It goes a little something like this
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This is a little bit of a cheat, but what the hell. First up, an audio clip of “Last Night on Earth” by Green Day, from their 2009 album 21st Century Breakdown; following that, the video of a revolutionary cover version by Green Day front man Billie Joe Armstrong and his canine housemate, Rocky.
I’m not entirely sure what the correct term for this musical arrangement would be… Read the rest of this entry »
Once again, a cover song I’ve covered previously in my Got You Covered series has surfaced in video format on YouTube.1 This one’s a high quality, professionally shot piece of film, too (as opposed to a cell-phone-in-the-audience product,2 like most concert videos on YouTube). Here’s Richard Thompson channeling his inner Britney Spears — or not:
Those craving more can download the MP3 (and check out plenty more of his stuff) at the Richard Thompson store on Amazon, or at eMusic. His home page is called BeesWeb and is located at www.richardthompson-music.com. Like any responsible recording artist today, he also has fan pages on Facebook and MySpace.3
Ah, the James Bond theme song: a sub-genre unto itself. There are songs, and there are movie songs, and then there are movie theme songs… and only then is there the Bond film song: a sub-sub-sub-genre distinctive for being (like the Bond movies themselves) unabashedly over-the-top. The best Bond songs are broad-stroke, go-for-broke, balls-out records: Shirley Bassey’s clarion “Goldfinger,” Paul McCartney & Wings’s churning “Live and Let Die,” and the subject of this post, “Nobody Does It Better.” Composed by Marvin Hamlisch and Carole Bayer Sager, it played under the opening titles of the 1977 Bond adventure The Spy Who Loved Me. Carly Simon’s warm, wide-open performance of the pop ballad caught the fancy of moviegoers1 and radio station directors alike, and the single reached #2 on the U.S. pop charts. Here’s the first minute or so, just for nostalgia’s sake:
Your browser does not support the audio element. Bummer.
Like just about all of the songs in my Got You Covered series, “Nobody Does It Better” has been covered more times than a 90-year-old exhibitionist. Before I highlight my favorite version, I would be remiss if I didn’t address the rendition by Radiohead. A taste: Read the rest of this entry »
How ubiquitous are cover versions of Beatles songs? They’re commonplace enough to make me wonder whose songs bands used to cover before the Beatles existed. That’s the price you pay for revolutionizing popular music — every song you ever record is covered by everybody under the sun.
For this “Got You Covered” post series, I’m setting the bar higher for Beatles covers than for those of other artists. I’d include one only if it is in some way surprising and unexpected despite being a Beatles cover.
That’s where The Bobs come in. The group originated in 1981 when a San Francisco singing telegram company went out of business, unemploying Matthew Stull and Gunnar Madsen1. Needing a bass singer, the lone respondent to their classified ad was Richard Greene. At some point the group named themselves The Bobs, the basis of which was the dog show acronym meaning “Best of Breed”; nevertheless, each member took on the middle name “Bob,” apparently just for shits and giggles. The group soon completed itself with the addition of Janie Bob Scott. Read the rest of this entry »
When I was a clean- cut suburban kid in my late single-digit years, I used to be afraid of AC/DC fans. Nowadays, hearing strains of the landmark Australian hard rockers’ “Highway to Hell” or “Back in Black” makes me nostalgic for a time simple enough for music to actually seem scary. To be fair, though, back in those days AC/DC did cultivate a somewhat malevolent image; these days, I imagine they’re mostly grateful to still get paid big money to travel the world and play to arenas full of screaming fans. In the image at right I attempt to juxtapose their former menace with the relative cuddliness of their current state.
For the uninitiated, here’s a clip of AC/DC’s best-known song:
If the prospect of still touring after 37 years seemed unlikely, the notion that AC/DC’s music would be given a second incarnation by a bluegrass tribute band calling itself Hayseed Dixie must have been even more farfetched. Read the rest of this entry »
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