Judging By Covers: Love and Respect for the Art of Playing Other People’s Songs

Someone (was it you?) once said to me that a good cover of a song either does the song differently or does it better than the original version.  While that isn’t really the whole conversation about covers, it’s a good way to start.  I spent an hour walking with “Sail Away: The Songs of Randy Newman” this morning, and many of the cuts on this record pass this simple test in one or even both respects.  To the “different or better” question, I would also add some other ideas to consider as one contemplates cover versions of songs: first, how a given song stands up to cover-age is a test of the song itself— if people can have engaging musical conversations with the song, bend it their own way, make it say something new, cast it in a different light, then it’s probably a good song in and of itself, whoever is playing it.  Most Randy Newman songs also pass with flying colors here.  Cover versions are also a kind of crucible or benchmark test for musicians—a successful or unsuccessful cover version can say a lot of different things about a performer.  Finally, I’d say that musicians’ decisions about what songs they cover and how they cover them constitutes a legitimate musical artistic vehicle and art form—whether or not those musicians write songs of their own— potentially giving “cover bands” every bit as much musical legitimacy as bands playing “original” material.  Indeed, as a musician who spends much of my own musical time as a player / performer covering songs of other people, I am hereby moved to offer a defense, nee a celebration, of the role of cover songs in this world which, post-Beatles /  Bob Dylan, places a distinctly higher value on musicians who write their own songs than those who cover other people’s songs.  As you read along bearing my modest musings in mind, I humbly ask you to sweep the corners of your brain for your own favorite covers and be ready to share when we’re done, boys and girls…

Tim O’Brien’s cover of “Sail Away” opens the Newman tribute.  O’Brien trades the lush orchestral sonic palette of Newman’s original rendering of the song for country fiddles, strummed guitar, pedal steel / slide, and mandolins— sonic elements more closely associate with the South than the orchestral palette or even the solo piano Newman has used to offer the song up when performing by himself.  The song— voicing in typically razor-sharp ironic Newman fashion the huckster perspective of a slave trader kidnapping Africans into slavery in the South—is, in many ways, brought home or made more authentic by these Southern sonic elements in O’Brien’s version, directly evoking the pastoral southern landscape the trader is trying to make sound appealing (the genius of Newman’s lyric is that it begs the question “does he believe his own line or is he trying to make it sound appealing to himself or to his victims to salve his conscience?”).  O’Brien’s cover, at first blush, doesn’t sound all that different than the original—the melody, tempo, and arrangement are all intact— but  upon further consideration of the sonic palette O’Brien uses, it might well be argued that it’s both different and better.  In any case, O’Brien’s cover certainly underscores the satirical power and beauty of Newman’s songcraft—a celebration of the song and songwriter, as well as the performer, and the art of both songwriting and covering all in one.  Nicely done, Tim, nicely done, indeed.

I really dislike Joan Baez records.  I find the singing generally shrieky and yet also somehow flat and lacking immediacy, and find the songs generally preachy and precious.  One of my favorite covers of all time, however, is of Judas Priest covering Baez’s “Diamonds and Rust,” and it’s great for many reasons, not the least of which is that it sifts the song from the muck of it’s original delivery.  Baez’s lyric portrays an ex-lover addressing her ex about why or how one shouldn’t stay lost in the past.  In her original version, the tone is pedantic, preachy, and lecturish, and also lacks a hook or chorus that digs into your flesh and can’t be shaken.  Baez’s singing (as ever) is shrill and lacks any real ferocity.  In the hands of the Priest, however, the song suddenly becomes something much more savage and appealing: Rob Halford’s narrator is snide and angry, the arrangement pulls a refrain from the lyric that is not in Baez’s original rendering—“we both know what memories can bring, they bring diamonds and rust”—that sticks in your head and gut, and the wailing guitar lines and thunderous chords running around and underneath the melody suddenly make the song a much more engaging and desperate piece of expression.  Different and better, hell yes and for sure, and it also does a great job of showing the song at its best, maybe even improving it.

