The first of two guest blogs comes all the way from Adelaide, South Australia. My old flatmate Mike Lynch has selected six unusual covers to share with us all. Enjoy!
First Word
I’d like to open by thanking Alan for inviting me to contribute to WeekInSound by picking some tunes. I am truly honoured and, following my contribution, I will be insufferably full of myself, I promise.
It used to be that there were songwriters who wrote songs and artists who performed them. Then along came the Beatles and singer/songwriters and we now expect a singer or group to perform mostly their own compositions. That means we now get pleasantly surprised, or sometimes even angry or disappointed, when someone other than the original artist covers a song. That’s this week’s theme – a few quirky covers. Everybody loves a quirky cover – even a personally treasured track can be reborn, stripped back or slowed down for novel effect.
Shake It Off – Ryan Adams (2015)
Original: Taylor Swift (2014)
Alan usually finds events in the week to link to his tracks, so this is as close as I can get to that. With Taylor Swift receiving her fourth Grammy award the other week and the Australian leg of her tour in full swing as I write this, I’ve picked a cover of her song Shake it Off by Ryan Adams. I thought there was a bit of a Twitter thing between the two artists but when I went looking for it, I found out that Ryan Adams had been cancelled in the #MeToo melee. So now that I’ve started, I’ll finish this list off with Gary Glitter, Rolf Harris and Michael Jackson. Only kidding…
My brother Mark played me this track to see if I could guess what it was – there was no novelty or surprise for me because I didn’t know the original! Before you ask, yes, I have been living under a rock – it’s quite cosy under here. It might also be because as soon as I hear the voice/production sound that I associate with pop music for teenage girls, I haughtily change the channel. I know… I know… I am trying to shuffle off my musical snobbery and become a better person, but it’s a work in progress. So, Mark and Ryan Adams introduced me to the phenomenon that is Ms Swift, the Kansas City Chiefs’ new cheerleader.
Where Is My Mind – Trampled By Turtles (2011)
Original: The Pixies (1988)
I will be forever indebted to Alan and Lynn for introducing me to The Pixies back in 1989 when they had a spare ticket and invited me to the Doolittle tour gig in the Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh. It was love at first encounter. Moving forward a couple of decades, and Placebo were playing in Melbourne and sharing their delight at the reformation of the Pixies and their upcoming tour – so they played a version of Where Is My Mind in their encore. Searching for that track on Spotify, I came across a version by my current favourite band name (move over Half Man, Half Biscuit and Camper Van Beethoven) Trampled by Turtles. This version is country or bluegrass maybe – my musical tastes seem to be moving further West in my old age and I expect I will soon be found in a rocking chair on my verandah, chewing tobacco and spitting at varmints. According to Spotify’s ‘annual wrap’ analytics of my listening last year, I should live in Missoula in Montana because I listen to Trampled by Turtles and the Milk Carton Kids. What happened to the previous year’s genre-hopping descriptor of me being an ‘Astronaut Adventurer’, Mr Algorithm? Huh? Now I’m simply a ‘Mountain Vampire’?!?
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face – Johnny Cash (2002)
Original: Roberta Flack (1972)
Staying out West, the next track is by Johnny Cash from his album American IV: The Man Comes Around. Independent radio station 3RRR in Melbourne introduced us to a lot of different music and when my partner Melanie heard this track, she mentioned that she might quite like to have it. Santa was duly informed, Chancer and Bludger delivered, and the CD turned up in her fluffy red stocking that Christmas, along with the obligatory bag of chocolate money and Terry’s chocolate orange. The album is a treasure trove of the stripped back, surprise renditions and contains the monster track that is Hurt (originally by Nine Inch Nails) with all its raw honesty. But I’ve gone with the track that kicked off the love affair, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face which was a hit for Roberta Flack thirty years earlier in 1972. These recordings with producer Rick Rubin rejuvenated Cash’s career and brought him to a new audience. You’ve heard the album, now see the film, the documentary, the stage musical and buy the frog that croaks A Boy Called Sue.
