Saturday 22 March 2014

UNDER THE COVERS (Part 3 Of 3)


And here we are with the third and final part of my look at the strange world of cover songs. Last week, I described a range of categories that embraced the many different types of borrowed tunes. I then looked at some of these in much more depth. This time, the task is completed. As before, plenty of examples are included - courtesy of links to You Tube - and next week, as a special supplement, I'll list my current Top 20 borrowed songs. Of course, this attempt will be doomed to failure as choices always change and you, dear readers, may very well disagree with my selections. But, it's a starting point for discussion - and that isn't always a bad thing.

Before I  head off into the uncharted waters of this episode, why not check out the first two parts right here:

So - chocs away, let's go!

ARTIST COVERS - INDIVIDUAL TRACKS


In many ways, this category could include just about anything. 
The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour
It isn't very exciting to simply trawl through a list of covers and point out the little quirks and differences compared to the original, so we'll take a different approach. Here, we'll ignore "standards", that is songs from quite some way back which have moved beyond just being a cover. They are de rigeur for certain kinds of artist and consequently, have been replicated numerous times in recent years. Defining what's a "standard" is awkward, but something like The Beatles' Yesterday probably is whilst Magical Mystery Tour, recorded just a year later, isn't. The focus, such as it is, will be on distinctive covers, new versions which - for some reason - are memorable or have some innate quality of their own. Even this apparent limitation leaves us with a multitude of fine music, so I'll home in on a typical song for each of the "sub-categories" of cover number.

 Better Than The Original
The Zutons - Second album
including original version of
Valerie
Some say that the only reason for doing a cover song is to "make it better than the original". That's certainly a motivation. Old songs often get updates to improve upon recording and presentation, to turn it into a new song - but one with enough of the original's DNA to make it recognisable. In part 1, we highlighted one of the best examples - Jimi Hendrix's version of Bob Dylan's All Along The Watchtower - and here, another cover that betters its original. One of the most interesting bands to emerge from Liverpool in the early part of the century was The Zutons. Ostensibly an indie band, they also had a happy knack for creating music that had a nod back to the late 60s with its psychedelic vibes. Their second album Tired Of Hanging Around came out in 2007 and on it,  a fine song called Valerie. Also released as a single and getting into the lower reaches of the UK Top 20, it was a fine jangly-guitar number that harked back to the r&b styles of their favourite decade. It's a good performance, complete with backing singers and a heartfelt vocal from Dave McCabe.
Amy Winehouse, produced by
 Mark Ronson - cover of
Valerie
A year later, producer Mark Ronson was putting together an album of contemporary cover songs (Version), one of which was an excellent take on Valerie by the much missed Amy Winehouse. She'd had great success with her debut album Back To Black and with this song, released as a single and hitting number 2 on the UK charts with sales of over 330,000, her career momentum was maintained. Winehouse took the vocals by the scruff of the neck and really put an authentic r&b vibe on them. It sounded like the song had been frozen in amber since the 1960s such was the emotional content of the vocal punch that she brought to it. 

Both are fine versions, but Amy Winehouse brings a little more heart and soul to hers.


Movie Updating

 In recent years, no self-respecting movie is released that doesn't come with a song-packed Official Sound Track album. No matter that some numbers may only have  appeared for a fleeting moment, the album is all about sales and promotion - and bringing the money in. Licensing existing songs can be an expensive business, but more and more movie production companies do it. There are two issues worth noting - firstly, a song's performance is "of its time" and thus whilst lyrically it may fit the movie, the image it portrays may not be contemporary enough. Secondly, it is that matter of cost: movie budgets have a tendency to spiral out of control and anything that can be done to contain the cost of music will be foremost in the director's mind (and if it isn't, the producers will no doubt remind him or her). Using - or creating - cover songs minimises the impacts of these risks. A modern version can better match the feel of the movie - and by using a cover artist, expenses can be better capped.
David Bowie - Diamond Dogs (1974)
Beck - His version of Diamond Dogs
was on the Moulin Rouge
sound track. 













