The rave-up on the album, if you can call it that, is Cecilia. I most certainly didn't understand the lyrical histrionics at the time, but that rhythm though.
Who knew that Eddie Simon helped to generate that rhythm line, which older brother Paul later looped, by banging on a piano bench.
Anyway, there are a bazillion covers out there - this one by former Indie Kids (but now kinda/sorta grown-ups) 'Local Natives' - slays me...
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Brought to you, really, by the fine folks over at 'Cover Me'
There was an extended period that started in the late 90's and passed through into the early 'aughts that forms a massive hole in my knowledge of anything newly musical.
Why?
Pre-tenure-driven, work-a-holism times infinity, times.
That's why.
All of which is just a way of explaining why I knew absolutely nothing about the power-poppish, hook-laden 'Teenage Dirtbag' by Wheatus, despite the fact that it was, and is still, so popular that the band's original Vevo version, which was made for a crappy Amy Heckerling movie called 'Loser', now has 175 million views.
In fact, the first time I actually paid any attention to it at all was when it appeared in a much different form conjured up by that kid currently riding an indie supernova headed straight for the the mainstream named Phoebe Bridgers:
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Anyway, fast forward to yesterday and what does my favourite new musical site, which is called 'Cover Me' throw up?
Why, the five best covers of 'Teenage Dirtbag', of course.
Which, on its own, is great.
But I also enjoyed their parallel-lined treatise on the tune's true impetus:
...Even if you didn’t grow up on Long Island in the ’80s, if you are a true-crime aficionado of a certain age (a horrific classification but here we are), you are likely to be familiar with the case of Ricky Kasso, who murdered Gary Lauwers (both 17) in June of 1984. And if you did grow up there like Wheatus’s Brendan B.Brown (and myself), the whole story is firmly and forever embedded in your psyche, especially if you were a kid or teen at the time. It was both tragic and terrifying.
It wasn’t long before the press found a sensationalistic angle to latch onto regarding the crime and the scapegoating began. When Kasso was arrested for the murder, he was famously photographed wearing an AC/DC shirt replete with a bloody logo and a green cartoon devil. And that little detail, coupled with rumors of the crime being part of a satanic sacrifice ritual, provided all the ammunition needed for those in authority–i.e. parents, teachers and police–to go into irrational overdrive. As naively fantastical as sounds, from that point on, if you actively listened to metal, if you wore tees featuring the bands you loved like Iron Maiden or Black Sabbath, you were heretofore regarded as one of the devil’s loyal soldiers. While this mistrust of metalheads was patently ridiculous, an absurd piece of residual damage based on a single news photo, it really happened. And it was this very notion that led Brendan B. Brown to pen “Teenage Dirtbag”...
'Cover Me' shows up over there on the blog crawler thingy. It's really a fantastic musical multi-level stratification sort of place to hang out.
Kind of like a cool record store from the old days where the folks working there would let you in on what's what because they were actually nice rather than jerks.
These kids, who call themselves 'Th'Rattletrap', just slay me with this tune.
Especially the combination of shamoblics and the wicked guitar breakdown that begin at 2:15.
And, as far as I can tell, it looks like the kid taking care of the latter is doing pretty much all of it with her thumb.
All killer and absolutely no filler...
_______ The band's page is...Here. And the Sioux Falls South Dakota visualaudioscapish incubator where I've been getting all my new stuff lately is a place called the White Wall Sessions. Check out their artist archives...They're really quite something. Previous versions of our usual Saturday Night Uke Cover Fighting feature can be found...Here.
First, the Original, covered by the excellent third generation Non-Originalists...
Next, Bigger E's amazingly graceful Uke Cover...
Why no video on this one?
Well....
If you listen closely I'm there in the audio mix, off in the background (which is right where I belong)...
_____ If you want to keep track of where E. is playing around town, and beyond (she's across the water at a gig tonight, in fact) her Twittmachine feed is....Here. And, just in case you were looking for that seminal second generation cover by the exceptional Mr. Van Ronk, it's....Here.