Sometimes straight ahead cover versions illuminate performers in revealing ways.  The Black Crowes teamed up with Jimmy Page for a Zeppelin fest some years back.  “Live at the Greek” documents the adventure.  The Crowes being the unapologetic 70s hard rock throwbacks that they are, certainly no one was surprised that they found the opportunity to cover the Zeppelin songbook with Page himself irresistible, and the renderings of the classic Zeppelin catalog are all good, clean, straight ahead, live fun—certainly not different, and not really better, in all frankness, but a fun set to stroll through, just ‘cuz you know the Crowes were living out a dream.  The outing does provide a chance to compare the players involved head-to-head, and the results are revealing both from the Zeppelin side and the Crowes side: the Crowes’ Rich Robinson goes toe-to-toe, guitar-to-guitar with his Master and comes out ahead, laying down song-foundational guitar riffs and firing off bone rattling solos with much more facility and ferocity than the aging Page, who stumbles kinda lamely through his own songs.  Chris Robinson, however, doesn’t fare so well: I love ya’ Chris, I really do, but we can all hear, after listening to this, that you really are no Robert Plant.  The singing is forced and out of tune, and Robinson doesn’t have the technical or emotional range of his forebear.  Sorry dude.  The covers outed ya’ here.

Near the end of the Newman tribute, Marc Broussard offers up a reading of “You Can Leave Your Hat On” which is as delicious as it is straightforward.  Newman’s lyric narrates a sexual encounter which has been interpreted by performers and critics in various ways— from simple passion (Joe Cocker’s rendition) to sexual disorder or deviance (as articulated in various analyses offered up by critics and listeners of varying stripes).  Newman’s own rendering of the song is curiously neutral— certainly lustful, but yet not particularly passionate or malevolently lascivious.  Broussard’s version on the tribute album is really a deliciously straightforward r and b paean to hormonal infatuation.  From the funky bass and drum driving the tune, to the smoky lead and soulful backing vocals setting the scene, to the sleazy horns, the listener is in the room and feels what’s going on here— a narrator who is VERY pleased to be spending the evening with someone he is VERY fond of.  The song stands up to this and all of the varying interpretations and allows listeners and performers to bring their own lenses to what’s, uh, laid out.

Finally, I have played in “cover bands” for many years.  Yeah, I’ve written or co-written a few songs which aren’t half bad, but I ain’t no Bob Dylan and have no delusions about this fact.  However, I sure as hell know a great song when I hear one, and take pride in my ability (and in my bands’ abilities) to have a musical conversation with a great song—to recast it using different tempos, harmonic structures, instrumentations, and stylistic approaches, and also to respect its primary melodic, harmonic, and lyrical ideas.  Kurt Vonnegut once said that he wouldn’t mind being placed in the “Science Fiction” drawer if so many people didn’t mistake that drawer for a urinal, and I feel the same way about playing in “cover bands.”  My own bands have covered everything from the Stones’ “Sweet Virginia” to Monty Python’s “Universe Song” to Bobby Timmons’s “Dat Dere” to George Jones’s “The Race Is On” to the gospel standard “Wayfaring Stranger” to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and way the hell beyond. I have a particular version of “Amazing Grace,” recast in a minor key and narrated by an unconverted unbeliever that I’m mighty damn proud of, and I’ll wager that none of the renditions we have offered of any of these songs sound like any other renditions you’ve heard and also will wager that most of them will knock your bloody socks off.  I think the songbook we’ve amassed—I can and will play any of these tunes for you on command—is a pretty wonderful thing to listen to, defines a really clear musical aesthetic, and says a lot about me and my compadres as musicians.  I also bet almost any other musician you’d wanna hear could lay out dozens of covers which would render you, dear listener, speechless and which would also lend you powerful insight into that musician’s musical heritage and passions and would probably also inspire you to check out some things you’ve never listened to.

Covers are an unheralded but powerful and joyous rock and roll tradition.  They provide glorious conversations with familiar and great songs, illuminate songs and performers in important, meaningful and revealing ways, and constitute an art form in and of themselves.  Go hear the cover band opening for the big national act at the bar down the street this weekend, and holler at that Big Act for them to do a cover or two while you’re at it.  Here are a few more of my own favorite covers:

·       Devo’s version of “Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones (on “Are We Not Men?”)
·       Uncle Tupelo’s version of “No Depression” by A.P., Hardy (on “No Depression”—heck,
      this one touched off the whole “alt-country” movement)
·       Linda Ronstadt’s version of Lowell George’s “Willin’” (on “Heart Like a Wheel”)
·       Nirvana’s version of Leadbelly’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” (on “Unplugged”)
·       Jane’s Addiction’s version of “Rock and Roll” by Lou Reed (on “Jane’s Addiction,”
      their first record which, interestingly, is a live one)
·       Two classical cellists version of “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC (I swear to god, this link
      just came through as I was writing this blog entry and it is CRAZY:
      http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/83896505/ )
What are some of yours?

