Though it is among Dylan‘s most acclaimed early songs, “Boots of Spanish Leather” does not get the kind of attention that some of the others get, especially those that were hits for him or hits for other artists. Currently it’s his 26th most covered song. For anyone other than Dylan, that would mean very few covers, but there are plenty because it’s Bob Dylan. Dylan didn’t play the song live much until his Never Ending Tour started and that’s when the covers really pick up. Continue reading »
Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!
Warren Zevon was quite an excitable boy himself, it seems, if not necessarily in the league of the character described in the song of that name, a highpoint in his third album release. A maverick individual with a bag of demons, he cast a spiky flame across the AOR uplands of the ’70s and ’80s, falling in and out of favor, exasperating and alienating friends, family and fans alike. A couple late career upturns brought him back into focus as the century turned, before lung cancer scythed a swath through his renaissance. It also supplied him the means for some exceptional last gasp, literally, material, releasing The Wind just one month before his 2003 death.
Like many of that era, Zevon’s career began as a songwriter for hire/jingle composer. The Turtles were early recipients of his style. His 1970 debut Wanted Dead or Alive sank with little trace, sending him back to supper clubs and session work. Jackson Browne gave him a huge break, producing and promoting his second disc before taking him out on tour, as his support and gig-buddy. The Browne connection, and the prestigious Asylum label, contrived to bring attention earlier lacking, his quirky songs now available to a much larger audience. This eponymous 1976 album was duly hailed “a masterpiece” by Rolling Stone.
Bolstered by recognition, two years later saw the release of Excitable Boy, again helmed by Browne, together with guitarist Waddy Wachtel. This saw Zevon’s career-best sales, going platinum and attaining a Billboard Top 10 placing. Furthermore, the single from the album, “Werewolves Of London,” #21 on the US chart, prove also an unlikely critical hit in the U.K., at a time when punk rock was more the emergent flavor of the day, alerting this writer to his oeuvre, a love maintained immediately and thereafter.
So let’s see how it and rest of Excitable Boy has lasted, as inspiration and influence for the covers work of others.
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Follow all our Best of 2024 coverage (along with previous year-end lists) here.
A great cover song is hard enough to pull off. Doing it over and over again enough times to make a great cover album is something like a miracle. This year, miracles abounded. We awarded only the third or fourth five-star album in the site’s history. That’s our number one, naturally. But if we’d run a full review of our number two album, it might have gotten five stars too.
Our list includes tributes to everyone from Lou Reed to Low to Tom Petty—twice. It includes jammy experimental covers of ’90s alt-rock, fingerpicked guitar covers of Kraftwerk, and skankin’ ska covers of Weird Al. It translates Leonard Cohen into Hebrew and Talking Heads into Spanish. It honors Fleetwood Mac before Fleetwood Mac and deeper Bob Dylan cuts than you can imagine. (Seriously, imagine the most obscure Bob Dylan song you can. These are more obscure than that.) It was that kind of year.
Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!
Jimi Hendrix released Electric Ladyland in 1968, the last of his three lifetime studio releases. Produced by the guitarist himself, it was a double set and featured a veritable panoply of guests, over and above the core trio of Hendrix, Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell. Notable amongst these were Steve Winwood, Jack Casady (Jefferson Airplane), and the drummer in his later band, Buddy Miles. This sometimes led to criticisms of the album being a chaotic overindulgent sprawl, and there are moments that touch upon that, but it did not stop Electric Ladyland‘s swift elevation to bestseller, almost from day one. It attained the number one album slot in the US within a month of release. In the UK, where he had made his name, it fared less well, if still attaining a credible number six. Time has expanded and widened the appeal, winning over many of the initially sniffy critics, who saw it as overlong and muddled. In the year 2000 Rolling Stone ranked it at #53 in their Best 500 Records of All Time, a full 32 years after release. And we haven’t even mentioned the album artwork, which has a whole backstory of its own. Hint: there was a reason the UK cover was different from the US cover. Well, nineteen reasons. (Would you believe thirty-eight?)
But that’s another story for another time. Here we are interested more in covers than covers. We found sixteen of them, one for each song, even the ones where calling it a song is a stretch. You might not like them all – there’s one here that we think is an absolute clinker – but hopefully they evoke the best of Electric Ladyland when you hear them.
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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!
For those that celebrate, the closing gigs to The Dave Matthews Band’s Summer Tour, titled Labor Dave Weekend, are an annual highlight. Three days of raucous fandom mark the transition to Fall in the Gorge, Washington State. Those in The Pit had an extra thing to celebrate this year. After a fan movement failed to get the band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020, the band was elected this year and their enthronement takes place this weekend. Those fans will have had just enough time to recover from the weekend to get to Cleveland!
The Dave Matthews Band is an American phenomenon, in several ways. Across nearly 3500 live shows that the band and their spinoffs have played, not much more than 100 DMB events have occurred outside North America, and these shows are often populated by American fans on pilgrimage to the host country. Their seven consecutive number-one albums in the US includes records that never touched a single chart overseas. They have, of course, generated a billion dollars of concert ticket sales off the back of legendary, epic live shows. Their presence on the list of highest-grossing touring artists ever is a testament to the energy they can generate.
Almost everything in DMB’s world is vociferously debated somewhere. The role of cover music in the sets is one of those matters. They have included hundreds of cover versions in their sets over the years, demonstrating a vast knowledge and appreciation of popular and not-so-popular music. When you have a world-class, jazz-infused drummer, a rock bassist, a roots-minded guitarist and a vocalist born overseas, not to mention touring musicians with decades of experience, you are going to have a lot to draw on.
Still, there are a group of people who get agitated every time a cover is included in one of their sets. The argument seems to be that, with a vast back catalog of their own, why do they need to play the music of others? That is understandable in some ways. If you made out with someone hot in your college dorm to a DMB song back in the ’90s, and that song doesn’t get played in the set, you miss the chance to fully relive that moment, perhaps even if you are at that concert with the hot person. Every set is different, but your memories stay the same. The covers that the band have played over the years have a rich heritage and history, and the band are not going to stop playing them, and Matthews himself is going to announce and perform them with enthusiasm regardless.
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It’s a great song, so why not play it twice? That’s what happened when John Mellencamp and Bob Dylan both appeared at the Outlaw Music Festival. The song was “All Along the Watchtower” and the date was September 12th in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.
Mellencamp played before Dylan and played it as the song third in his set. And when Dylan took the stage immediately after Mellencamp, he opened with his 1967 song. This was Dylan’s first performance of “Watchtower” since November 2018. Clearly there was no animosity between either performer since both played the song again on September 14th, 15th and 17th.
Mellencamp also performed “Watchtower” on his 2000 Good Samaritan Tour, where he performed for free on street corners and public parks. His version also appeared on a live album documenting the tour.
With the Outlaw Music Festival wrapped up, Mellencamp has no future dates scheduled, while Dylan kicks off the next leg of his Rough and Rowdy Ways tour on October 4th in the Czech Republic.