Yes Archives - Cover Me

In the Spotlight: The Bad Plus

Posted by Tom McDonald at 2:00 pm No Responses »

Mar 302021

In the Spotlight showcases a cross-section of an artist’s cover work. View past installments, then post suggestions for future picks in the comments!

It’s a good time for a look back at The Bad Plus. The jazz trio recently announced a new chapter in their 20-year career: they are downsizing to a duo, as pianist Orrin Evans departs the band. (Evans joined in 2017 to replace the band’s original pianist Ethan Iverson.) The remaining musical chairs belong to bassist Reid Anderson and drummer Dave King. The moment is an interesting one for a band that always rejected the “piano-led trio” descriptor, insisting instead on “leaderless collective.” While fans await the band’s next chapter, we have highlights from their previous chapters to dig into.
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Review: ‘A Tribute to Keith Emerson & Greg Lake’

Posted by Seuras Og at 3:15 pm No Responses »

Apr 142020

I confess to hovering over this one a while, ahead of taking a bullet for the team. Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge fan of Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Or rather, I was, and therein lies the problem.

It was nigh half a century ago that I made my first purchase of an LP record; that was none other than Pictures at an Exhibition, and boy oh boy, was I keen on the energetic bombast. It wasn’t then long before four of my first ten vinyl records were by ELP — I snapped up the eponymous debut and, then, on their release, Tarkus and Trilogy. I lapped up every inky page I could about them, relishing in my membership of an elite. Those Yes acolytes could take a jump, Emmo was king and that was that. And Lake, well, he was in the band, so, clearly, he was the tops too. How could 100,000 spotty boys be wrong? As for John Peel, custodian of the nation’s counter culture tastes: “a waste of electricity”, huh, what did he know? I even went to see them, cramming into the dismal aircraft hangar of Earls Court in London with innumerable facsimiles of myself, enduring the dire acoustics and excessive volume, telling myself, and anyone else in earshot, just how good was this.
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Jenn Champion Delivers Futuristic Cover of Yes’s “Owner of a Lonely Heart”

Posted by John Lenhardt at 12:11 pm No Responses »

May 012018

On her new single, former Casandra’s Wierd band member Jenn Champion provides a futuristic rendition of “Owner of a Lonely Heart” by the prog rock gods Yes. It’s a desolate and eerie electro-dirge that recalls a bit of Daft Punk’s TRON: Legacy soundtrack. Though a significant departure from the Yes version, Champion’s tranquil and measured version does feature the unmistakable heavy guitar intro. In fact, that’s what inspired her in the first place.

Champion said on Facebook, “I always loved the arpeggio-ish guitar part in this song and I was just figuring out that riff and then thought it would be fun to cover.” Originally she started doing a more faithful cover, but that felt silly to her. So her wife suggested that Champion try the cover as a ballad, which Champion achieved by messing around with some new synthesizers. She said, “It was a challenge to get the cool guitar back in once I had synthed it all up.” Sounds like she nailed it. Continue reading »

The Best Cover Songs of April

Posted by Ray Padgett at 3:00 pm 4 Responses »

Apr 302018

April was the best month for covers of the year so far. There’s no particular reason for that, I suspect. These things just ebb and flow. But the fact remains that it was a proverbial embarrassment of riches, as the length of the list below confirms.

As always, there’s no quality difference between the main picks and the honorable mentions; a cover’s categorization is only determined by how much I had to say about it. Continue reading »

Cover Me Q&A: Jordan Becker, What Ten Cover Songs Matter To You?

Posted by Jordan Becker at 10:00 am 5 Responses »

Feb 212017

Welcome to Cover Me Q&A, where we take your questions about cover songs and answer them to the best of our ability.

Jordan Becker lives in Tarrytown, New York, a suburb of NYC where the Tappan Zee Bridge crosses the Hudson (until the new bridge is finished and they knock it down). He’s been writing for Cover Me since 2013, debuting with an essay about Mermaid Avenue by Billy Bragg and Wilco (see below). Of all his Cover Me pieces, he’s “kind of proud” of spotlighting the Grateful Dead and defending Dexys Midnight Runners.
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Review: Keep Calm & Salute the Beatles

Posted by Matt Vadnais at 3:00 pm No Responses »

Jun 092015

I have long held it to be a covers truism that people who love covers are most compelled by musicians who can re-imagine a song in order to create something new. The whole point – I’ve said and written – of covering a song is to merge the acts of making and enjoying music in order to say something through song while also saying something about the song itself. Good covers discover or reveal. Good covers surprise.

The expectation that a cover should make something new, however, starts to feel unfair when one is attempting to evaluate covers of songs that have been covered as often as the sixteen Beatles songs on Keep Calm & Salute the Beatles. Covering the Beatles is a bit like taking a picture of THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA, an act that Don DeLillo describes not as capturing an image but maintaining one. What is there left to say, discover, or reveal about these songs beyond the tautological notion that they are good enough to be covered again and again?
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