Dan Zanes and Raising Kids with the Right Musical Ethos

Took a walk this evening with Dan Zanes’ Parades and Panoramas.  My children were not with me.  Often placed in the kids sections of music stores both online and on the street, Dan Zanes does not belong there.  His records, Parades and Panoramas among them, while accessible to and appropriate for kids, are NOT children’s albums.  They are folk music for people of ALL ages, and folk music in the truest, purest sense of the word, drawing on musical, cultural, and historical strains from all over the world—from Africa to South America to the USA and beyond.  Dan Zanes is a hero and an inspiration— pure love and guts— to anyone who loves rock and roll and folk music.

Zanes first appeared on the musical radar screen as the leader of the Del Fuegos, a real plain old guitar, bass, and drums rock and roll band slashing and hammering their way through the 80s, when it was almost impossible to be a real plain old guitar, bass, and drums rock and roll band.  Their records are savage, raw, and desperate (“Nervous and Shaky” will set your teeth a-rattling in the first 8 bars), but  alas, as we know, not many folks bought records like this in the 80s and so the band, despite critical acclaim (and even some help from the likes of the Band’s Rick Danko!), fizzled and, uh, disbanded.  Zanes then moved to New York, recorded “Cool Down Time” in 1994—a wonderful but unnoticed rock and roll gem—and started a family. 

 

Now a father, he put together some folk bent sessions with friends and relations around town, which eventually gelled into a truly magical series of albums: Rocket Ship Beach, Family Dance, Night Time, House Party, etc.  These were marketed as “kids music,” and while this marketing strategy helped the records sell and helped Zanes resume life as a working musician, it didn’t really accurately describe what was afoot here.  Zanes was really making folk music, of which the late Pete Seeger or Woody Guthrie would be very proud, and which was accessible and engaging not just to kids but to anyone and everyone.  The records combined American classics like “Wonderful World” and “The Sidewalks of New York” with international folk songs such as “Siyahamba” and “Jamaica Farewell” and gorgeous, hooky, and / or rocking originals such as “Night Owls,” and “House Party.”  This was really folk music— friendly, fun, upbeat, funny, danceable, singalongable— for everyone, including kids. 

 

Don’t get me wrong: good records directed specifically at kids should and do exist (please go buy a Justin Roberts record or the Bloodshot Records “Bottle Let Me Down” compilation classic immediately), but the term “Kids Music” mostly conjures up the kind of saccharin sweet sanitary drek so often pushed off on kids (Raffi, et. al.), which sane adults raised on rock and roll can't bear to listen to without upchucking. Sensing that he was somehow bridging this gap with his magical brand of all-ages accessible folk music, Zanes recorded a pair of albums not really too different in feel from the "kids" albums but marketed as "traditional" music-- an album of sailors' ballads and riverboat chanteys called Sea Songs, followed by Parades and Panoramas, a collection of songs pulled from Carl Sandburg’s iconic American Songbag.  Sandburg's Songbag is a collection of about 250 American Folk Songs transcribed by Sandburg for piano sketching the first 150 years of our country’s history in song, published in 1927.  This record is really Zanes’s finest achievement in my opinion. 

 

Someone (his wife, I believe) had given Zanes a battered copy of the Songbag as a present, and he (not reading music) had taken the book to the music teacher at his daughter’s school.  The music teacher recorded every one of the 250 songs into a cassette recorder for Zanes, who then culled 25 of his favorites and arranged them for his folk band to be put on Parades and Panoramas.  This is REAL music, about real lives and real people, performed by real musicians with real musical lives which EVERYONE in your house-- ages 0 to 100-- will dig deeply. The songs on Parades and Panoramas— American roots classics, all of them— are tuneful, the recording elegant and gorgeous, the playing and singing sublime, and the arrangements clever and engaging at all turns.  From the opening, longing plea of “Wanderin’” through the rocking trains rolling through “Railroad Bill” and "The Railroad Cars are a-Comin,'" on to the desperation of “Willie the Weeper,” past the Mexican air “Lo Que Digo,” and along the travels of “Across the Western Ocean” and “The Colorado Trail,” the album touches every folk music tradition in our country’s history, traces important parts of our history in ways poignant and personal, and seems to express every emotion in our collective psyche at some point or another.