Take the Baz Luhrmann smash hit Moulin Rouge which starred Ewan McGregor aned Nicole Kidman, released in 2001. It was a musical - but the majority of songs were rock and pop numbers from the past 40 years or more, some sung by the cast - others by current artists. It worked well for this movie and it went on to win numerous awards including several for the soundtrack songs. One of the most interesting covers that illustrates the point about *updating* was by Beck, that fine US indie and rock artist. His task was to take David Bowie's semi-science fiction epic Diamond Dogs and make it fit this period pastiche "jukebox drama", as one critic described it. And what a fine job of it he made.

Promoting New Artists 

 An effective way to gain recognition as a new artist is to drop a few cover songs into your live set. This provides some instant audience-recognition - and hopefully encourages them to listen to the artist's own material as well. When it comes to recording songs, a decent cover song can - again - provide that initial sense of familiarity to the listeners. But - and it's a big but - there is a downside in that without understanding the pitfalls, it is very easy for artists to get trapped into a cycle of doing covers, rather than being creative with their own songs. Indeed, in some ways, this is a danger that is becoming more and more prevalent with the continued popularity of TV talent shows such as The X-Factor and The Voice. What ever we may think of such programmes, they usually do discover singers who are technically proficient. They won't be singing their own songs though, so despite any inate talent, any album that gets produced as a result of their exposure will tend to "play it safe". It is a rare thing that they get to a second album.
Fleetwood Mac
Go Your Own Way (1977)
Lissie - also going her way
(2011)














However, some musicians do manage to carve out a successful career by a judicious selection of covers that complement their own material. One such artist is Lissie, a US singer-songwriter who specialises in folk-rock, pop-rock and country-rock. She's from Illinois and was recognised by respected music magazine Paste as the "Best new solo artist of 2010). Her debut album Catching A Tiger was filled with original material, but it was only in 2011 that she started to gain real recognition with a Fleetwood Mac cover that proved to be very popular. Since then, she's released a second album of originals, but has also gained a reputation as a strong covers artist with her versions of material by such as Nick Cave, Joe South  and Lynyrd Skynyrd. 

Live Covers On Record

Even the most seasoned and experienced of artists succumb to the allure of covers occasionally. The temptation is greatest when performing live and there's nothing quite like a band diving off left-field and bashing out a well known borrowed number. This may well be in the "encore"part of a gig, but it's usually aimed at being a crowd please as much as a recognition (perhaps) of the band's own early musical influences. These days, live covers have taken on a new life in the fad for de-luxe expanded editions of their early albums. With remastering and much a-trawling of the archives, an enlarged CD will have a much better sound quality - and the odd few unreleased numbers thrown in as well. One or two of these may be covers. 

Marvin Gaye
One of the most interesting can be found on the 1997 Fairport Convention studio album, Who Knows Where The Time Goes, released to celebrate their 30th year in the music business. Much of the album was standard folk-rock fare, but a live number from their 1995 Cropredy festival was included. This saw one-time member Richard Thompson join in with the band on a stirring version of a number originally made famous by Marvin Gaye - I Heard It Through The Grapevine. Thompson himself will admit that he's not the world's greatest singer, but this is a decent stab at this much-loved number. Roy Wood, late of The Move and Wizzard also joins in on guitar.

Fairport Convention's Simon Nicol with one time member Richard Thompson
"still doing it through the grapevine"  

Resurrection From The Vaults

The Kinks
Early days back in 1964
The final selection in this sub-category epitomises what a good cover song can do: remind us of songs from years gone by that might have had a moment in the sunlight, but have long since been overlooked. Indeed, many latterday covers are mistaken as originals by listeners as they simply aren't aware of the original. There have been many of these across the years such as Soft Cell's 1981 hit Tainted Love (originally done by Gloria Jones in 1964), Siouxie & The Banshees 1983 non-album single Dear Prudence (recorded by The Beatles for The White Album in 1969) and The Pretenders' 1980 hit Stop Your Sobbing (a Kinks number from 1964). Interestingly enough, that latter song was suggested to The Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde by her then partner, Kinkman Ray Davies. 


