Apr 272018
 

‘The Best Ever’ series counts down our favorite covers of great artists.

fleetwood mac covers

Lindsey Buckingham is out of Fleetwood Mac for reasons that, a few weeks later, remain as enigmatic as many of the band’s best songs. He was fired – or quit? – amid reports that he wanted to work on a solo album while everyone else wanted to tour. This after reports a couple years ago that he wanted to do a Fleetwood Mac album and Stevie didn’t. Their professional lives today are as complicated and messy as their romantic ones once were.

And let’s be honest: He’ll be back in a few years for a dramatic “reunion tour.” But why wait that long to celebrate this great band? We decided to use the excuse of the recent news to pay tribute to one of the most cover-able bands of all time. And lord knows we’ve paid tribute before, full album tributes to Rumours and Tusk and much more (a bunch of links a the bottom).

But now, just as we did with the Talking Heads last month, we’re looking at the entire catalogue, ranking the top thirty covers of Fleetwood Mac songs from any album or era. There’s no specific Lindsey-focus or anything. Though the majority of songs are from the the classic lineup (including a number from Lindsey’s passion project Tusk), a handful come from the band’s blues beginnings before he or Stevie joined. If the record sleeve said “Fleetwood Mac,” it was fair game for artists to reinterpret – and boy, have they ever. Without further ado, thirty artists who listened carefully to the sound, then played the way they felt it. Continue reading »

Apr 112016
 

In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.

MerleHaggard

Merle Haggard died on April 6th, his 79th birthday. On another April 6th, eleven years earlier, he celebrated his birthday in Chicago, opening the spring run of Bob Dylan’s “Never Ending Tour.”

I don’t know what he did for most of that 66th birthday, but I do know how five minutes or so was spent. He was standing outside his tour bus, listening to a handful of Dylan obsessives sing “Happy Birthday” to him. I was one of them. Continue reading »

Apr 192013
 

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

Fans of Gram Parsons are generally divided into three camps over 1999’s Return of the Grievous Angel: A Tribute to Gram Parsons. The first thinks it’s brilliant, a reverent homage to a great songwriter and a testament to the weight of his country rock influence. The second likes the raw sound of another tribute album better: 1993’s Conmemorativo: A Tribute to Gram Parsons, featuring the likes of Bob Mould and The Mekons. And the third camp feels that the only person that can sing Gram Parsons songs is Parsons himself.

If we took the philosophy of the last opinion to heart, this site wouldn’t even exist. While the so-called purists would deny any version other than the one by the original artist as being legitimate, it certainly would be a dull world if all musicians were content to color within the lines without recognizing that someone else before them drew those lines. While Conmemorativo does contain some gems, there are two reasons why Return of the Grievous Angel is better: great production values, and the guiding hand of Emmylou Harris, who worked so closely with Parsons and who served as executive producer of the compilation. So count us among the members of that first camp. Now let’s meet the man who inspired the album. Continue reading »