Cover Me Turns Ten: A Free Covers Album

 Posted by at 10:00 am  18 Responses »
Oct 262017
 
free covers album

Ten years ago today, I had a whim.

I was studying abroad one semester and found myself with a lot of free time – school work was light, and a college student’s budget limited my international explorations – so I decided to start a blog. A second blog actually, since for several years I had run a personal blog of concert reviews and bootleg downloads called Dylan, Etc (it had more “Dylan” than it did “Etc”). I’d fallen in love with the cover song after hearing Bob Dylan (who else) play a revelatory cover of “Summertime” on his short-lived radio show. I’d already hosted a Cover Me college radio show, and decided to expand us to the World Wide Web.

These were the days of the so-called “MP3 blog,” which included a vibrant subgenre of cover-songs blogs. That’s right, I’d like to claim credit for inventing the category, but I didn’t – not even close. RIP to Copy Right?, Cover Freak, Fong Songs, and the rest of the pioneers – and shoutout to our fellow survivors from that era, Coverville, which was releasing podcasts before most people knew what that word meant, and the folk blog Cover Lay Down, which began around the same time as us.

A lot has changed over the past decade. We’ve published 3,564 posts as of this one. Oh, and did you notice the pronoun change there? Cover Me is no longer an “I” – it’s a “we”, with over 60 writers contributing over the years. We’ve grown from an ugly Blogspot to our spiffy own domain (which is overdue for a redesign itself, frankly). And in case the large banner ads all over the site weren’t clue enough, I just released a book also called Cover Me, which – back-patting alert – Variety called “one of the best multi-subject music books to come down the pike in years.”

We wanted to do something special to celebrate our tenth birthday. And we wanted to celebrate not just ourselves, but celebrate the cover song itself. So we put together this little album Cover Me Turns 10: A Covers Tribute to Covers as a gift to our readers. We contacted several dozen of our musician friends and asked them to cover a cover. That is, to honor the many great songs we might not even know without an iconic cover – Aretha Franklin reinventing Otis Redding’s “Respect,” Quiet Riot amplifying Slade’s call to feel the noize, Prince learning that nothing compares 2 Sinéad O’Connor.

We’re honored that so many of our favorite musicians contributed, and frankly speechless at how great a job they did. So speechless, in fact, that we asked them all to introduce their own work with a few sentences. A million thanks to all of them, and also to Cover Me writer and art whiz Sean Balkwill for designing the lovely – ahem – cover. The whole thing is free to download at Bandcamp until downloads run out, and free to stream forever.

Enough chatter from me. For ten years this blog has been all about celebrating the music and we’re not going to stop now. Thanks for taking this journey with us.

– Ray Padgett
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In Memoriam: Badfinger’s Pete Ham

 Posted by at 3:00 pm  6 Responses »
Apr 242017
 

In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.

ham

As the cops close in and Walter White lies dying, one of television’s most influential series ends with the crisp power-pop of Badfinger’s “Baby Blue” in the background. (“Guess I got what I deserved…”) It was likely the first listen to Badfinger for many Breaking Bad fans, and the exposure provided by the show resulted in a huge spike in song downloads and more than a few blog posts on the “tragic” band from Wales. Badfinger would be remembered mainly for three reasons: being seminal contributors to the power-pop genre, penning one huge and iconic song, and the suicide of its two best known members.
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In the Spotlight: Golden Smog

 Posted by at 4:00 pm  4 Responses »
Jun 102016
 

In the Spotlight showcases a cross-section of an artist’s cover work. View past installments, then post suggestions for future picks in the comments!

golden smog

Back in the late 1980s, as the alt-country/No Depression sound began to spread, a group of bands centered in the Minneapolis area often played in the same venues. Sometimes members of these bands would do cover shows for fun. Although even the members of the band remember the band’s fittingly murky origins differently, ultimately, some of these friends began to perform as “Golden Smog” (originally a Flintstones reference), mostly playing covers. The core membership coalesced as Gary Louris and Marc Perlman of the Jayhawks on bass, Dan Murphy and Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum, Kraig Johnson of Run Westy Run (and later the Jayhawks) and Chris Mars of the Replacements (although the drum chair in the band has a near Spinal Tap-level rotating door), often augmented by guest musicians and singers. It was like seeing an incredibly talented bar band.
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Cover Classics: Come and Get It: A Tribute to Badfinger

 Posted by at 5:00 pm  No Responses »
Feb 192016
 

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

badfinger

Badfinger combined magic and tragic like no other band in rock history. They were one of the few bands signed to the Beatles’ Apple label who made an impact of their own, but the Fab Four’s blessing carried its own curse of people not taking them as more than clone wannabes. They scored multiple top 20 hits, but saw very little of the revenue they generated, due in no small part to their corrupt manager. Finally, two members of the band, Pete Ham and Tom Evans, were driven to suicide. Today, the sorrow of Badfinger’s fate remains – but so does the music. Some of the strongest power-pop songs came from the band, including “No Matter What” and “Day After Day,” and their song “Without You” became a worldwide smash when covered by Harry Nilsson and (more than twenty years later) Mariah Carey.
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In Memoriam: Doug Fieger (The Knack)

 Posted by at 4:00 pm  3 Responses »
Aug 192013
 

In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.

If Doug Fieger hadn’t died of cancer in February 2010, today would be his 61st birthday. By most standards, Fieger had a successful musical career. He was the lead singer for the Knack, whose debut album Get the Knack sold more than two million copies and was the number 1 album on the Billboard album chart for five weeks. The first single, the ubiquitous “My Sharona,” was the biggest song of 1979; the second, “Good Girls Don’t,” hit #11 in the US. The follow-up album went gold and spawned another Top 40 single. Thereafter, the band continued to record and tour until breaking up in 1982, then re-formed in the late 1980s, recording and touring through the early 2000s. Fieger also worked as a guest vocalist for Was (Not Was) (a band co-led by his childhood friend Don Was) and released a solo album. Most musicians — and many wannabes — would take that career in a minute.
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