 

Covering this breadth of material in ways this engaging to all listeners, it's simply not right to call it a kids album.  It's worth noting that one online reviewer felt that it wasn't a kids album because it includes songs with bawdy or darker lyrical themes, but I disagree.  While I don't think it's JUST for kids-- again it's a folk album for everyone-- I DO think its appropriate for kids.  Kids of all ages eat it up and don't get spooked or embarrassed by the songs on edgier topics because the songs about the noted potentially dodgy topics are presented with love, humor, honesty, naiveté, and innocence (my wife and I have kindergarten and 3^rd grade students who go crazy for the thing and it has played endlessly in my home and car with and without kids of varying sizes around for the last 10 years). Indeed, the songs, along with Zanes's and excerpts from Sandburg's notes about them, provide a real education about American history and life over the past 150 years that is likely to be much more insightful, informative, interesting, and exciting than what is presented to kids in school. But, again, it's not a kids album because grups will wanna put it on even when their kids are not around-- 10 year later, I still spin the thing endlessly meself, and my own rock and roll band has pulled several tunes off the record and presents them in settings and arrangements that have NOTHING to do with kids. 

 

Perhaps the only reason to classify this, and all of Zanes’s records, as “kids music” is that they are instructive to kids about what, at best, music and art in general can and should be: beautiful and edgy, old and new, funny and serious, and accessible to everyone, all at once.  This is an ethos and aesthetic worth passing on.

 

And so: the vision and courage Zanes shows in presenting such a collection, rough edges, grup themes, and all in the context of music for FAMILIES -- kids AND their parents-- is truly heroic. This is a record for the ages. Buy it for your kids, buy it for yourself, buy it for your parents and grandparents, buy it for the whole darn family, and for goodness sake, go see the Dan the Man and his Band perform if they get within a hundred miles of wherever you are.  This is a real American treat.

On the Importance of Unpluggeds

I believe that great Rock and Roll (and great music in general) incorporates:
-skill as well as passion
-subtlety as well as bombast (this could also be phrased as understatement as well
 as hyperbole)
-tradition as well as innovation, and
-great songs, period. 
I spent an hour walking with Nirvana Unplugged this afternoon, and as the final, chilling chords of Cobain and Co.’s cover of Leadbelly’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” faded in my ears, I got to thinking about what an incredibly dramatic and wonderful reshaping of the rock and roll landscape in reference to these values Unplugged records represented when Nirvana unleashed this one on the world.

When Bob Dylan outraged his kum-ba-ya chanting minions by “plugging in” and going electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, he built a bridge between folk music and rock and roll—a fusing of subtlety and bombast, a clear and wonderful combination of tradition and innovation, and a prodigious demonstration of both skills and passion from one of the two most accomplished songwriters in history (I count Lennon-McCartney as one).  As a result of this bridge, rock and roll of the late 1960s and early 1970s—from the Band to Joe Cocker to Joni Mitchell to Van Morrison to the Rolling Stones to even Lynyrd Skynyrd—revered, respected, and clearly incorporated elements of acoustic music with folk and traditional blues lineage and sensibilities.  By the 1980s, however, bands like (ugh, gag, RETCH!) Soft Cell and the Human League, which barely had anyone who could play any instrument, electric or acoustic, were selling millions and filling arenas.  Electronica—drum machines, synthesizers, and computer treated voices-- dominated the airwaves.  No tradition, no subtlety, no skill (and, for that matter, no passion either).

In 1989, however, MTV—like it or not, the Tastemaker of the day—started airing “Unplugged” segments, featuring  established stars performing stripped down arrangements of well-known material in front of small, live audiences on a set which looked and felt like an old-fashioned folkie song circle.  Early MTV Unplugged guests ranged from Jethro Tull to Bon Jovi to Paul McCartney, and were well received, though more in the spirit of  quaint diversions than as serious musical offerings.  That all changed n 1992, however, when Eric Clapton rescued his career from a bland fadeout and stormed back into relevancy armed with only a Martin acoustic guitar and his voice. Clapton’s Unplugged set, in retrospect, is a flawed piece of work: stuck in mid-tempo from start to finish and often lapsing into smooth adult contemporary blah well-suited to shopping malls or elevators. 

