Just American? On the subject of hideous covers of Anarchy In The UK…
Full disclosure: I bought the album. In my defense, I was at a closing down sale in a record shop, saw the album and, when I’d stopped laughing, offered a fraction of the already vastly reduced price, on the basis that this was the only way they were going to sell it.
Remember these guys at all, EH? Any background on them?
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I’m sorry, no, I haven’t got anything about them. I know quite some German punk of the day, but I’ve never heard of that band before. Though I must admit that that I quite like that cover. Yes, it’s ugly, but wasn’t punk supposed to be ugly? I also like the quote by the band:
“We hated everyone and wanted to be hated by everyone. Through our music we wanted to force people to have a break-through and feel a call to action, so that they would notice their frustration.”
That’s pure punk spirit.
Here’s the wiki.
At the risk of becoming very unpopular here, there are covers and there are interpretations. They are not the same.
Covers seek to replicate a recording. This bores me to death.
Interpretations are where the performer puts his stamp on the song and makes it his.
Interpretations are the stuff that jazz standards are made of, but one of my favourite rock examples is the NIce performing the Byrds’ “Get To You”, which when finally got released as an archive recording was retitled “Better Than Better.” I didn’t realise it was a Byrds song until someone pointed it out to me. Although I love the song, the Byrds played it in this weepy, drippy, sad sack style that I couldn’t sit 30 seconds through. My first thought was “make it stop.” The Nice turned it into this really weird quartal harmony thing that continues to fascinate me some 25 years after I first heard it.
I’ve got no problem with “covering” a song in concert. It’s a great song; you want to do it homage. What bugs me is when they include a studio version on an album that is almost identical to the original. I love interpretations.
I’m likely to get offended if anyone ever says that I “covered” a song. They’re negating my effort to interpret and put my stamp on it. I’ve been known to angrily say to someone who said I covered a song “I don’t cover songs, thank you very much.”
That’s a semantic distinction I’d never considered, and I agree with you 100%. That said, I think “cover version” is largely defined by folks as “playing someone else’s song” whether it’s a replication or a reinvention. I’m totally on board with you linguistically, but I suspect the ship has sailed for the masses, and I’m sadly unlikely to start using the word in casual music conversations either.
If you are not a musician, you are the first to agree with me. The masses are never going to get this one. I think it’s because “cover” has two syllables and “reinterpretation” has six and that’s just too many. If I were to put this forth on Reddit, or as I think of it, the Really Curved Dope, I’d be roasted.
Ehh, I’ll nitpick that a little. There’s a continuum between a straight cover and a reinterpretation. The Breeders’ cover of “Happiness is a Warm Gun” is somewhere between the two. It deviates pretty hard from the original recording, but it retains its bones, architecture and harmonic structure. It’s a cover, but no one would think it’s the Beatles doing it. It’s a cover, but it’s their cover. The Beatles wouldn’t have done it that way. It’s a much later sensibility.
I (possibly wrongly) assume everyone is familiar with the Beatles’ original. Here is The Breeders’ cover. I think both are awesome.
On the other hand, The Cardigans’ cover of “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” retains the structure and melody, but almost nothing else. If you didn’t know the lyrics of the original very well, it’d be really hard to know you were listening to a Black Sabbath cover.
The original, for reference.
Nitpick all you want, but I’m not bothering with your choices for simply not liking the bands. And I’m not going to argue it.
Hehehe, because you don’t like the bands? Okeydoke, moving right along…
Yes. I don’t have enough life left for them.
Got an early Christmas treat – the Kelce brothers singing ‘Fairytale of Philadelphia’. Some notable creative touches that put their own spin on the song are substituting some of the less PC insulting terms for words like ‘jabronie’.
Unfortunately the brothers take turns singing the traditional male and female parts; I say unfortunate because it would have been fun to hear Taylor Swift cameo on the song and have Travis call her ‘an old slut on junk’ (or whatever the Phillie-fied version of the insult would be) and hear her insulting response.
Anyway, surely this version is destined to become a traditional holiday standard that will have future generations saying “wait, there was a New York version, sung by a band called ‘The Pogues’?!?”