Was listening to late-night, butt-headed sportstalk on the longwave recently and suddenly, between the caterwauling about the NY Giant pass rusher guy who blew his fingers off with fireworks and the ridiculousness of the abundance of riches of Ohio State at the pivot position, the two 'hosts' suddenly and incongruently started waxing nostalgic for Cameron Crowe's 'Almost Famous'.
And, specifically, that scene on the tour bus near the end of the show.
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Anyway...
Despite the tonguish-in-cheek title of this little series, I don't think I've ever done an Elton John tune.
So, without further ado, here's a pretty good version of the original by the Original mouthing the really original words of Mr. Taupin:
And here's a barebones Cover with just as much feeling (it actually amazes me how covering a tune can transform folks as they're playing/singing the song even in the most straightforward and rudimentary way).
______ And, just for good measure, here's the scene from the movie....And, why the heckfire wouldn't Dave Grohl do an almost, but not quite, ironic cover on the TeeVee?...Case in point, by the time the gum-popping Grohl gets halfway through the second verse he has the same expression on his face as the kid in the video above...Then, of course, he starts to work the crowd... As always, Uke Peg-Head at the top of the post courtesy of fantabulous Los Angeles photo-maven Ellen Bloom. Previous Cover Uke Fighting sessions can be found....Here.
When we were wearing out the grooves for the first time, I was pretty certain that the brains behind the operation was the tall kinda cool looking guy in the back.
And even though I didn't believe him at first back in those pro-Googlified times, my littlest brother (who later became the real musician) set me straight.
Who knew the little guy in the front would just keep on keepin' on for pretty much ever?
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This tune came out much later.
By then we were living in Vancouver (the first time) and C. was running a daycare while I went to Gradual School and developed a somewhat problematic Revello addiction.
We bought the album on cassette.
I know it made it down to Berkeley but I'm not entirely sure it made it all the way back...
______ Other cover tunes currently in the rotation can be found...Here.
First, the Original, by a couple of Bay Area originals...
Next, the Cover, from, as it should be, a kid who is a Rancid fan in her bedroom...
_______ You can see Mr. T. Armstrong and his always and forever DIY band power up the tune that he and B.J. Armstrong wrote more than 20 years ago on a front porch...Here. Because of this Green Day goes to Cleveland thing...And all that meant for the folks concerned at least... And, because the Geezers are planning to do a new (to us at least) GD tune at next week's gig, I fell down a bit of a Youtube hole earlier today while ostensibly working on the next paper....It's that business of bringing the kids up on stage that Armstrong does...Call it hokie if you like, but stuff like this just slays me...
First, Mr. Bangs' inside-out symbiotic trapezoidal tom-tom lede on the original:
Van Morrison's Astral Weeks was released ten years, almost to the day, before this was written. It was particularly important to me because the fall of 1968 was such a terrible time: I was a physical and mental wreck, nerves shredded and ghosts and spiders looming and squatting across the mind. My social contacts had dwindled to almost none; the presence of other people made me nervous and paranoid. I spent endless days and nights sunk in an armchair in my bedroom, reading magazines, watching TV, listening to records, staring into space. I had no idea how to improve the situation and probably wouldn't have done anything about it if I had.
Astral Weeks would be the subject of this piece - i.e., the rock record with the most significance in my life so far - no matter how I'd been feeling when it came out. But in the condition I was in, it assumed at the time the quality of a beacon, a light on the far shores of the murk; what's more, it was proof that there was something left to express artistically besides nihilism and destruction. (My other big record of the day was White Light/White Heat.) It sounded like the man who made Astral Weeks was in terrible pain, pain most of Van Morrison's previous works had only suggested; but like the later albums by the Velvet Underground, there was a redemptive element in the blackness, ultimate compassion for the suffering of others, and a swath of pure beauty and mystical awe that cut right through the heart of the work...
Next, the cover:
_______ Astral Weeks is NOT the tune I was mentioning last night...Like Mr. Hansard, I play it straight up in A. If you'd like little more on the late, great Mr. Bangs I could never, ever recommend Maria Bustillos' piece in the New Yorker from awhile back enough. You can find it....Here.
Brought to you by Bigger E. working barefoot in downtown Lotusland.
________ E. was captured for posterity by 'Everyday Music' who has a heckuva local multilevel musical stratification archive-a-palooza project going... .
