Mike Tobyn, Author at Cover Me

Mike Tobyn

Mike Tobyn is a Scottish Scientist, and lapsed Pharmacist. Brought up, along with Aztec Camera and The Jesus and Mary Chain, in the New Town of East Kilbride near Glasgow he has lived and worked near Liverpool for the past 20 years. He has recently returned to writing about music when he was reminded that the follies of one’s youth need not be abandoned forever, although the golfball type IBM typewriter he used then could be.

Album Review: “Lucinda Williams Sings The Beatles from Abbey Road”

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Dec 062024

If you are going to find and love The Beatles, you will probably do it when you are young. A friend or relative’s music collection might stimulate you first, or you might get a taste via a radio program/podcast. So many roads lead to The Fab Four that the streaming algorithms get you there quickly enough if you start listening to pop music. If you like the tracks all of those sources have more, much more, to help you satisfy your craving. Those who are now disgorged from the cruise ships to the Cavern Club in Liverpool might be older and well upholstered now, but they were probably young when their love formed. The love often stays with people once formed, and people have built careers around growing old with their heroes from fifty-plus years ago.

We must also remember that younger people created this music. Yes, they had a unique musical perspective and unprecedented life experiences, but the band imploded before any of its members reached 30. The ones that got the chance to grow old bring that perspective to their renditions now, but they cannot separate it from the young men they once were.

Lucinda Williams had an opportunity, for reasons wished for and unwished for, to bring a whole new perspective on her music and world, that of someone in late middle age. In 2020 she suffered a stroke, during a worldwide pandemic. She had to relearn how to sing, but never regained her guitar skills, and she got to reappraise the music that she loved and formed her. She released six volumes of Lu’s Jukebox, cover albums of her favorite artists or genres. Once she had recovered enough to tour and perform, she got a more welcome opportunity to rethink her relationship to The Beatles, with an opportunity to record at Abbey Road studios.

The result is Lucinda Williams Sings The Beatles from Abbey Road, forming volume 7 of Lu’s Jukebox, and it is a triumph.
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Julien Baker and Friends Cover Belle and Sebastian for Red Hot’s Trans-Rights Comp

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Dec 022024

The Red Hot Organization’s new TRANSA project may have started small, but it was probably always going to end as something epic. Intended as a “spiritual journey celebrating trans people” it features over 100 artists coming forward with new material (including the first new work from Sade in many years) and new interpretations. For a cover of Belle and Sebastian’s “Get Me Away from Here I Am Dying,” Julien Baker has assembled a genre and ocean-spanning group featuring Calvin Lauber, Northern Irish folk artist Soak and Alaskan singer-songwriter Quinn Christopherson. Continue reading »

One Great Cover: Bow Wow Wow’s “I Want Candy”

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Nov 262024

One Great Cover looks at the greatest cover songs ever, and how they got to be that way.

Some songs are transcendent and seem inevitable. They were always going to be a hit, and destined for greatness. As soon as the opening notes are played, or a motif is reached in a cover, you feel comfortable that you are in the presence of something important. No ornamentation or elaboration is necessary.

“I Want Candy” is not one of those songs. From its very first iteration, writers Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein and Richard Gottehrer felt that the song needed something extra to help it along. They cast themselves as The Strangeloves, and implied that they were an Australian Beat Combo, consisting of the Strange Brothers (Niles, Giles and Miles), so that their song about the undoubted appeal of Candy Johnson could have an unusual hook.

Other covers sought other boosting methods. When Aaron Carter made his version he felt that he had to draft in his brother, Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys, to make it more interesting. In a much different iteration Spice Girl Melanie Chisholm, having successfully curated a girl-next-door persona as Sporty Spice, decided to go “raunchy” in an (unsuccessful) Olivia Newton-John style transformation for her take.

Who might you call if you had to create something that is successful as a triumph of form over substance? If you were thinking of Malcolm McLaren, ex-Sex Pistols manager, you get a prize. McLaren was a man who realized that presentation could trump musical ability or artistry if handled correctly. He proved it multiple times, but “I Want Candy” may be the catchiest proof in his particular rucksack.
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Laibach Bring More Danger to “Strange Fruit”

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Nov 202024

Slovenian industrial rockers Laibach have pushed artistic boundaries for more than 40 years. Sometimes at risk to themselves. In communist Yugoslavia during their National Service, their brand of anti-authoritarianism was not appreciated, and as late as last year they had to cancel concerts in Ukraine when comments that they made were (probably) misinterpreted, despite their overall support for the cause of combating aggression from Russian. They do not laugh at Fascists, they teach us to fear them. Their latest single is a version of “Strange Fruit.”

