Jan 252022
 
adam schlesinger tribute

Back in May 2021, Fountains of Wayne guitarist Jody Porter organized a tribute to his late bandmate Adam Schlesinger. Adam Schlesinger, A Music Celebration featured, among many others, Courtney Love, R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, Squeeze’s Glenn Tilbrook, Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carrabba, Sean Ono Lennon, and a reunion of Schlesinger’s supergroup Tinted Windows. At the time, it was a paid livestream to raise money for musician charity MusiCares and then-closed NYC venue Bowery Electric, but now the full thing is up on YouTube. It’s a tribute to the depth of Schlesinger’s catalog that it’s two hours long and no one even covered “Stacy’s Mom”! Continue reading »

Mar 262021
 

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.

Dashboard Confessional's Chris Carrabba

“Screaming Infidelities” has two birthdays – one in March 2000, for its presence on Dashboard Confessional’s debut album The Swiss Army Romance, and one in March 2001, as the lead single off of Dashboard Confessional’s second album, The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most. This song is usually thought of as Dashboard Confessional’s big break. “Stolen” was still just a twinkle in Chris Carrabba’s eye at this point.

Whichever way you look at it, the song is celebrating an important milestone this month, either turning the big 2-0 or finally being able to legally drink a beer while hearing the saddest songs (“and sit alone and wonder,” of course). The song struck a nerve twenty-ish years ago, and I’m willing to bet it still strikes a nerve today, not so much “taking its wear.” Others try to reach that same level of feeling in their versions. Of these…

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Jan 042020
 

They Say It’s Your Birthday celebrates an artist’s special day with covers of his or her songs. Let someone else do the work for a while. Happy birthday!

Michael Stipe

Today Michael Stipe, lead singer of R.E.M., reaches a decade milestone, as he turns 60 years old. Stipe was born in Decatur, GA, but raised all over, as his father was in the military. He met Peter Buck, soon to be the lead guitarist in R.E.M., in 1980 at a record store near the University of Georgia in Athens while he was attending school. Not long after, they both dropped out of school to start R.E.M., along with Bill Berry and Mike Mills, and the rest is history.

Some of our readers wanted more covers by R.E.M. upon reading our list of covers of R.E.M. We have a couple points of reference, but celebrating Michael Stipe’s birthday gave us an opportunity to give you even more covers. Moral of the story: ask and you shall receive! This post provides covers by Michael Stipe and friends, paying tribute to his tributes and providing a history of his historical moments.

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Sep 242016
 

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

Weezer_Pinkerton

Earlier this week, we posted Wavves’ cover of the Weezer deep cut “You Gave Your Love to Me Softly,” and I went looking for our full-album tribute to Pinkerton to link to. Turns out I was misremembering and we hadn’t done one (we did do the their blue debut album many years ago). So today, for Pinkerton’s 20th birthday, we right that wrong.

At this point, the story of Pinkerton is almost as famous as the music on it. After a huge college radio hit with their debut, Rivers Cuomo and co. followed it up with this “difficult” second album. It’s more personal, confessional, weird, and divisive. Cuomo was so hurt by the album’s initial rejection by fans and critics that, to some interpretations, he turned to attempting radio-friendly crowd-pleasers and, as a result, has never made another masterpiece (though if you stopped following Weezer in their “featuring Lil Wayne” era, know that their two most recent LPs are a major return to form). Continue reading »

Nov 112011
 

As the frontman for alt-rock heroes Dashboard Confessional, Chris Carrabba has been capturing ladies’ hearts with his angsty, swoon-worthy voice since 2000. Now it seems that the Connecticut-born singer is ready for something new. This winter he’s embarking on an acoustic tour, but this time around he’ll be flying solo – just a man and his trusty guitar. And Covered in the Flood, Carrabba’s first solo album featuring nothing but covers, will be available at his shows. He generously gave the public a little taste of what’s coming by sharing five of the ten tracks. Continue reading »