Next, the Cover, by those Timmins kids that slow everything to it's most essential essence of essences...
_____ Last night, when the Geezers slipped this one in during rehearsal for our coming holiday shows, they accused me of trying to junkify it...They were right...But then again.... I try my best to do that to pretty much everything. About the parenthetical part of the header?....It's the flip (not wilson) side of an old Saturday night bit 'round here.
But, more seriously, Mr. Greenwald just asked Mr. Snowden, who apparently had been using Lavabit's secure Email service recently, what he thinks:
..."Ladar Levison and his team (at Lavabit) suspended the operations of their 10 year old business rather than violate the Constitutional rights of their roughly 400,000 users. The President, Congress, and the Courts have forgotten that the costs of bad policy are always borne by ordinary citizens, and it is our job to remind them that there are limits to what we will pay.
"America cannot succeed as a country where individuals like Mr. Levison have to relocate their businesses abroad to be successful. Employees and leaders at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, and the rest of our internet titans must ask themselves why they aren't fighting for our interests the same way small businesses are. The defense they have offered to this point is that they were compelled by laws they do not agree with, but one day of downtime for the coalition of their services could achieve what a hundred Lavabits could not"...
There is that, of course
But there is also the matter of how much business the big American companies will lose if run-of-the-mill users (i.e. people like you and me) decide that we don't trust our data in their clouds.
OK?
______ Thanks, once again, to our friendBob for the heads-up on the Greenwald piece in The Guardian. Oh, and just in case someone out there is not familiar with the concept of the Bananaphone...Here it is...As a Uke Cover.
First, the Original, done by the original...Originally....
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Next, an otherworldly cover that may have been sung by she who the original was written for... If ever there was/is real truth and beauty (and art) in a Youtube cover, this just might be it...
_____ As always, thanks to Los Angeles photo-maven Ellen Bloom for the use of the Uke peg-head image at the top of the post...I honestly, and somewhat unfathomably, can't get enough of Ellen's escapades with all her friends and her partner and, it seems, somehow, the entirety of Southern California... Did a little Bruce covering of my own recently if anybody's interested...here.
First, the original from a real original who, thanks to reader Don F., is now on our top Canadian songwriters list...
And now, the Cover, from a rag-tag bunch of Australians, I think who, together, are nothing but joy and light (especially at the end)...
______ The Songwriter barroom pixel floor brawl started here...Then, after we all settled down and had a few pops, the discussion continued here. Yes, both Rick Danko and Richard Manuel were still alive then...Alas, they are not any longer. Second place in the cover fight goes to this kid. And thanks, as always, to Los Angeles photo-maven Ellen Bloom, whose site I really, really dig btw (because it's kind of like a real life Annette and Frankie movie for grown-ups, I think), for the Uke-Peg Head at the top of the post.
Our good friend Ellen Bloom (Uke forevever!) has the great story of the sweater and more great photos, here.
_____ When we lived in the States I loved MLK day....There are not many holidays that are inspired by folks that actually did something important in the near enough past that you can actually remember those actual people and the important stuff they did...Might also have something to do with the fact that we lived in Berkeley/Oakland at the time where the important stuff Dr. King did is celebrated all the time, not just in mid-January... Ellen lets us use her Uke Peghead image for our 'Saturday Night Uke Cover Fighting' posts... And, finally, just in case you were wondering about this thing I have for sweaters with meaning...It's kinda/sorta explained...here.
Just a reminder before we get to the latest No-Holds-Barred Uke Death Battle...Regarding the Auditor General Firing Fiasco, I explain why any fix is up to us, here, and also try to convince you why you might want to consider signing a very reasonable petition....here.
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First, The Original, from the real originals, especially that Tina Weymouth bop-backed death-ray stare that still knocks me out, even now:
And now, The Cover, from those folks in the formal wear who have taken this stuff to a higher plane indeed:
______ Of course, there's always the fruvooshness of the Ghomeshi and Friends version, here... As always, the UkePegHead at the top of the post is from our friend and LA Photo maven Ellen Bloom, whose site really is great and fun (it shows up on the blog crawl now too!)...Dug her recent story on sad passing of the real-life inspiration for Groening's 'Howell Heuser' on The Simpsons...
