Jan 192017
 

Download This scours the web’s dark corners for cool cover freebies. View past installments.

SummerofSheryl

Yesterday, a tweet from Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield caught our eye. It was a photo of Sheryl Crow holding up a nightmare-clown drawing of her own face. When we Googled to find out more, we stumbled upon an insane tribute album we’d missed, apparently meant to accompany the zine she’s holding up. The zine was forgotten as we burrowed deeper into the weird, weird world of the free Bandcamp tribute album Summer of Sheryl.

Crow’s hits are all high-gloss productions, and these 17 covers are anything but. Basic keyboard beats and cheap guitar sounds abound, with many tracks sounding like they were taped into a $10 cassette recorder. Summer of Sheryl also violates the cardinal rule of tribute albums – only one version of each song – by doubling up on hits “Every Day Is A Winding Road,” “Soak Up the Sun,” and “If It Makes You Happy.” There’s three separate covers of “Strong Enough,” plus a cover of the song Crow apparently wrote for a Katie Couric talk show. Continue reading »

Jun 152015
 
the doors tribute

During the six years Jim Morrison was alive and leading vocals for The Doors, 1965-1971, the group produced six albums. That is quite a feat, especially given the number of singles and hits they produced. The Doors’ music has lived on and tribute albums and covers have been made. The latest tribute from May comes from Murder Studios Presents. The nineteen cover songs each lend their own unique sound to decades-old songs that seem to never expire. Continue reading »

Jul 022012
 

One of the hottest bands in the bluegrass and jamband scene, Greensky Bluegrass never seem to stop touring. As evidenced by their three appearances at last week’s  Telluride Bluegrass Festival, the band is working hard in support of their latest release, Handguns. Continue reading »

Aug 182011
 

Download This scours the web’s dark corners for cool cover freebies. View past installments.

The 21st century has been good to Daryl Hall and John Oates. They’ve experienced an enormous resurgence of popularity among capricious young listeners and have maintained an enviable momentum of success, both together and solo. Oh, and people love to cover them. Continue reading »

Aug 122011
 

For the last few years, the folks at Cokemachineglow have marked the end of the year with a Fantasy Covers Podcast. In the latest edition, they give the Podcast a twist by making it a contest– they encouraged artists to submit covers that “re-contextualize” a track with an unexpected new genre. As they predicted, the results are both strange, creative, and occasionally hit-or-miss, but the overall result is a set of imaginative covers with some terrific standouts. Unfortunately the Podcast format means that the 13 covers are only available in one massive file, but it’s one worth downloading. Continue reading »

Jul 262011
 

Download This scours the web’s dark corners for cool cover freebies. View past installments.

When you think of Iron Maiden, acoustic guitar probably doesn’t come to mind. Throughout their hard-hitting run of classic heavy metal albums in the 1980s, Maiden used the instrument incredibly sparingly, often only to add flavor to a track or to give it room to get louder when the electric guitars finally kicked in. At least until some of their more experimental work in the 2000s, the term “unplugged” really had no meaning for this genre-defining sextet. Yet a die-hard Scottish Maiden fan known to the Internet as “Thingfishy” (real name: Gavin Anderson) has decided that, for almost the band’s entire catalog, the acoustic sound is where it’s at. Continue reading »