The key to a successful interpretation of this song is filling the liminal spaces between the devastating lyrics and the world they inhabit. Billie Holiday’s original arrangement had her beautiful, delicate voice bathed in a sophisticated jazz arrangement, contrasting the worlds of beauty and evil that man can create. In 2017, we noted that the song retained a modern relevance, with a version filled with contemporary R&B sounds. Some versions eschew setting completely by going acapella, leaving nothing to cushion the blow.

Laibach have included the song as part of their set for several years. For the recorded version they put the song in place and time by using the angular sounds of avant-garde European classical music of the first half of the 20th Century. There is no comfort to be had from any aspect of the piece. They do not cushion the blow of the words with a lush arrangement, or even bury it in an industrial soundscape. The basso profundo of Milan Fras can comfortably inhabit a big wall of sound, but it jars and unsettles when unaccompanied. The meaning of every word carries import, and is given space to express itself. Atonal piano is the only accompaniment. An unsettling but necessary experience.

Rarely Covered: Simple Minds

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Nov 132024

Rarely Covered looks at who’s mining the darkest, dustiest corners of iconic catalogs.

Simple Minds has existed for close to 50 years, featuring schoolboy friends Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill, still the nucleus of the lineup. You have heard their music. At least one of their songs, anyway. In the US they are considered One Hit Wonders (even though “Alive and Kicking” hit #3). Here at Cover Me we have had not one feature on “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” but two, along with the occasional standalone mashup version. Nevertheless, it is atypical of their work. And when I say “work,” I mean that Simple Minds were the most commercially successful Scottish Band of the ’80s, and a version of the band records and continues to fill UK and European arenas each year.

Those decades of effort have had many important stages. It is not worth pretending that punk act Johnny and the Self-Abusers had such a glorious future, but once the band evolved into the electronic, Krautrock-flavored field, their sound began to take its mature form, in the albums Real to Real Cacophony and Empires and Dance, and the song “I Travel.” A switch of record labels led to a stream of single and album successes, hits across the world (but not yet the US). Their classic albums Sparkle in the Rain and Street Fighting Years endure as classics. They developed different, innovative, sounds and hit records with legendary producers like Trevor Horn and Jimmy Iovine. With occasional breaks they have remained active ever since. They have embraced many sounds and line-ups. Fully 23 of their albums have been hits in the UK, 5 reaching number 1. Their live act remains a strength to this day; they toured extensively, pre-COVID, across the world, with big tours in the US, periodically strengthened by refugees from other Scottish rock bands around Kerr and Burchill. The breadth and vigor of their work is remarkable.
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One Great Cover: UK Subs’ “Sabre Dance”

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Nov 082024

One Great Cover looks at the greatest cover songs ever, and how they got to be that way.

Punk paradigms provoke panic. Whether it is parents worried that their young people who do unnatural things with their hair may do more natural things if left alone together, politicians who fear anything they can’t readily control, or prog musicians who feel that someone is about to eat their lunch, there have always been reasons for fearing the new art form from the ’70s. Of course, none of these paradigms really hold true. Punk youngsters had no greater rate of teenage pregnancy than any other group of horny young people, and often proved to be good parents, and prog musicians have continued to thrive for the last few years, despite the efforts of the Sex Pistols and New York Dolls. Punks are inherently “anti-establishment,” but the remarkable thing about “The Establishment” is that no one can agree on who it is, so rebelling against it has no universal means and meaning.

Mexican-British (a much smaller demographic than Mexican-American) David Perez may be a nephew of original Joker Cesar Romero, or maybe he is not! Born in 1944 he didn’t find his true calling, as a hardcore punk now going by Charlie Harper, until 1976. He has embraced it as a member of the UK Subs ever since, combining skills with admirable industry. However, by the time he formed the band, in response to seeing The Damned, he was no longer a teenage tearaway, but a married man with experience of the world, and a history of playing in a range of R&B bands. He assembled a band that knew more than three chords, could turn his hand to harmonica and had assimilated a range of influences from the ’50s and ’60s, as well as the ’70s. He still includes songs by Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie in his sets, putting his politics alongside his music. We might guess who his “establishment” is. His band’s only previous appearance on these pages was to be included in a Nirvana cover feature, indicating a wish to stay current.
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