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100 best covers: #81 The Pogues “Dirty old town”

<< #82    |    #80 >>

Ok. So it’s been quite a while since I’ve posted one for this series, well over three months for sure. And this is another that I didn’t know was a cover for the longest time. The Pogues recorded “Dirty old town” for their second album, 1985’s “Rum, sodomy, and the lash”, and it’s here that I’ve heard and sung along to these words countless times.

It was originally written in 1949 by actor, poet, playwright and songwriter, Ewan MacColl, who is, incidentally, the father of Kirsty MacColl. (I’m sure you all see the connection.) He wrote it for one his plays, “Landscape with chimneys”, as an ode of sorts to Salford, the town of his birth. He later recorded it in 1952 and it has become a folk classic, apparently covered dozens and dozens of times. Perhaps it was most famously done by The Dubliners in 1976, whose version (check it here) was upbeat and raucous, with banjos, fiddles, and shout along vocals, and likely influenced that of The Pogues.

MacColl’s original, at least the recording in the video below, is by contrast scratchy and hissing and full of cobwebs, sounding forgotten in the darkest corner of your grandparents’ attic. It is a soft strum on the guitars, almost an afterthought to the sorrowful vocals, MacColl warbling all over the place. It is only 2 minutes 45 but feels a whole lot longer.

The Pogues’ cover is also sad but decidedly more upbeat. It is not hoarse and roaring like The Dubliners do it, nor as punk-influenced as other tunes in The Pogues back catalogue. It is a song to sway to with a frothy pint in hand, the band off in the pub’s corner, a harmonica crying sadly, the mandolin waffling and sniffling, the fiddles creaking like a squeaky old door, and Pogues’ vocalist Shane MacGowan slurring roughly, as he is wont to do. All in all, there’s plenty of memories and regret in each note and tap on the drums.

So in sum, I think all three of the versions here are great but the one by The Pogues is my preference. Thoughts?

The cover:

The original:

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

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Tunes

100 best covers: #82 Travis “Baby one more time”

<< #83    |    #81 >>

So here’s one that you can place firmly in the fun column.

I came across this particular cover during a brief period in 2001 where I was a bit obsessed with Scottish alt-pop band Travis and I was on the hunt for everything they’d recorded. Appearing as a B-side to the 1999 single “Turn”, it was recorded live and you can actually hear the laughter from the audience as they start to recognize the song. The band themselves can be heard snickering at the beginning, especially at the forced falsetto moments, but by the end, they are indeed performing it in earnest.

I also didn’t recognize the tune at first during my first sampling of it. It’s slowed some, performed stripped down to only an acoustic guitar with Fran Healy being joined, gang style, by the rest of the band on vocals. When it clicked, I still couldn’t believe what I was hearing and that’s what I think is so wonderful about it. It’s the surprise factor. A teen pop song performed by a pop band of a different sort and it works. I think so anyways.

As for the original, I’m pretty sure I don’t have to work too hard to jog your memory about it. Which is good because I can’t say I know much about Ms. Spears. However, I certainly have been overexposed to a bunch of her songs over the years and this one was particularly ubiquitous at the end of the nineties. I remember watching the video for the first time in disbelief. It was so obviously a ploy, a riff on the catholic school girl fantasy, but it worked. The song was huge, making her over from a former Mouseketeer to a pop star in the blink of an eye. Still, she likely got too big, too fast, given her tabloid ready lifestyle, and has had to forge more than one comeback over her career.

It’s probably pretty obvious by now which version I prefer. But don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a hate on for the Britney, nor her version of the song. It’s well written and has a great hook. Her style and sound is just not to my taste.

Do you have an opinion on the matter? I’d love to hear it.

The cover:

The original:

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

Categories
Tunes

100 best covers: #83 The Farm “Don’t you want me”

<< #84    |    #82 >>

Here’s a cover for the list that I realize might not be my most popular pick. I’m well aware that it is purely about nostalgia and time and place. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

When I was very young, I had a vinyl collection, mostly 45s, and mostly records connected with storybooks from the Walt Disney and Sesame Street family. I don’t know what age I was, but definitely before ten years old, I received my first “real” music record from one of my cool aunts, probably my Aunt Kathy. It was, as you might have guessed, the 7” single of Human League’s “Don’t you want me”, backed with “Seconds”. Of course, I didn’t know then that it was the fourth single to be released off the synth pop group’s third album, heck, I didn’t even know what synth pop was, but I played it all the time, along with its B-side, and danced around my little bedroom like a maniac.

Just under a decade or so later, I had just graduated high school and was wondering what to do with my life. I was quite deep into music, this new alternative stuff, mostly of the baggy, madchester persuasion, and one of my favourite albums of the moment was “Spartacus”, the debut album by The Farm. My friend Andrew Rodriguez got a copy of the sophomore release, “Love see no colour”, for Christmas, which he promptly recorded for me. I won’t lie. I was a bit disappointed with the first few songs but then, there were some higher moments, and then, six songs in was a cover of this song from my youth. I fell in love with it all over again. I only later learned that the cover was originally recorded for an NME-related compilation called “Ruby Trax” a few years later when I picked it up in a used CD store on McCaul street in Toronto.

Despite being recorded almost a decade apart, the two versions are not all that far apart in sound. The Human League’s “Don’t you want me” is definitely more synth heavy and mechanical and The Farm’s cover has more guitar work and some synth flourish to plug the gaps left by the austere original. Nevertheless, both are quite dated sounding today. Again, definitely time and place. And if I hadn’t been there for both originally, this post might not have happened at all.

Thoughts?

The cover:

The original:

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