The Pretenders in 1980
Covering The Kinks
The more you look at singles across the years, the more you realise just how many have already been round the block some time before. A good song will always be a good song, pretty much whoever covers it: quality will out. It is probably more difficult here in the lofty uplands of 2014 for most of us to identify all these covers in the first place. With something like 60 years or more of the music charts, there's been a huge range of songs released, some just fleetingly, and others more impressed upon the public consciousness. Even bands such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones started out with a high proportion of covers on their initial album releases.   



CHARITY EVENT/SPECIAL OCCASIONS


A musical phenomenon that has exploded in the past 20 years has been the Charity Song. It's not a new concept - George Harrison did it back in 1970 with his Concert For Bangladesh - but ever since the 1985 success of Live Aid, all manner of artists have been keen to be associated with fund-raising activities. It gives them a bit of credibility, it might even help boost sales - and in a healthy number of instances, it's something which they believe in. Allied to that is the release of singles or albums to celebrate special occasions or anniversaries: sometimes these are at the behest of a record company, sometimes the band themselves - and from time to time, the subject of the event or occasion.

This interests us because it provides opportunity a-plenty for cover songs to be part of the fund-raising or celebratory mix.

Bowie & Jagger - Dancing In the Street
Live Aid itself wasn't just the two main concerts at Wembley Stadium and in Philadelphia. There were a number of pre-recorded inserts, one of which was David Bowie and Mick Jagger doing a version of the Martha Reeves & The Vandellas hit, Dancing In The Street. It wasn't a patch on the original, but it did get a massive audience around the world. Another big hit was to enter the UK charts in 1989 in the wake of the Hillsborough football disaster in Sheffield, a disaster that saw 96 Liverpool fans die and over 700 more suffer injuries. A number of Merseyside artists got together - The Christians, Paul McCartney and Gerry Marsden - to cover the Liverpool anthem, Ferry Cross The Mersey. The emotional content of the song was important, rather the an the quality of the performance.

BBC Children In Need 1997
One of the best charity covers - and one formally endorsed as such by the original artist -  was released in 1997. It started life as a promotional song for the BBC and its wide range of musical content. Lou Reed's 1972 song Perfect Day was reworked by over 20 major artists, each contributing a line of vocals at most and, incredibly for such a number, the finished version worked really well. It was adopted by the BBC's Children In Need fund-raiser later that year, released as a single and went onto raise over £1.25m within a matter of a few weeks. As at 2012, it has sold over 1.6 million copies.




Ten years later, 2007 also saw an event - as opposed to charity - linked to the BBC which  this time featured an accompanying double-album. In that year, BBC Radio 1 celebrated its 40th anniversary and the album "BBC Radio 1: Established 1967" saw 40 artists contribute 40 cover songs to underline the massive role that the station had played in the world of UK pop and rock. The songs did vary in quality somewhat, but such artists as Franz Ferdinand (doing David Bowie's Sound & Vision) and The Foo Fighters (doing Wings' Band On The Run) certainly rose to the occasion. 



An intriguing celebratory triple-CD from Island Records also appeared in 2007. This was Island Life, a release supporting the label's 50th anniversary  since it was started by Chris Blackwell in Jamaica. Two of the CDs contained some fine selections of songs from the label's back catalogue, but the third saw current Island artists doing covers of older Island releases - and most gave a good account of themselves. Paul Weller did an interesting take of Nick Drake's River Man, Grace Jones had a go at Roxy Music's Love Is The Drug and U2's Within You Without You was tackled by Jonathan Jeremiah.





