Seuras Og, Author at Cover Me

Seuras Og

Seuras Og is an old enough to know better family Dr in Birmingham, UK, having taken the easy option of medicine upon failure to get work in a record store. By now drowning in recorded music, he has thought it about time to waste the time of others in his passion here, as well as a few other places dotted about the web.

Review: The Sam Chase’s ‘Covered’

Posted by Seuras Og at 10:00 am No Responses »

Dec 092025

I am not sure how much traction (The) Sam Chase elicits in his home state of California, but over here in Blighty, courtesy a magnificent little festival called Maverick, he is always guaranteed a welcome. He, and his band, The Untraditional, cut quite the rug with his hoarse holler, belting out songs of a country hue, a punk attitude and a sometimes chamber-folk setting. This all makes for a beguiling combination, a rich mix of sandpaper and silk. Over the years he has worked solo, as a trio and now with his a 7 piece band behind him. That’s a lot, but, with cello, violin and trumpet, augmenting the more familiar guitar, keys, bass and drums, flickering remembrances of Van Morrison’s Caledonia Soul Orchestra wouldn’t be that far off point. And, yes, all seem present for Covered:, endeavoring to both compete with and comfort his foghorn fusillade.

To be fair, Chase’s voice gets dialed down a tad across most the selections here, culled from a bevy of the usual suspects: a Dylan, a Prine, a couple of Waits, balanced with CCR, Nirvana and one from the pirate cabaret of The Crux. The overall effect is strangely chameleonic, as he affects to occupy the persona of each individual singer, in character if not always sound. The difference comes largely from the arrangements, which tend toward the dusty roadhouse of amplified acoustica with drums. This renders a fluency to the flow of Covered:, a congruency that makes for a set that is all his own, however familiar the songs may or may not be.
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Five Good Covers: “Get Lucky” (Daft Punk)

Posted by Seuras Og at 10:30 am No Responses »

Nov 192025

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

OK, so Cover Me has found five good covers of “Get Lucky” before, a decade-plus ago, but given it was then appended “So Far,” I felt it allowable to repeat and reprise, with all new songs.

I absolutely love “Get Lucky,” popping up forever on radio and on shop playlists. I loved it in 2013, the year Daft Punk released it, and I’ve loved it ever since. But the difficulty, for me, was always in the tracking it down. Even with good old Shazam I was suspicious. I couldn’t believe it was actually by some weird helmeted French electronic duo. Shazam must be wrong, I thought, convinced it was more akin to the sound of Nile Rogers and the extended Chic diaspora he created, courtesy the inescapable scrub of guitar that he has made his own. It took me actually buying Random Access Memory to get to grips with the truth, and to confirm that, yes, it was Rogers on guitar, along with Pharrell Williams on vocals, half of the pre-eminent music production team, the Neptunes.

A number one single across most of the world, surprisingly “Get Lucky” only ever made #2 in the US, albeit for 5 consecutive weeks (damn you, “Blurred Lines”!). Multiple awards came as a deserved matter of course, including Best Song and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance, at the Grammys. Lyrical scrutiny was less a concern in those days, with the chorus so damn catchy that all were happy to sing along, whether or not there was much realization about what the “Get Lucky” may be addressed toward. Mind you, with the singer suggesting the content innocent and relating more to the good fortune of meeting with and immediately connecting to someone, who was going to argue. With the slightly changing repetitions, many may have never actually latched on to the full lyrical, if you will, thrust, only learning the truth via so many karaoke machines.
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Review: Willie Nelson’s “Workin’ Man: Willie Sings Merle”

Posted by Seuras Og at 8:00 am No Responses »

Nov 112025

So, here we are, another year and, not so much another Willie Nelson album, but another Willie Nelson tribute album, seeing him paying respect to another of his old buddies. This time, following discs dedicated to Ray Price, Harlan Howard and Rodney Crowell (astonishingly only six months since the Crowell set!), we have Merle Haggard in the frame.

Of course, the problem for a site like this, is that when Willie loves a song–and he loves a lot of ’em–he sings ’em again and again and again. A cover lover has to be on their guard and make sure that any earlier rendition, by or including him, wasn’t the first outing ever for that song. All but one of these songs have been covered previously by Nelson, frequently alongside Haggard, but my research suggests they had all had their original recording un-Willied, so to speak, all coming from Haggard alone, usually with his band, the Strangers.

