Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!
When a Cover Me writer tackles the Full Albums category, he or she is really committing. Not only are they writing about a dozen or more songs (instead of the usual one, three, or five), they have to make sure there are actually covers of all the songs on the album. If you want to write about Prince’s 1999, it’s easy enough to find a cover of “Little Red Corvette,” but you’re going to need to do some digging to find a version of “Lady Cab Driver,” and maybe longer to find a good one.
Sometimes you don’t have enough songs to finish off the album, but you still want to share what you’ve found. For me, this post on the Millennium’s Begin is one of those times. So, even if it was “close, but no cigar” for me, why should that mean you can’t enjoy a couple puffs yourself? Hence this, and (Almost) Full Album look at sunshine pop producer Curt Boettcher’s masterpiece. Continue reading »
A supergroup made up of members of Green Day, Rancid and blink-182 came together to form a Ramones tribute band called “Cretin Family,” and to perform at the Hollywood Forever cemetery in Los Angeles on August 30th.
Created to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Ramones’ self-titled debut record, the band took the stage with the instrumental “Durango 95,” which was a frequent Ramones set opener. From there, they segued into “Rockaway Beach.” Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day played guitar and sang, while blink-182’s Travis Barker played drums and Rancid’s Tim Armstrong played guitar and sang as well. Rounding out the group was late-era Ramones bassist CJ Ramone.Continue reading »
Jack Antonoff and his band Bleachers played Asbury Park, NJ’s Stone Pony outdoor stage during the band’s annual “Shadow of the City” event and, what do you know, Jersey legend Bruce Springsteen showed up for a couple of songs.Continue reading »
U2 has released their Shane MacGowan cover in anticipation of the tribute album to the late Pogues singer/songwriter. “Shane MacGowan was full of contradictions — and that’s where the truth of him lived,” said U2 guitarist The Edge in a press release. “He could be precise about what mattered and gloriously careless about everything else. If that sounds like a kind of performance, maybe it was. But as Oscar Wilde put it, ‘a mask tells us more than a face.’”Continue reading »
The final single from their 1989 debut album Up to Here, “38 Years Old” was not one of The Tragically Hip‘s biggest hits, just missing the Top 40 in their home country of Canada. (The Tragically Hip are an institution in Canada. For multiple generations, they are “Canada’s Band.” Culturally if not commercially, they were bigger than Nickelback, Barenaked Ladies, Justin Bieber, Drake – outside of Toronto, anyway – Bryan Adams, maybe even Shania Twain. One third of all Canadians watched their televised final show. Nine years after lead singer Gord Downie’s death, they arguably loom larger in Canada than a number of those artists. They were not yet that institution in 1990.)
Over time, this ballad about a man escaping from Millhaven Prison just outside of Kingston, Ontario only to get caught when he visits his little brother has become one of their most popular songs. It’s their sixth most streamed song with nearly 30 million streams.
At least according to Second Hand Songs, it doesn’t have any covers though. This is likely because it’s far more likely to be covered by a Canadian bar band live than it is to be recorded specifically for release. As Cabin Fever’s lead singer Kyle Faulkner jokes at the end of their new cover of “38 Years Old,” “You are not legally allowed to play music on a weekend in the summer time [in Canada] without playing at least one Tragically Hip song.”
And so that’s what this trio from outside of Sarnia, Ontario did last month. Originally performed by The Hip with a distinctive detuned acoustic guitar part, but otherwise played as a rock song with a prominent electric guitar, Cabin Fever drop the drums and they replace the bass and electric guitar with stand-up bass and mandolin.
But the biggest change is reserved for the tempo. If you’ve heard a bar band play “38 Years Old,” or really any Canadian musician fulfilling their obligation to play a Hip song at an outdoor show in the summer, they pretty much play it the same way The Hip did, only with more or fewer instruments. But Cabin Fever slow the song down to a crawl. Faulkner plucks his guitar part instead of strumming and Jess McKay joins him on the chorus and the ends of the verses.
If you’re a Canadian, you’ve heard this song more times than you can count, so this very distinct arrangement makes the song feel fresh. Check it out:
John Mayer paid tribute to Dolly Parton during a SiriusXM concert in Amagansett, New York, by including a short instrumental tribute in his final song. Mayer worked the melody of Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” into the introduction of his hit single, “Gravity.” The audience quickly picked up the iconic melody and cheered in appreciation.Continue reading »
