Hip-hop oldies become jazz instrumentals. Cult folk songs become grand spaghetti-western soundscapes. Blink-182 hits become DIY bedroom jams. We’ve got ’90s hardcore bangers shredded on acoustic guitar, Spanglish Latin-pop takes on Air Supply and Elvis, and, maybe most outrageously of all, a wild experiment in turning everyone from Chappell Roan to Smash Mouth into emo/screamo.
It’s an especially unruly set this year, but a rewarding one. Enough preamble. Dive in.
A few months ago, music journalist Jason Schneider released the book That Gun in Your Hand: The Strange Saga of ‘Hey Joe’ and Popular Music’s History of Violence. It’s a fascinating read—but don’t take our word for it. None other than Lenny Kaye, who in addition to playing on an iconic version of “Hey Joe” (it was the Patti Smith Group’s first single!), is a music journalist himself. He wrote in the book’s foreword, “In these pages, Jason Schneider has traced Joe’s lineage through its many mise-en-scenes, not only the bare bones of the song but the inner complexities and contradictions that each artist brings to it, subject and subjective.”
As part of the book, Schneider listened to, naturally, a lot of different versions of “Hey Joe.” Since I assume we all know the Hendrix version (and if not, here’s a deep dive on it), we asked Schneider to tell us about some lesser-known covers he loves.Continue reading »
At their two co-headlining shows in Boston this weekend, The Dresden Dolls and Gogol Bordello collaborated on a dark and ominous cover of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ “Red Right Hand.” It came as the encore to Gogol Bordello’s set, and featured their full band joined by masked Dolls Amanda Palmer on vocals and Brian Viglione on tubular bell (a key instrument on this song). Well, we assume it was them; “Who that was we may never know,” Gogol Bordello’s Eugene Hutz joked as the masked duo left the stage.Continue reading »
When you think Nick Cave, you might not necessarily think “joy,” but, the concept has been coming through in his more recent work, none more recent than his new cover of the Burt Bacharach classic “What the World Needs Now is Love.”
The cover appears on the soundtrack for the Todd Phillips film Joker: Folie a Deux.
Cave’s song is part of a larger medley, featuring “Slap That Bass” and “Get Happy” (Cave’s voice isn’t instantly discernible in those sections of the song). The medley invokes a 1940s big band vibe, incorporating a full horn section, along with a xylophone and drums. And while at first the thought of all those ideas combined seem rather incongruous, it actually works.
The idea of love and joy aren’t necessarily new additions to the Cave cannon. In 1992, he recorded cover of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” with former Pogues front man Shane McGowan. And as far as joy is concerned, Cave’s latest album with the Bad Seeds, Wild God, actually features a track with that name.
As regular readers know, here at Cover Me we put together a Best Covers Ever list every month for a celebrated artist. We’ve recently done the Pet Shop Boys and Sheryl Crow. And before them we did the biggie – The Beatles – and before them, Bob Dylan! But every now and again, there’s a particular genre that’s crying out for the Best Covers Ever treatment – and this month it’s the Dark Genre. It’s goth!
So why now, you ask? Are goth covers really a thing? And why don’t Alien Sex Fiend or Fields of the Nephilim have their own Best Covers Ever features?
Fair questions, all. First off, goth music is everywhere right now. It may have emerged out of the UK post-punk scene and enjoyed its most innovative period from 1980 to 1982, but it’s now the reason we have Whitby Goth Weekends in April and November (well, that and Count Dracula), World Goth Day on May 22, and goth nights down the Hatchet Inn in Bristol most nights, particularly Thursday. It’s also why we have heaps of goth books on the market right now, from John Robb’s The Art of Darkness to Lol Tolhurst’s Goth: A History and Cathi Unsworth’s Season of the Witch, all trying to explain goth’s lasting influence as a musical subculture: the fixation with death, the dark theatricality, the Victorian melodrama, the leather, the thick black eyeliner, the fishnet tights, the deviance, the sex, the deviant sex, and, of course, spiders.Continue reading »