Landslide – The Smashing Pumpkins (1994)
Original: Fleetwood Mac (1975)
Next on the list is another Melanie request, Fleetwood Mac’s song Landslide covered by The Smashing Pumpkins on the b-side of their 1994 single Disarm, with the ‘Heart’ cover. Again, I was looking for a different version on Spotify – by the (formerly Dixie) Chicks – and found this one. It’s a great Stevie Nicks song and according to Wikipedia she wrote it when she was feeling down, sitting in somebody’s house in Aspen, looking at the snow-covered mountains. We all got that? Sitting in Aspen in the snow-covered mountains? I feel a ‘poor little rock star’ vote of ‘Nae Sympathy!’ coming on. I think Billy Corgan’s vocals really suit the song but I’m a fan of the band’s music anyway. I have a theory that the Smashing Pumpkins have two styles of song – the heavy rock ‘Smashing’ style and the lighter, more lyrical ‘Pumpkin’ style. This definitely fits the latter. I remember hearing a story when Sharon Osbourne (Ozzy’s wife) gave up managing the Smashing Pumpkins. She said she had quit managing them for “health reasons” – Billy Corgan was making her sick.
The Pretender – Lucinda Williams (2014)
Original: Jackson Browne (1977)
It’s not all accidental searches on Spotify. We also now have the occasional tribute albums where a bunch of different artists record versions of one particular artist’s songs. One such collection I first heard on 3 RRR was Looking Into You – A Tribute to Jackson Browne. Now I remember as a youngster seeing some live footage of Jackson Browne on The Old Grey Whistle Test and thinking ‘ho-hum’. At the time I found his music unremarkable and a bit ‘why bother?’. Maybe it’s about getting old and square – I now hear my music collection playing as I walk around my local supermarket. Or maybe it’s about my current musical drift westwards – like a hot air balloon floating towards the US West coast – without the balloon. (There are jokes in there about being a total basket or getting shot down as a Chinese spy but they’re for another day.) However, I have come to really appreciate some of Browne’s songwriting in recent years. The title track to his 1975 album The Pretender has some great lines: “I’m gonna find myself a girl/Who can show me what laughter means/And we’ll fill in the missing colours/In each other’s paint-by-number dreams”. Here it is performed by Lucinda Williams – yes, the grand dame of alt. country herself. (What’s with the country hour, eh?) Her languid and gravelly vocals suit the air of lost aspirations and there’s some great guitar in there too.
Lose Yourself – Kasey Chambers (2022)
Original: Eminem (2014)
Track 6, the last! I’m down to one left. I had thought of putting in a really bad version as a bit of fun, compare and contrast. . . . and I had up my sleeve Goodbye Yellow Brick Road sung by Missy Higgins that I found on a Like a Version compilation CD produced by Australian youth radio station Triple J. (Give it a play it if you want a laugh or to torture a neighbour’s dog.) But then I realised that it would go in the WIS Master Playlist and it would sit there like a pile of steaming dog turd in the middle of a traditional hand-woven wool and silk Qashqai Persian rug. I could not sully the playlist. So, I’ve decided to go for the degree of difference and to stay out West, firmly in the bluegrass with Kasey Chambers’ version of Lose Yourself by Eminem. I can’t remember how I first found this but it has the novelty/surprise value in spades and big guitar licks. It’s a slow build, so give it time. And, before I finish, I’d like to give a final thanks to Alan for trusting me with his baby.
Last Word
It was a pleasure, Michael, especially since you have provided the blog with a great selection of quirky cover versions, most of which I was hearing for the first time. I had to laugh at Trampled By Turtles usurping Half Man Half Biscuit and Camper Van Beethoven, as both of these bands feature on one of your forty year old mixtapes which still sit on my shelf behind me now. I failed to mention CVB’s cover version of the Quo’s Pictures of Matchstick Men in a recent post, so putting that right now, with a link as well.
The thankfully unsullied Master Playlist has been updated to remain the pristine rug of eclecticism it has always been at the link below. (I’m not completely sure eclecticism is a word, is it?)
AR
Week In Sound 
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