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 »
During the encore during his show in Wolverhampton, England on April 25th, The Who’s Roger Daltrey had a bit of a tete-a-tete with one fan before performing a shortened version of “Days” by The Kinks.
Returning to the stage for the encore, Daltrey set down a stool close to the edge of the stage and began talking with fans, some of whom shouted out requests for Who classics like “Magic Bus” and “Pinball Wizard.” Introducing a cover of “Days,” Daltrey said, “I’m gonna do this … ’cause it’s a band that we forget how good they were and how great they are.”
However, one fan, located at the edge of the stage was less than thrilled, repeatedly calling out for “Pinball Wizard.”At first Daltrey responded to her request, “I’m fed up with that, I’ve done it too much.” He then began the song, which she interrupted again, to which Daltrey stopped singing and kindly requested that she “shut the fuck up.” There was then a back-and-forth between the two, which, really, didn’t amount to much, apart from one audience member trying to dictate what a performer should sing, while other audience members (judging by other voices later singing along) seemed to want to enjoy his performance.
One of the things everyone enjoys about the Beatles is the band’s equality. Take John, Paul, George, or Ringo out of the equation, they say, and the magic is over. Well, the same is true for the Who (something they proved, sadly, after Keith Moon’s death). Only the Who were bigger. Louder. More proficient at their instruments of choice. They could be more powerful, but they could be more vulnerable too. They were one of the best studio bands of their time, and one of the best live bands of all time. And when they were at their peak, they could be the best band in the world.
Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle, and Keith Moon combined to form a force of nature. Starting as one of the great singles bands, they segued into being masters of the LP. Townshend led the way with pioneer guitar playing – both slashing power chords and controlled feedback were part of his palette before any other Guitar God – and a pen that produced not one but two full-length operas for the band (three, if you count the belatedly released Lifehouse), as well as three-minute expressions of defiant angst. Daltrey gave voice to that angst, developing a roar that could surf the wave of noise or blow through it. Entwistle may have looked stoic, but they called him Thunderfingers for a reason. His bass lines were nimble yet forceful, and his sense of the macabre in his songs gave the band even more colors. And what can be said about Moon and his drumming that hasn’t already been said?
The Who’s songs will remain long after they’re gone. Not just for the performances the Who gave them, but for the songs themselves. They conveyed anger, regret, humor, and more, searching low and high within their psyches. The stories they told were both theirs and ours. Here are thirty-five of those stories, telling those stories in ways that approach and occasionally surpass the band that created them.
Welcome to Cover Me Q&A, where we take your questions about cover songs and answer them to the best of our ability.
Here at Cover Me Q&A, we’ll be taking questions about cover songs and giving as many different answers as we can. This will give us a chance to hold forth on covers we might not otherwise get to talk about, to give Cover Me readers a chance to learn more about individual staffers’ tastes and writing styles, and to provide an opportunity for some back-and-forth, as we’ll be taking requests (learn how to do so at feature’s end).
Today’s question comes from one of our readers, Micah Goldfus. He wants to know:
What’s your cringiest cover song?
You’ll find his answer below, along with plenty more from the Cover Me gang… Continue reading »
In late 1973, David Bowie released his last album with his backing band, The Spiders from Mars, the all-covers Pin-Ups. Somewhat surprisingly, it contained two covers of songs by The Who, their second single “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere” and their first single, “I Can’t Explain.”
This month will see the release of Rock ‘n’ Roll Star, a Ziggy Stardust-focused box set, which includes outtakes from the Ziggy sessions. One of these outtakes is an earlier version of Bowie’s “I Can’t Explain” cover featuring an earlier version of the Spiders from Mars, with Nick Woodmansey, the original drummer, instead of Aynsley Dunbar, who only took over for Pin-Ups.
Bowie’s original cover of “I Can’t Explain” is an extremely slow version of the song featuring saxophone fills from Bowie and another horn player, and ethereal backing vocals.
This earlier version is far closer to the original Who version. Bowie obviously sounds like Bowie not Roger Daltrey, but the backing vocals evoke the original’s. Trevor Bolder’s bass is mixed higher, but he and Mick Ronson’s rhythm parts really do seem to just try to sound louder. However, Mick Ronson’s solos are entirely different from Pete Townshend’s original. No saxophones to be heard.
The cover is an interesting insight into Bowie’s process. Clearly he loved the song but was unhappy with this original approach, or decided it didn’t fit the Ziggy Stardust concept. (There is one cover on that album.) By the time he re-recorded it two years later, he had found his original take on it but in this early version it’s still very clearly a song by The Who.
At Cover Me, our goal is to share great covers, whether they comes from artists with ten fans or ten million. But I am always vaguely curious what cover songs break out, which among the thousands we hear each year become genuine hits.
I was reminded of this when a recent Country Now headline crossed my Google Alerts: “Luke Combs’ ‘Fast Car’ Cover Is A Streaming Giant.” After only a month, the country star’s fairly faithful take on Tracy Chapman’s 1988 classic has racked up 33 million streams in the U.S. alone. Covers by famous singers come and go, but this one clearly has staying power.
So I decided to try to figure out which other covers from the 21st century have reached this level of breakout success. I’m not privy to Billboard‘s deep-dive chart data, so I used an easy metric available to an amateur like myself: Seeing how many plays something has on Spotify. As good a measure for “a popular song” as you can probably get these days, albeit still imperfect.
I found twenty-four 21st-century covers with over 100 million U.S. streams as of this writing (April 2023). Some very popular covers didn’t quite make the 100m+ threshold: Weezer’s “Africa” (75 million), Iron & Wine’s “Such Great Heights” (76 million), Fall Out Boy and John Mayer’s “Beat It” (89 million). Ryan Adams’ “Wonderwall” only just crossed the 100 million streams mark in the past couple months. And while older covers obviously have an advantage in more time to rack up plays, number one — by a lot! — came out only a few years ago.
Here’s the list of 24. No commentary since, for once, we’re not unearthing buried treasures here. Let’s count down the 24 most-streamed covers on Spotify, with the year of release and number of streams as of this writing. (And it’s possible, even likely, I missed a few, so feel free to suggest additions in the comments — if they qualify, I’ll add ’em.) Continue reading »