Haggard and Nelson had history together, dating at least as far back to the early ’70s, each bit players on the Nevada Casino circuit. Haggard, four years younger, after an early life plagued by insolvency and petty larceny, had hardened his ambition to become a country singer. It was hearing Johnny Cash sing “Folsom Prison Blues,” as a twenty-year-old inmate in San Quentin, that lit his fuse. Nelson, who had already quit Nashville disappointment, was seeking alternative routes to satisfy his muse, with the two bonding and becoming part of the eventual “Outlaw Country” movement. Over the years they frequently appeared together, bolstered by a set of four shared duet albums, between 1983 and 2015, the last only a year before Haggard’s death.

Here the recordings have taken shape over the space of several years, between the myriad other projects that Nelson has forever on the boil. As such there are other old friends to respect; this record contains the last recordings of Nelson’s sister Bobbie and longtime drummer Paul English, who died in 2022 and 2020, respectively. The rest of the musicians are all also familiars of what Nelson calls the Family Band, producing the by now familiar mix of loving looseness, all helmed here by Mickey Raphael’s production, his harmonica a warm presence throughout.
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Cover Classics: Joe Cocker’s ‘Organic’

Posted by Seuras Og at 12:00 pm No Responses »

Nov 042025

Cover Classics takes a closer look at all-cover albums of the past, their genesis, and their legacy.

To celebrate the entry of Joe Cocker into the Rock’n’Roll Hall Of Fame, possibly the only way to celebrate this sometimes consummate interpreter of song, is to drill down into one of his many albums. Organic was a bit different, even by his standards; as well as a selection of songs new to him, producer Don Was got him to revisit some of his earlier covers. Quite a risk, as the now 52-year-old singer was widely seen, by then, as merely functional, going through the motions with a gruff bluster and a camouflage of backing singers.

Rewind to 1969. Arms flailing and eyes tight shut, the sight of the ex-gas fitter as he transformed “With a Little Help From My Friends” from skip-over track, into a searing ceremony of the soul; it was an astonishing moment. It had already captured the hearts of listeners at home, a number one UK single in 1968. But, played out on stage to thousands at Woodstock, the film then made sure it was then seen by millions worldwide. Suddenly he was a star, seemingly from nowhere.

For a while he could do no wrong. Blessed by a crack team of London’s best session men, his first two albums are a remarkable salvo of intent, matching his sublime vocals, Ray Charles with a little more frailty, with some of the best playing of the day. He even wrote a bit back then, but it soon became far more apparent that his strength lay more in what he could bring to the songs of others. On the back of these albums, and buoyed by Woodstock, he hurtled next into the Leon Russell helmed Mad Dogs & Englishmen circus, a carnival of excesses that went on a 48-date tour. Cocker, already exhausted by his earlier whirlwind ascent to fame, self-medicated his way around America on pills and booze, became a wreck by the end of it.

That could have been that, and nearly was; he needed two years away from music to even begin to recover. However, good friend Chris Stainton lured him back to the limelight. The return to the treadmill, and all its attendant vices, nearly and should have killed him. So much so that, when Michael Lang agreed to become his manager, in 1976, this was only on the condition of his sobriety, a condition which, against both odds or expectation, he came to fulfill.

From that time, and almost up to the time of his death, his workload remained formidable. Dipping between styles, he would follow up an album with the Crusaders, heavy with horns, with a bevy of soundtrack anthems, to wave lighters in the sky to. Quality varied and it was hard to know quite to whom he was aiming his appeal. But, by and large, his bread and butter was in the melodic songs of the ’60s, songs by Dylan and the Beatles, who suited his soulful timbre. Retaining healthy audience numbers, they were forgiving his fraying range, right up until he died, aged 75.

So, back to Organic. Don Was, the maverick musician, record producer, music director, film composer and documentary filmmaker, had already shown a Midas touch with his ability to revitalise flagging careers and/or add new pep to those then needing a lift. Iggy Pop, Bonnie Raitt, Brian Wilson and the Rolling Stones can all owe a degree of debt to the bassist from Detroit, they all ahead of Cocker, with many more after. His idea was to revisit some of Cocker’s greatest moments, tacking on a few new songs to cover in addition. A veritable who’s who came out to add their instruments to the album, headed by the ever faithful Stanton, also including Billy Preston, Jim Keltner, Darryl Jones, and Greg Leisz, with even cameos from Randy Newman and Dean Parks. Additional, let’s say, buffering vocals came from the likes of Merry Clayton.