Peter Kay, Tony Christie
Still asking questions....
Comedian Peter Kay entered the charity fray in 2005 with a song aimed at raising funds for Comic Relief. He took the Tony Christie number Is This The Way To Amarillo to number 1 on the UK charts, assisted by a clever video and support from Tony Christie himself. Over 1.3 millions copies have since been sold. A further Comic Relief release followed in 2007: this time Peter Kay teamed up with Matt Lucas to do a version of I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles), originally a hit for Scottish duo The Proclaimers. This too sold plenty of copies, although didn't reach the coveted number 1 spot. 

GENRE TRIBUTES


 This is an interesting category.
The Nice
Made use of the classics
There's quite a long history of one musical genre doing covers borrowed from another musical genre. Many readers I am sure will remember the 1970s fashion for rock and pop songs to be reworked by classical orchestras. And why not, after all, bands such as The Nice had lifted wholesale classical pieces and given them the prog-rock treatment back in the late 1960s.(Their biggest hit was a version of Leonard Bernstein's music for America from the musical, West Side Story). It would be  a thankless task to review all genres and the songs they've borrowed, so here, we'll just take a flavour of some of the more intriguing ones. Inclusion doesn't necessarily mean that they're good covers, although that is broadly my aim. 



Hayseed Dixie
They like AC/DC
Bluegrass is a musical style that's enjoyed a bit of a resurgence in recent years probably, in no small measure, due to the work of artists like Alison Krauss. A band that started out as a hillbilly parody sort of act is Hayseed Dixie, a play on the name of Anglo-Aussie rockers AC/DC. Hayseed Dixie were formed in 2001 and aside from writing their own material, have become renowned for their bluegrass versions of a wide range of rock songs by bands such as the aforementioned AC/DC as well Kiss, Aerosmith and Bad Company. It is a conceit that can wear little thin, but they are seasoned practitioners and deliver exciting live shows too. 


It's not just rock that's been subject to the bluegrass treatment: in 2004, a group of Nashville-based musicians got together to cover an album's worth of songs from cosmic prog rockers, The Moody Blues. The album, needless to say, was called Moody Bluegrass. Some of the numbers strayed more into country territory and, in an odd sort of way, worked pretty well. 





The French musical New Wave?

 Over in France, the last ten years has seen a covers duo Nouvelle Vague have some success with their take on a range of rock, new wave and punk songs. Their very name itself means New Wave and is taken from the 60s French "new wave" film movement. The duo - Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux - augment their song with various guest singers and the output can perhaps be best described as lounge or bossa nova in style. Some of their interpretations work very well indeed whilst, it must be said, others are very much an acquired taste. Their version of Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart  changes the whole temper of the song, but it still stands up despite the treatment.

Dread Zeppelin - with added Elvis
If we turn our attention to reggae and dub, there are all manner of cover songs done in this style - either by genuine reggae bands and artists, or by other acts intrigued by what sorts of sounds are possible. One of the more obvious contenders here is Dread Zeppelin, a Californian band formed back in 1989 and featuring as their lead singer, Greg Tortell, an Elvis impersonator. They've had quite some success with their reggae version of classic Led Zeppelin numbers and have released approaching twenty albums of studio and live material. They've also dabbled with other rock bands such as Cream, The Who,  Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, so it looks like their well has plenty of water before it runs dry. 



Easy Star All Stars
The dub aspect of genre covers is catered for by The Easy Star All Stars, a reggae and dub collective founded in 2003 in New York City. Their speciality is doing complete versions of whole albums in their dub style, the first being a treatment of Pink Floyd's Dark Side If the Moon which was released in 2003 as Dub Side Of The Moon. Other that followed include Radiohead's OK Computer (as Radiodread), The Beatles' Sgt Pepper (Easy Star's Lonely Hearts Dub Band) and in 2012, a version of Michael Jackson's Thriller (Thrillah). They've also released their own material and, being a collective, have had quite a throughput of members.

