Tony Molina Covers Nico for B-Side of New Covers Single

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May 222026
 
Tony Molina

So the story of German singer-songwriter Nico‘s solo debut album is that members of The Velvet Underground, to whom she’d been attached by their patron Andy Warhol, did not appreciate her presence in the band. However, they were willing to help her perform live as a solo act and would help with her solo debut. And they weren’t the only ones, as Tim Hardin, who already had a solo career, and Jackson Browne, who was only writing songs for other people at the time, and who was then dating Nico, also were performing with her. Nico had yet to write her own music so Browne, Hardin and Lou Reed and John Cale of the Velvets all contributed songs to her debut. (There’s also a Dylan cover.) Continue reading »

Lower Dens Cover ABBA and Tony Molina Covers Dinosaur Jr at Brooklyn’s Northside Festival

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Jun 122017
 
lower dens abba

Last year, 33 1/3 – the music book series that dissects classic albums – hosted a tribute to three of those albums at Brooklyn’s Northside Festival: Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville (covered by Frankie Cosmos), Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melody Nelson (covered by Ava Luna), and Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality (covered by Deradoorian). And this past weekend, they repeated the trick, with three new bands covering three new albums.

Lower Dens headlined the event, covering ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits (not quite the same as covering a full album, but since ABBA were basically a singles band we’ll let it slide). This sort of cheesy pop is right in the band’s wheelhouse, as heard a few years back in their cover of Hall & Oates’ “Maneater.” For the ABBA set, they performed the tracks as karaoke-plus-live-drumming, with singer Jana Hunter belting in a way she doesn’t often get to in Lower Dens. The karaoke format would be a little disappointing to fans who might want to see more Lower Dens-esq rearrangements of these hits, but her pipes do the songs justice. This “S.O.S.” cover follows Portishead’s last year, our #1 cover of 2016. Continue reading »