Feb 032023
 

Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.

See No Evil Television covers

January 2023 was not a good month for guitar heroes. Not three weeks after Jeff Beck passed away, Tom Verlaine followed him to the great gig in the sky. Both were hailed from all corners of the music world and valued for their contributions to their instrument. Verlaine had one advantage to music fans’ hearts that Beck didn’t – he was the front man for Television, writing the band’s songs and singing them with a voice of strangled urgency.

Millions of people listened to Television’s Marquee Moon this week, whether in memoriam or to find out what all the fuss was about. The opening track, “See No Evil,” was a thrilling introduction to one of the era’s greatest albums. It saw great interplay with guitarist Richard Lloyd (that’s Lloyd doing the solo), and bassist Fred Smith and drummer Billy Ficca held down a solid rhythm that allowed Verlaine and Lloyd the chances to drive, lift, and soar.

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May 242019
 

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

time out of mind covers

For Bob Dylan’s 78th birthday today, we wanted to post covers of every song on one of his classic albums. Problem was, we’d already given the “Full Albums” treatment to so many contenders: Highway 61 Revisited, Blood on the Tracks, Blonde on Blonde, Bringing It All Back Home, and John Wesley Harding. We’d even done a couple of the oddballs: Empire Burlesque and Street Legal.

So, for the first poll on our new Patreon account, we put the question to our backers. Time Out of Mind beat out its competitors Desire and Freewheelin’ by a single vote – a testament to the power of Dylan’s latter-day work. Turns out, Dylan has a lot of classic albums.

Calling Time Out of Mind Dylan’s comeback, as many do, overstates it a bit. After, he was only eight years on from his last “comeback” album – 1989’s Oh Mercy – and had released several quite respectable records in between (though the less said about “Wiggle Wiggle” the better). Continue reading »

Dec 132013
 

They Say It’s Your Birthday celebrates an artist’s special day with other people singing his or her songs. Let others do the work for a while. Happy birthday!

Today, Tom Verlaine celebrates the day his parents named him Tom Miller. But we, the music nerdery, celebrate it as the birth of the man who (legend has it) opened CBGB’s doors to what would become punk when he talked Hilly Kristal into letting his band Television play. Though not quite a household name, Television is indisputably seminal. More punk in attitude than sound, Television began life as the Neon Boys, with Verlaine and Richard Hell as the leading lights. In time, the Neon Boys transformed into Television, adding Richard Lloyd to the mix on rhythm guitar. With tangoing guitars, they took downtown NYC by storm. Television recorded disappointing (to Verlaine) but intriguing demos with Brian Eno, Hell left the group, and then, finally, they produced the album that would solidify their legend, Marquee Moon. The band broke up soon after their follow up, Adventure, and Verlaine launched his solo career.

Television has reunited intermittently over the years, releasing an album of new material in 1992 and irregularly touring during the aughts – most recently, anointing the new Rough Trade store in Brooklyn with a performance (sans Lloyd, who quit years ago). For three decades, covering Television songs has been a right of passage for a certain stock of rockers, which should shock no one considering the awe in which many guitarists hold Verlaine and Lloyd’s fretwork. Here are five covers for the man who fell into the arms of Venus de Milo.
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May 232011
 

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

Bob Dylan turns 70 tomorrow. We pondered long and hard how to celebrate. This seemed to us deserving of more than the usual They Say It’s Your Birthday collection, and we knew we could do better than another Best Dylan Covers list. We wanted to do something truly special.

So we’re celebrating Dylan’s birthday this week by doing something no one’s ever done before: compiling covers of every single Bob Dylan song. If he released it on a regular studio album, we’ve got it, for a grand total of 279 songs.* Our entire staff has dug deep to find the hidden gems alongside the classics. We’ve got your “Ballad of a Thin Man” and “Tangled Up in Blue,” sure, but we’ve also got your “Cat’s in the Well” and “Po’ Boy.” Heck – we’ve even got the Jesus stuff! Continue reading »