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100 best covers: #41 The Lemonheads “Mrs. Robinson”

<< #42    |    #40 >>

By all accounts, the Lemonheads’ frontman and driving force, Evan Dando, hated the original version of the song “Mrs. Robinson”, almost as much as he disliked its author. You got the feeling he was heavily leaned on by the ‘powers that be’ to record the cover to go along with the 25th anniversary release of “The Graduate” on home video cassette. He must’ve really blown a gasket when it was tacked on to the end of the track listing on later rereleases of his band’s now classic 1992 album, “It’s a shame about Ray”.

So it’s amusing that this was likely many listeners gateway to the band. It certainly was mine. I distinctly remember recording the video during one of my Friday night CityLimits viewing sessions and falling for the update of a song I knew from my parents’ oldie radio station listening in the car. From there, I recorded the video for the aforementioned album’s title track based on name recognition and of course, I’ve already told the story on these pages on how showing these two videos to my aunt landed me a copy of the CD for Christmas. So yeah, I’ve got a history with the song.

I later developed an appreciation for NYC-based folk rock duo, Simon & Garfunkel who wrote and performed the original. Parts of it were written before the filming of “The graduate”, were shared with its filmmaker, and these appeared in the final film cut. Versions of these snippets appeared on the soundtrack but the actual full-fledged song wasn’t released until a year later as a single and appeared on the band’s fourth album, “Bookends”.

The Lemonheads’ cover has got raunchier guitars than the original acoustic finger picking and instead of the lilting harmonizing on the iconic do-de-do-do-do-do-do intro, it is Evan Dando’s solo, half hearted mimicry. Theirs is about twenty seconds shorter than the orginal but that’s probably more due to its sped up pacing. Indeed, the song is all there but the tone is very different. It rocks and rolls more and yet, it has been often criticized for being a lazy cover. And that may be so, but I couldn’t help myself but to fall hard for it, and that love hasn’t waned in the least in the 30+ years since its release.

(If you hadn’t guessed, I prefer the cover to the original here.)

Cover:

Original:

For the rest of the 100 best covers list, click here.

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Best tunes of 2013: #21 Crocodiles “She splits me up”

<< #22    |    #20 >>

I’ve already told the story on these pages about how my friend Tim and I drove to Cambridge from Toronto one day over the Christmas break back in 2011. We headed there to meet up with one of Tim’s university friends Greg and his wife Wendy, and check out their books and records store, Millpond. We stayed for dinner before returning to Toronto in a snow storm but not before sharing laughs and memories and trading a few musical picks.

Greg’s contribution was Crocodiles, seconded by Wendy, and based on their raves and descriptions, I definitely took note to check them out when I returned home. Perhaps coincidentally, my own suggestion was Dum Dum Girls, whose sophomore record “Only in dreams” was hot on my repeat listen list and had placed on my favourite albums list that year. What’s funny is that Greg and Wendy hadn’t heard of Dum Dum Girls and I hadn’t heard of Crocodiles but at the time, the front persons and driving forces of each band, Brandon Welchez and Dee Dee Penny*, were married and had regularly contributed to each other’s musical projects.

I later learned that Crocodiles were formed in 2008** by Welchez and Charles Rowell in San Diego, California, after their previous, mostly punk-driven bands had broken up. Their psychedelic and retro noise pop sound was established right from the beginning and got them drawing buzz. I recognized and fell for it when I first listened to their sophomore album, “Sleep forever”, quickly making the connection with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and The Jesus and Mary Chain, and of course, with Dum Dum Girls. I’ve continued to follow the group through the multiple lineup changes but the sound hasn’t veered too far off course, nor has the songwriting quality diminished, right up to last year’s excellent “Upside down in heaven”, the group’s 8th full length album.

In 2013, though, they released their 4th album, the Sune Rose Wagner (The Raveonettes) produced “Crimes of passion”. The neon colours of its album foreshadowed the technicolour sounds and garish and glam tinged ethos. Ten searing and cool tracks for turning up and rocking out alongside, my favourite of which was track six, “She splits me up”. With guitars that wail at the high end, dance harpsichord-like arpeggios, and gnarl and snarl at the robust bass line. Meanwhile, Welchez bemoans and lauds a member of the opposite sex and the hold she has on him.

“She dazzles on the streets beneath me but her love is never real. And the world outside is fading fast, and she’s so detached. She splits me up”

Yessssss.

*Funnily enough, this is the first post to focus on Crocodiles but Welchez has been mentioned a couple of times already in posts about Dum Dum Girls.

**Same year as Dum Dum Girls.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2013 list, click here.

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100 best covers: #42 Pop Will Eat Itself “Games without frontiers”

<< #43    |    #41 >>

So here’s a topsy-turvy, chicken and the egg kind of story.

I remember hearing “Games without frontiers” on AM radio as a pre-teen not really know who the artist was or what the song was about. I much later became a fan of Peter Gabriel when I picked up his “Shaking the tree” compilation on CD in the midst of my 80s retro kick in the late 1990s and there, reacquainted myself with the track. However, prior to that, in the early 1990s, I became a fan of Grebo jokesters Pop Will Eat Itself, mostly because of their relations with The Wonder Stuff and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, bands of whom I was already a big fan. Years later, some time in the early 2000s, whilst exploring some of PWEI’s back catalogue that I had yet to consume, I came across this cover they did of “Games without frontiers” and with a bit more digging, found that it was their contribution to a fundraiser compilation supporting the peace efforts in Northern Ireland, called “Peace together”.

Peter Gabriel’s original version of the song was recorded for his self-titled third album, released in 1980. It features Kate Bush on backing vocals, plodding percussive and bass synths, a drum machine mimicking congos, whistling, and sinister guitar lines dancing along the minor key. It is oft-considered an anti-war song with a title referencing a well-known European game show and lyrics that equate politics with children games, rhyming off names of children from different cultures, all playing together.

So a good choice then for a band to cover for an album promoting peace. Pop Will Eat Itself’s cover is longer, predictably rage-filled, and rife with samples. Though its rhythm and its use of rhythm as melody is the same, the tone is indeed very different. It feels like they packaged it all up, Gabriel included, and shot it off into an apocalyptic future world similar to that found in “Tank girl”. Yeah, it’s fun in its angst.

Indeed, both versions are a gas and make you feel urbane as your happily singalong, but I think I may be siding with original in terms of preference, even as I replay the cover with the volume cranked.

Cover:

Original:

For the rest of the 100 best covers list, click here.