Hopefully a full recording will be released of the Carnegie Hall tribute to Patti Smith. Until then, there are a number of videos on YouTube. Best I’ve seen is Ben Harper doing “Ghost Dance,” Smith’s mesmerizing mediation from 1978’s Easter. Note Flea on bass and Dylan/Costello sideman Charlie Sexton on guitar. Continue reading »
Cher’s pushing 80, but, as seen most recent on the SNL 50th concert, she can still command a stage like nobody’s business. At the recent Love Rocks benefit concert in NYC, she reprised her ‘90s “Walking in Memphis” cover, complete with full Elvis costume, pompadour very much included.
A heavy-metal cover of the least heavy group of all time (they are French, after all): Air. Dååth (you “know it’s heavy with that punctuation in the name) writes: “Our version of “Run” has been a long time coming. It’s a creepy, weird song I’ve wanted to cover since I first heard it… This is a weird song. If you haven’t heard it, listen to the original, then ours. To do it justice, we needed an unconventional mix that could also go full metal. Gautier Serre, of Igorrr, was the obvious choice. If he can handle Igorrr, he can handle this—and being French, he already knew the song. The result is truly unique. If you’re expecting pure extreme metal, you might be disappointed—and that’s fine, because we do what we want.” Continue reading »
Screamo Oasis? That’s sure to piss some people off! Can’t wait for the Gallagher brothers to weigh in. This reminds me of Biffy Clyro’s highly divisive “Modern Love” a few years back. Not generally my genre of music, but I do love when a band takes a swing like this.
For a couple weeks this months, my Google Alerts were taken over by some TV-performance show called Chefsache ESC 2025. Which I’d never heard of, and still only vaguely understand what it is (some sort of Germany-only Eurovision?). It produced some wild covers though. The Feuerschwanz medieval-metal version of “Dragostea Din Tei” must be seen to be believed. But we’ve written about that song before—they released it on an album a couple years ago—so, instead, here’s a group called The Great Leslie performing Coldplay like they’re Franz Ferdinand. Continue reading »
“Covering the Hits” looks at covers of a randomly-selected #1 hit from the past sixty-odd years.
When I spun the hit randomizer, I pulled up a song I’d never heard of. So I Googled it. Google spat out these lyrics:
Girl, shake dat laffy taffy
That laffy taffy
Shake that laffy taffy
That laffy taffy
Girl, shake that laffy taffy
That laffy taffy
That laffy taffy (candy girl)
That laffy taffy
It didn’t get better from there. Continue reading »
At their two co-headlining shows in Boston this weekend, The Dresden Dolls and Gogol Bordello collaborated on a dark and ominous cover of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “Red Right Hand.” It came as the encore to Gogol Bordello’s set, and featured their full band joined by masked Dolls Amanda Palmer on vocals and Brian Viglione on tubular bell (a key instrument on this song). Well, we assume it was them; “Who that was we may never know,” Gogol Bordello’s Eugene Hutz joked as the masked duo left the stage. Continue reading »