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100 best covers: #39 Great Big Sea “Run runaway”

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Great Big Sea has long since been a household name here in Canada and is relatively well-known elsewhere as well, counting amongst their fans actor Russell Crowe. They are likely the most famous band to come out of Newfoundland and for a while during the late 90s and into the 2000s, were one of the best-selling groups here, their high-energy folk and updated interpretations of traditional sea shanties obviously finding a home in the hearts of good Canadian youth.

It certainly found me on first listen with this very cover of Slade’s* “Run runaway”. I remember catching the video at some point in the summer of 1995 or 1996 on MuchMusic, right around the time their video for “Mari Mac” also caught my attention. It wasn’t long at all before these two songs could be heard from open residence room doors and through the open windows of student apartments all around Toronto. Both are excellent tunes but it was this re-interpretation that first sold me.

Slade’s original came out around the time that I was just finding my own feet with music, branching out from my parents’ oldies radio listening in the car and regularly watching the chumFM top 30 countdown on CityTV. I didn’t, of course, know this at the time, but this was Slade’s second go round and comeback venture, their biggest inroads into the North American market. They had been flirting with glam rock throughout the 70s and were quite popular at home in England. It took a cover by metal band Quiet Riot of their 70s hit “Cum on feel the noize” to finally drum up interest in the US, leading to a signing with a US label, and the first single released was, of course, “Run runaway”.

Recorded for their 11th studio album, “The amazing kamikaze syndrome”, “Run runaway” was very much of its time. It has soaring guitars that put together a stadium-ready hook and there’s those shout-along vocals that had me along for the ride, even though I didn’t understand them. But it was far from a sellout. Slade didn’t stray far from their roots, employing electric violin and adapting traditional Scottish jig elements for a hard rock world.

Then, more than a decade later, Great Big Sea, removed the rock and upped the traditional. Their cover has flutes, accordions and fiddles and is sung like a shanty. They even made it more upbeat, which I wouldn’t have thought possible as a pre-teen.

And though the original has the nostalgia factor going for it, I gotta give the edge to the cover here.

Cover:

Original:

*This is, I believe, the second cover of a Slade tune to find its way on to this list.

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

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100 best covers: #40 Iron And Wine “Such great heights”

<< #41    |    #39 >>

Back in May, I travelled down to Toronto to see a concert for which I had purchased tickets almost six months beforehand. The show in question was certainly worth all the pre-planning and the additional travel: one of the few stops on the tour by Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service celebrating the 20th (er… 21st) anniversary of these bands’ landmark 2003 albums, “Transatlanticism” and “Give up”. It was double duty for Ben Gibbard, frontman of both acts, as he performed two sets on the evening, both feted albums from beginning to end, before coming back to perform a two-song encore, the first song* of which was “Such great heights” (again), which Gibbard introduced as a cover of an Iron And Wine song.

Gibbard was joking, of course, but there was a kernel of truth in there somewhere as well.

When “Such great heights” was launched as the first single from “Give up”, it was released as a four song EP, including covers of two of the album’s songs by two of The Postal Service’s Sub Pop label mates**. The Iron And Wine cover was very nearly as popular as the original, both versions coming to the public’s consciousness at around the same time, and the fact that the pair were very different in sound and style but equally catchy probably helped record sales for both artists. The cover was featured on the “Garden State” soundtrack, a massive vehicle for certain indie artists at that time, and the two versions appeared in multiple TV advertising campaigns.

The Postal Service’s original is a digital beast. The upbeat chiming synths and frenetic rhythm reflect the almost blinding optimism and exuberant subject matter of love and hope, a rarity in Gibbard’s early songwriting. Played back to back, the Iron And Wine cover is still nearly unrecognizable as the same composition. It has a tempo slowed down a hundred million times and is austere in its acoustic guitar finger picking and Sam Beam’s soft and wistful delivery. The production, too, is like a 180, sounding ancient, rather than futuristic, analog versus digital. You can almost hear imagined vinyl crackling overlaying the audible breaths between lines and the tactile feel of the calloused fingertips on the strings.

Both versions are swoon worthy, each a work of beauty in their own right. I couldn’t possibly choose one over the other, unless the mood dictated a certain aesthetic on a given day. Of course, it would be the opposite on the next.

I call this one a draw.

Cover:

Original:

*The second one being an actual cover of Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the silence”!

**The other was The Shins’ cover of “We will become silhouettes”.

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

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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.