Widespread Panic’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ Halloween Includes Doors, Who, Alice in Chain Covers

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Nov 052025
 
Widespread Panic's 'Alice in Wonderland' Halloween

A Widespread Panic Halloween show is a tradition, and, after skipping last year, the band was back on stage Halloween night, making up for lost time in their performance in Savannah, Georgia.

Fans knew they were in for something special as the whole band took the stage dressed as characters from Alice in Wonderland. (John Bell was the Cheshire Cat, Jimmy Herring was Tweedle Dee/Dum, Dave Schools was The Executioner, JoJo Hermann was The Caterpillar, Duane Trucks was The Queen of Hearts and Domingo Ortiz was the Mad Hatter.) Continue reading »

Cover Classics : Babybird’s ‘Covers’

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Jul 152025
 

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

Babybird Covers

You won’t know this one. Well, not unless you read our Good Better Best on The La’s ‘There She Goes‘, where Adam Mason gifted the best to the version from Stephen Jones, aka Babybird. (Or should that be babybird? Citation needed.) This isn’t a dig at taste anyone’s taste or due diligence in capturing all end every cover version in the world, more around the blink and you missed it nature of the release. Covid still very much the story of the day, it snuck out in June of 2021, likely a pointer to how Jones had himself spent lockdown. There were limited hard copies available, on CD, as a single disc, a double, containing a trio of additional revisions, and a special edition, with individually hand finished covers. These all sold out aeons ago, with none of these self-released items accessible even through Discogs. But, luckily for you, if so inclined, you can grab the downloads over on Bandcamp. And they are free! Continue reading »

In the Spotlight: The Harmonica

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May 202025
 

Consider the lowly harmonica. When was the last time the harmonica–aka the mouth organ, the mouth harp, or simply the harp–truly stirred an audience or moved any musical needle in anyway?

Was it the mid-’90s, when John Popper shredded on “Run-Around” and other Blues Traveler hits? Maybe, but that was decades ago. What’s the harp been up to since? And what were other highlights in its pop cultural history?
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Cover Classics: Jimmy Somerville’s ‘Suddenly Last Summer’

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Nov 292024
 

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

Suddenly Last Summer

Jimmy Somerville, should you need reminding, was the idiosyncratic voice of both Bronski Beat and the Communards, a high and pure countertenor, falsetto even, frayed at the margins. His was an altogether extraordinary instrument, capable of drawing an emotive heft other ranges can’t always supply. With Bronski Beat very much derived within an electro footprint, the Communards cast a much wider musical palate, with textures freely shared out between HI-NRG, R’n’B and chanson, all with an ear on commercial hooks and sheer joyous exuberance. Which, given some of their subject matter, was a feat in itself.

It is somehow galling to appreciate that “Smalltown Boy,” likely Somerville’s most recognized song, stems from all of 40 years ago. He left Bronski Beat the following year, the duration of the Communards then merely three years. While his solo career never quite hit the heights of either of those two bands, the six albums he released between 1989 and 2015 showed he was still in the game. He has also dabbled in acting and busking, and he’s remained the political firebrand, often for gay causes. Indeed, his last recorded work was a 2021 cover of “Everything Must Change,” for London-based charity End Youth Homelessness, which shows his voice remains as striking as ever.

Somerville released a cover album, Suddenly Last Summer, in 2009. It didn’t chart anywhere, even in France, the French aways holding his torch reliably until then. It is both easy and hard to see how it sank with such little trace. Easy? Well, with little to trouble any sweaty clubbers, the acoustic format and the choice of material might prove too demanding for casual fans. Hard? Maybe my bias, but the eclecticism of the songs, featuring songs better known by The Doors, Deep Purple, Cole Porter and Patsy Cline, amongst others, is dauntingly brave, the often spare arrangements starkly impressive and, how can I put this any more simply, his voice. He nails ’em. Or the vast majority of them.

The chances are that many readers will be unfamiliar with Suddenly Last Summer. The songs on it were all chosen by Somerville personally, all songs close to his heart, rather than the ideas of his producer or management. This, and the evident passion from within the grooves, make it one that should at least invite curiosity.
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Five Good Covers: “Light My Fire” (The Doors)

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Aug 232024
 

Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song.

Light My Fire

Just what is is about the songs of the ’60s that gives them such legs? Are they that amazingly good? Did they appear on enough soundtracks that they embedded themselves in my brainpan? Or is that just my fantasy, born out of a familiarity as long as the life of the songs?

“Light My Fire.” Perfect example. The song started life in L.A.s proto-underground, written and performed by the Doors, one of many groups plying their trade on the strip at the bars, seedy and otherwise, dotted along its trajectory. Jak Holzman, president of Elektra Records (they’d signed the Doors’ friendly rivals Love), liked what he heard enough to give them a contract. Shortly after, they moved to the studio, recording “Light My Fire” and the rest of their debut and eponymous album fifty-eight years ago this week.

Released in April of 1967, in an edit of the full-length version, the “Light My Fire” single spent three weeks at the top of the Billboard chart, getting a further boost when Jose Feliciano delivered the first cover, itself a top-five hit. Over the years, that original version has seen it regularly populate various best-of lists, helping it attain platinum sales by 2018.

Via many of the saccharine cover versions that followed swift behind the Doors’ own rendition, arguably the plight of any perfect song construction, it has been latterly seen as some MOR staple, slipping further and further away from the original menace inherent. Pity. Second Hand Songs shows upwards of 310 versions, and not all of these are weird, cheesy cabaret staples. (You want cheesy? Try Nancy Sinatra, or Shirley Bassey, or the New Jordal Swingers. You want weird? Well, you couldn’t get much weirder than Mae West……) Thankfully, we found five that are not.
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Crime & the City Solution Return for First Time in Nine Years with “People Are Strange” Cover

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Nov 082022
 
crime and the city solution people are strange cover

I would tell you that Crime & the City Solution are the like the Australian Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, only Nick Cave and most of the Bad Seeds are also Australian, so that isn’t very helpful. Both groups hail from Melbourne, both shared members during the ’80s and ’90s, and both groups spent time in both Berlin and London during that period, before Crime & the City Solution disbanded. (So I guess they’re like the way less famous half brother of the Bad Seeds?) Bonney has a bit of a reputation in some circles as the Poor Man’s Nick Cave, too, but he has a distinct voice and his band’s singer-songwriter-meets-post-punk sound is actually fairly distinct from the ’80s Bad Seeds even if that description says otherwise. Continue reading »

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