Sandi Thom sans flowers
Singer-songwriters occupy quite a berth in this category of genre covers and interpretations.There are far too many examples to go through, but a couple will serve as the variety that can be found. Sandi Thom is a Scots artist who first struck chart success with her single I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers In My Hair) back in 2006. Since then she's re-invented herself as a not-at-all-bad blues singer and guitarist. Her most recent album, Covers Collection (2013) does what it says on the sleeve - and there's a particularly good version of The Foo Fighters' Times Like These on there. 




Sheryl Crow
Another singer-songwriter who has a decent history of fine covers (as well as forays into the indie, rock, blues and country genres) is Sheryl Crow. She got her big-break quite late in her musical career back in 1993 with an excellent album called Tuesday Night Music Club. The hit single - All I Wanna Do - showed the promise of what was to come. Five years later in 1998, she released her third album, The Globe Sessions, the UK version coming with a bonus song which she'd borrowed from rockers Guns 'N Roses, Sweet Child O' Mine. Her version starts with acoustic guitar and although it fills out with strings and other rock accoutrements, it's still an overtly singer-songwriterly take on the original. 


Maddy Prior...and girls

 Mention of singer-songwriters takes us neatly to the folk genre, again a veritable treasure trove of excellent covers, although we are taking care not to divert ourselves into "standards" or "Trad. arranged" territory. Maddy Prior started out on the folk circuit in the late 1960s with Tim Hart and in 1970, was a founder member of folk-rockers Steeleye Span. She's also had many side projects, a current one being Maddy And The Girls, a trio also comprising her daughter Rose Kemp and singer Abbie Lathe. On their 2010 album Bib & Tuck, they performed an acapella version of the Elton John number I Need You To Turn To.

The Ukelele Orchestra
of Great Britian
An instrument which has seen much popularity in recent years has been the ukelele, an instrument rescued from the hands of such as George Formby and used now by all manner of artists. The late Beatle George Harrison was a big fan but probably not as big a fan as The Ukelele Orchestra Of Great Britain who, as their name suggests, is a group of artists who play nothing but this simple four-stringed instrument. The UOGB was formed back in 1985  and operate today mainly as an eight-piece and have been a very busy band indeed. Whether it's turning their strings to Kate Bush (Wuthering Heights), David Bowie (Life On Mars) or, amazingly, The Sex Pistols (Anarchy In The UK), they are there and they deliver.  

Betty LaVette
Finally in this brief exploration, let's take a look at British rock numbers done by US soul and r&b artist, Betty LaVette. She's had quite a varied career since she started out in the 60s  - including a lengthy break in the 80s and 90s. A comeback loomed in the late 1990s and she's been pretty busy since then. In 2010 she released a covers album called Interpretations: The Great British Songbook. This included songs borrowed from such as The Beatles, Steve Winwood, The Stones, and Eric Clapton. Some of the covers are a bit mixed, but there are some fine versions too, particularly a cover of The Who's Love Reign O'er Me.


AND IN THE END


I'm very conscious that this potentially huge subject has received merely a brief and somewhat superficial examination. But, as I said back in Part 1, much of the content that could be excavated from Planet Covers probably isn't really worth the effort.

 I have looked at the main types of covers, looked at how they initially arose - and then opened up the different categories of borrowed song to provide some examples. Whether you believe that the song-links provided simply confirm your negative views of cover songs - or they have opened your eyes and ears to what is possible - I'll leave to you. What I can say is that cover songs don't seem to be diminishing in number and if you are fascinated by some of the more thoughtful ones, then don't forget that I include four of them in each edition of The Musical Box radio show, broadcast each Thursday night at 10pm. 

 Next week, I'll add a postscript to this series - a selection of my current twenty best cover songs. I'll make no promises for them, my mind will change frequently before then, but I hope that it'll act as a discussion point - and perhaps persuade you, dear reader, to let me know of songs you think I've missed.

 Alan Dorey
24th March 2014
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