Dec 132024
 

Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments!

Electric Ladyland covers

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.
Continue reading »

Oct 152024
 

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.
Continue reading »

Sep 252024
 
Mellencamp Dylan Watchtower

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.

Sep 062024
 

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

Robyn Sings

[W]hen I sing other people’s songs… I’ve known them so long that they feel like they’re my songs, you know? Obviously, I don’t get the publishing for them, but I feel like they’re part of me, because they also formed the way I write songs. Those songs are like my parents or my elder brother, you know? [Laughs.] I may not possess them, but they’re certainly family. I don’t know if family is something you possess or something that possesses you. – Robyn Hitchcock

If Robyn Hitchcock sees Bob Dylan’s songs as family, then 2002’s Robyn Sings was him organizing a great family reunion. It was a two-CD collection of live Dylan covers; the second CD recreated the famed “Royal Albert Hall” concert. It’s got a bootleg sound and one clown who thinks it’s funny to yell “Judas!” after every song, but it gets the job done. The real treasure, though, is on the first disc, which is what we’ll focus on here today.

Continue reading »

Aug 082024
 
Bryan Ferry

Former Roxy Music singer Bryan Ferry covers Dylan a lot. His first ever solo single was a Bob Dylan cover. Nearly 35 years later, he released an album of just Dylan covers. Now he’s releasing a 50 year retrospective box-set of his solo career and, fittingly, he’s included a new cover of an old Bob Dylan song.
Continue reading »

Jun 252024
 

Sometimes it is the lower key and lesser heard that most catches the ear, and Adam Holmes a prime example. If you follow the contemporary Scottish folk (and beyond) scene, you may well know Holmes already, for having one of the more soulful instruments in the country, a warm burr with a distant flavor of John Martyn. Starting off as a member of neo-trad outfit Rura, Holmes’ singing and songs were a tidy contrast to their instrumental elemental fare of fiddle, flute and pipes. With time, the mix became perhaps too schizophrenic, he needing a platform to stay on stage the whole set. This he found, forming a band, the Embers, lasting for a well-received year or three.

Since then he has been on his own, give or take a duo, with Heidi Talbot, and a brief membership of Anglo-Scots folk-rock supergroup, The Magpie Arc. A veritable one man industry, he releases his own albums and sorts out his own gigs and shows, no middlemen to sour the pitch. As such, the gap between he and his audience is thin; if you fancy him writing a song for you, or for him to play in your own home, he will; contact him, via his website.

Songs for My Father, the second of two recent releases, each dedicated to cover versions, is in his father’s memory, the songs of his childhood and his father’s record collection. (The earlier one, last year’s The Voice of Scotland, covered more the traditional songs he grew up with, together with a couple that have near earnt that same soubriquet: we included “You Are My Sunshine” from that set recently.) Holmes’ father, dying of throat cancer, made a last request his son record his favorite songs; it was a task that took Holmes ten years to work up the initiative to address.
Continue reading »