each song. Continue reading »

The Best Cover Songs of 1996

Posted by Ray Padgett at 12:00 pm 10 Responses »

Sep 302016

They say nostalgia works in 20-year cycles, and this year the music of 1996 has been in the media a lot. And if you believe the music blogs, it turns out 1996 was a truly groundbreaking year for every possible genre. Over at SPIN: “The 96 Best Alternative Rock Songs Of 1996.” Complex: “Best Rap Songs of 1996.” Junkee: “Ten reasons 1996 was a great year for dance music”. Loudwire: “10 Best Metal Albums of 1996.” Red Bull Music: “1996: Why it was a great year for pop”. Suck it, 1995! (Kidding; similar articles were of course written last year too.)

We’ll be honest: 1996 was not some magical, pioneering year for cover songs. It was also not a terrible year. It was just, you know, another year. There’s no overarching theorem of 1996’s cover songs that wasn’t true in ’95 or ’97. But even so, Cover Me wasn’t around in 1996, so we never made a Best Cover Songs of 1996 list (our first year-end list came in 2009, with the Kings of Convenience’s “It’s My Party” topping it, and you can catch up on all the lists here). So we decided, before the year ends and we take our look at the best covers songs this year, why not take a nostalgic rewind and do 1996 just for fun, twenty years too late. Continue reading »

Cover Me Q&A: What’s a favorite country & western cover of a non-country & western song?

Posted by Staff at 12:00 pm 3 Responses »

Apr 222015

Welcome to Cover Me Q&A, where we take your questions about cover songs and answer them to the best of our ability.

Here at Cover Me Q&A, we’ll be taking questions about cover songs and giving as many different answers as we can. This will give us a chance to hold forth on covers we might not otherwise get to talk about, to give Cover Me readers a chance to learn more about individual staffers’ tastes and writing styles, and to provide an opportunity for some back-and-forth, as we’ll be taking requests (learn how to do so at feature’s end).

Today’s question: What’s a favorite country & western cover of a non-country & western song?
Continue reading »

Full Albums: Nick Drake’s ‘Five Leaves Left’

Posted by Patrick Robbins at 5:00 pm 1 Response »

Sep 162011

Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!

“There goes another one. There are only five left now.”
“Five what, dear? Tell your Sudie.”
“Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too.”
— O. Henry, “The Last Leaf”

Nick Drake released his first album, Five Leaves Left, five years before his death. Barely out of his teens, Drake wrote almost unnervingly mature songs, and married them with sympathetic backing by members of Fairport Convention and Pentangle, and string arrangements by Robert Kirby, a friend and classmate only two months older than Drake. The album featured some of his most expressive singing and playing, and his songs, so melancholy yet so light, wore their graveness like a black silk cloak. Painfully shy, he refused to tour behind it, and the album was poorly marketed. It was doomed to sink with barely a trace. But oh, that trace… Continue reading »

Dylan Covers A-Z: “T.V. Talkin’ Song” – “4th Time Around”

Posted by Staff at 11:00 am No Responses »

May 272011

Dylan Covers A-Z presents covers of every single Bob Dylan song. View the full series here.

Oh mama, can this really be the end? After one heck of a week, we reach the finale today. This last set of 50+ covers makes it official: Cover Me now includes covers of every single Bob Dylan song, in alphabetical order. 279 songs in 50-60 song chunks. It’s never been done before and, given how much work it took, it probably won’t be again (at least not by us).

We’re not sure if this last set is the best of the bunch, but it’s up there. From Jimi Hendrix’s just-unearthed “Tears of Rage” to Elliott Smith’s transcendent “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” there’s a lot to love here. So join us in our final celebration of Dylan’s birthday with one more cup of covers. Once again, happy birthday Bob.

Sidebar: We’re guessing you maybe fell behind on a song or two these past four days. After all, listening to these all would take more than 15 hours. So here are links to the full set for you to peruse this weekend.
Part 1: “Absolutely Sweet Marie” – “Everything Is Broken”
Part 2: “Father of Night” – “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”
Part 3: “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” – “Oxford Town”
Part 4: “Peggy Day” – “Sweetheart Like You”
Part 5: “T.V Talkin’ Song” – “4th Time Around”

Continued on Page 2…

Moptop Madness: Chris Eckman vs. The Black Keys, Brad Mehldau Trio vs. Teenage Fanclub

Posted by Ray Padgett at 8:00 am 5 Responses »

Mar 042011

This March, we pit 64 Beatles covers against each other in what we call Moptop Madness.

Yesterday’s winners: David Bowie, “Across the Universe” and Booker T. and the M.G.s, “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”

For our fifth and sixth matches, we present some heavy hitters. First, it’s a Revolver battle when Chris Eckman of the Walkabouts pits his “Yellow Submarine” against the Black Keys’ “She Said She Said.” Then, Brad Mehldau Trio jazz through “She’s Leaving Home” for over nine minutes while indie pioneers Teenage Fanclub keep it short and sweet on “The Ballad of John and Yoko.”

Listen to each pairing below, then vote for your favorite. For added sway, try to convince others to vote your way in the comments. Voting closes in 24 hours. Continue reading »