Sadly, at the time, the album did not fare well, and failed, at least in the U.S., to chart. Nonetheless, worldwide sales eventually exceeded the million mark, as it went gold in several European territories. I think it has needed the sands of time to sift over it, ahead of this belated decontextualisation of its worth. Ready?
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Good, Better, Best: Stephen Sondheim’s “Send In the Clowns” (Part 1)

Posted by Seuras Og at 12:01 pm 1 Response »

Sep 192025

Some covers are more equal than others. Good, Better, Best looks at three covers and decides who takes home the gold, the silver, and the bronze.

Is there a ghastlier song than “Send In the Clowns”? The epitome of musical thea-ter (dahling), a go-to for any and every luvvy guesting on a TV show, invited then to sing us a song. Unspeakably vile, it is a song that must surely have some redeeming feature, to be drawn out of its saccharine turgidity. I mean, the bible of cover songs, Second Hand Songs, lists five and a half hundred iterations of the damned song, so surely there must be a “5 Good Covers” amongst them? Surely? I fear the title of this piece reveals the sickly truth.

Let’s get the details out the way. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say: “‘Send In the Clowns’ is a song written by Stephen Sondheim for the 1973 musical A Little Night Music, an adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s 1955 film Smiles Of a Summer Night. It is a ballad from Act Two, in which the character Desirée reflects on the ironies and disappointments of her life.” Two shocks there. First: I thought it came out a lot longer ago than 1973. Second: Bergman? It seems impossible to imagine the dour Swede having much truck with such lightweight frippery. But that is merely my view, with untold experts subsequently citing the song’s magnificence. It took a while for it to transcend the stage musical, not broaching the Billboard charts until Judy Collins brought it to #36 in 1975, and to #19 in 1977.

Frank Sinatra, in the meantime, had released it on his comeback album, Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back, setting the song along the road to it becoming a jazz standard. Sure, Sinatra tackles it with characteristic brio, and, vocally, it can’t faulted. It is just the wretched source material. Jazz, of course, in the context of standard does not generally equate with anything exciting or innovative, or indeed anything much to do with what I call jazz, it smacking more of big band MOR, easy listening for the easily pleased. Sure, otherwise reliable artists have given it a go, as an instrumental, but, even shorn of the pompously execrable lyrics, most come up short, shackled by the limitations of the melody. (Honorable exception is country maverick, Tyler Childers (here), who found a pearl within the snail shell.)

Disclaimer: I didn’t listen to every version. I couldn’t, on health grounds, and would challenge anyone of a normal disposition so to do. But I did take a look at the list, in no small detail, cherry picking names of those who might be able to step outside of expectations. Indeed, in particular, I had high hopes for Pete Burns and for Stan Ridgway. Burns, the flamboyant frontman of Dead and Alive, must be able, I thought, to buff it up into something idiosyncratic and memorable. Wrong. And Ridgway, the Wall of Voodoo man, turning then to oddball narrative songs, he’d give it some grit. Also wrong. So that’s my 5 gone for a burton.

Who’s left?
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Review: ‘I Will Swim to You: A Tribute to Jason Molina’

Posted by Seuras Og at 9:00 am No Responses »

Sep 082025

Jason Molina was the man, the inspiration, the words and, most of all, the voice behind Songs: Ohia, and Magnolia Electric Company. A major force, he died too young, aged 39, a victim of his battle with alcohol, and it is perhaps only now the importance of his legacy is making itself extant. Had he got sober, and maybe a bit happier, he would undoubtedly be where Jason Isbell is now today, Kindred spirits both, each had a canny way around a maudlin melody, built over with keenly observed lyrics, often those born of experience. And boy, was he prolific, issuing a torrent of albums, often more than one a year, as well as leaving a cache of tapes behind for his record company, Secretly Canadian, to slowly sift through.

Those good folk at Run For Cover Records are responsible for this curated compilation, and, in recognition of the circumstances of his passing, 10% of the profits of each copy of I Will Swim to You: A Tribute to Jason Molina will be donated to MusiCares® Mental Health and Addiction Recovery Fund. (Is it me, or is there not an all-too-tragic run of similar recordings just recently?) The contributors tend towards fellow travelers in the dusty outlands of contemporary gothic country noir, the broodier end of Americana, if you must, with MJ Lenderman, Sun June and Hand Habits (Meg Duffy) perhaps the best known. The songs traverse the whole of Molina’s catalog, with one song emanating from his posthumous stash.
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