Some of the Great Covers of All Time
Just in case there's any confusion on the subject, when an artist performs a song written by someone else, it's not necessarily a cover: the song has to have already been made famous by another artist. Thus when the Monkees performed songs by Neil Diamond (e.g., "I'm a Believer"), those weren't necessarily covers because, if I'm not mistaken, ND hadn't already performed them; or at the very least, we think of the Monkees' version of "Believer," not Diamond's, as the definitive one. By contrast, UB40's 1983 version of Diamond's "Red Red Wine" would most certainly be considered a cover.
Anyway, on iTunes I saw another user's list of what he considered the greatest covers of all time, and was immediately struck by how much my own list would differ from his. For example, he didn't list what I consider to be, hands-down, the single greatest cover of all time: Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower," as performed by Jimi Hendrix. Another great fave of mine is a cover of Hendrix, the Cure's "Purple Haze" (1993). Also high on my list is another Dylan cover: "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" as performed by Them, the group that featured Van Morrison before he went solo.
Several of the early Beatles' covers of 1950s classics--e.g., Chuck Berry's "Roll over Beethoven"--deserve to be on the all-time best list, as does MC5's cover of Berry's "Back in the U.S.A." (Incidentally, it's easy to see that both "Back in the U.S.S.R." by the Beatles and "The American Ruse" by MC5 are conscious tributes to Berry without actually being covers.) On the other hand--and here my wife will disagree with me hugely, because it so happens that ELO and Linda Ronstadt are on her current playlist--I don't think that ELO's "Roll over Beethoven" or Linda Ronstadt's "Back in the U.S.A." really add anything interesting to the originals.
The same can be said of "All Along the Watchtower" as performed by Dave Mason, as well as Mahogany Rush's 1979 cover of Hendrix's cover of "Watchtower." Ditto for "Killer Queen," first performed by Queen in the 1970s and replicated almost note-for-note (but without the same passion) by Travis c. 2000. On the other hand, Ted Nugent's 1979 version of "I Want to Tell You," a George Harrison Beatles song, preserves the energy of the original, yet Nugent manages to make the song his own. And I personally think Siouxsie and the Banshee's 1984 version of "Dear Prudence" is almost as good as the original.
My current favorite cover is Tim Buckley performing "Sally Go Round the Roses," an adaptation of an old Irish song made famous in 1961 by the Jaynettes. The fact that the original was rather mysterious-sounding, and seemed to contain lesbian overtones highly unusual for that time, and that Buckley's version is imbued with his own tragic character--illuminated in the chorus about going downtown and drinking oneself blind--only adds to the intensity of the experience. Also notable, though not nearly as much so, is a version of "Sally" recorded by Grace Slick with the Great Society, the band she fronted before leaving to join Jefferson Airplane.
posted by Judson Knight @ 6:47 PM
3 Comments:
Hi again,
I'm writing a follow up to the June 9th post. The music post is more my speed, but sometimes people don't check on old posts and I kind of want this to be noticed. Once I typed the note, my husband and I proceeded to talk theory. My history knowledge isn't the best, but the topic was lead poisoning of Rome VS lead poisoning of the North Pole expedition. The question was why did the expeditions poisoning seem so much quicker and worse? Romans, Nero et al, survived (unfortunately) far longer with their being poisoned. We reasoned, that the difference was that the food stored in the lead sealed cans completely leached into the food within, therefore ensuring a higher lead count. Effects showed quickly. The aquaducts lined with lead were diluted by the presence (sp)of flowing water, hence a late onset of the symptoms because the lead had to build up to produce the undesired effects we saw in Rome. Comment????
Well, Michele, you gave me something to ponder, because I hadn't been familiar with the story of the lead poisoning at the North Pole. And when I read your post, the first thing that came to mind with the words "North Pole expedition" was the Peary-Henson expedition, first to reach the Pole in 1909. (I had to look that one up too, because I've always had a mental block about several of the notable polar explorers, tending to get Peary and Scott mixed up, etc.)
Anyway, I believe the expedition you're talking about was the one led (!) by Sir John Franklin in 1845-47. As I understand from my scanty research, it appears that the problem there was not just the fact that the cans containing their food were made of lead, but that the solder used in the cans had high levels of lead as well. My highly unprofessional guess would be that in the heating of the solder to close up the cans (I'm assuming that's how they would have had to do it), some of the lead was changed either physically or perhaps even chemically to the degree that it poisoned the food to a much larger extent than ordinary lead might have.
In the case of the Roman plumbing system, at first I started to say that the Romans probably didn't have soldering in their repertoire of metallurgical techniques, but I'm glad that I checked, because I was way off: soldering has been in use for about the past six thousand years. In any case, though, I would cite what I first thought when I read your question, before I did any research on the topic: that with the lead in the Romans' pipes, you're talking about a much lower level of poisoning than in the Arctic, inasmuch as the Romans' lead poisoning was spread over a far larger population for a much longer period of time.
Keep in mind, after all, that our grandparents and great-grandparents had a much greater exposure to lead than we do, yet they did not die by the millions from lead poisoning. Nevertheless, it was an ever-present danger of which they were blissfully unaware, and if for instance a child had eaten lead paint chips, this would have been a serious problem. (This is of more than academic interest to Deidre and me, since we live in a hundred-year-old house; however, any lead paint is buried under layer upon layer of subsequent non-lead-based coatings. Given the fact that full-scale lead abatement would cost as much as a modestly priced home, we decided to forego it.)
In that same vein, it's a good thing that lead is relatively soft and a poor conductor; otherwise, people might have tried to use lead cookware. And that, of course, would have been a real disaster--another case, as with the soldered cans, of lead, heat, and food in dangerously close proximity.
Thanks for a great question!
You are welcome. I promise not to "toast" your thanks with a pewter goblet. I'd be getting more out of my cup than the wine. *grin*
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