 

However it does showcase a few kinds of things which had not been popular for many years in powerful ways.  First of all, the unplugged setting lets you hear the man sing.  While I have always felt that Clapton is an over-rated guitar player—come on now, let’s be frank: lots of rock and roll guys play the blues in ways more interesting and arresting than he does—I have also always felt that he is an under-rated singer, and the Unplugged set makes my point nicely.  His voice is rich and warm yet also steeped in grit and gravel, and his singing is clear, precise, and musical.  Listen to him sing “Nobody Knows you When You’re Down and Out,” “Before You Accuse Me,” or “Malted Milk,” and if you don’t get the shivers, well geez, ya’ must be deaf, dead, or soulless.  Without the bombast of his own screaming Stratocaster and a full blown, electrified  rock and roll band blasting away, this voice suddenly comes to the fore, and it is a wonder to behold.  Second of all, yeah—he’s a damn fine (although over rated) guitar player.  His guitar work had become predictable, however—“Clapton plays the blues on his Strat” again and again and again, from tour to album and back ‘round again.  Really, he hadn’t played anything that really sounded new or different, arguably, since leaving Derek and the Fuckin’ Dominos.  The Unplugged record, however, has that Old Dog turning some new tricks, and the stripped down setting lets you really hear it.  The fingerpicking on “Nobody Knows You,” the slide work on “Rollin’ and Tumblin’”—that’s yummy stuff and way more interesting than endless noodling on electric versions of “Cocaine” or "After Midnight” that he’d been playing ad nauseum for years, decades even.  Skill and subtlety as well as passion and bombast right there for ya’.  And the song selection and reworking of old material—covers of Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, et al as well as dramatic recastings of his own original works like “Layla” and songs like “Nobody Knows You” that he has covered already-- provide a delicious combination of tradition and innovation as well as a buffet of some of the finest songs ever written.  The Unplugged format was a new kind of conversation that spoke directly to these values and the fact that the record sold roughly a gazillion copies reflected the fact that the rock and roll audience at large was ready for something Big to happen along these lines.

And then: Nirvana.  Well Holy Crap and Flaming Mother of God with her Hair on Fire.  As noted in this posting and elsewhere, by the early 90s, although rock and roll seemed to be on its deathbed, it still had a heartbeat (those first 2 Jane’s Addiction records are as much of a musical defibrillator as you’ll ever hear, methinks, even if they didn’t sell gazillions).  Nirvana’s Nevermind—  loud,  electric, passionate, and desperate-- roused the sleeping giant.  In addition to the raw bombast audible in the guitar, vocals, and drums, the songs themselves-- “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “Come As You Are,” “Polly,” “Breed”— were fuckin’ unbelievable: melodic, irresistible, funny, insightful, and pressing on issues on the minds of young people everywhere.  The album and band took off like ballistic missiles.  To listen to Nevermind, however, with its screaming vocals, thunderous drumming, and wall crumbling guitars, one would not expect that the natural next thing to do would be an acoustic set.  WRONG!  

Nirvana Unplugged, following close on the heels of Nevermind, is one of the greatest albums of all time, and, as a result of the record, the values of
-skill as well as passion
-subtlety as well as bombast
-tradition as well as innovation, and
-great songs, period
were resoundingly re-established.  First: Cobain’s voice was just one part of the gigantic sonic steamroller that rolled over you as you listened to Nevermind.  In an acoustic setting, however, his voice, like Clapton’s, emerges as a specific instrument of staggering power and skill.  From the plaintive “About a Girl,” to the desperately confessional “Pennyroyal Tea,” to the threateningly eerie “Where Did You Sleep Last Night,” Kurt Cobain’s singing is both skilled and  passionate,  subtle as well as bombastic.  Again, if his voice on “Lake of Fire” doesn’t give you the Willies, then geez, ya’ must be deaf, dead, or soulless.  It’s all in tune, it’s understated at least or more often than it’s overstated, and it’s all incredibly musical. The set recasts many favorites from Nevermind (and the at the time unfinished In Utero) in remarkable ways – “Come As You Are,” "On a Plain," “Pennyroyal Tea”— making clear that the songs are outstanding compositions, not just successful because of their viscerality or topical timeliness but capable of holding water, and lots of it, in many different settings.  And the band offers breathtaking and inventive renditions not only of their own songs but of contemporaries (like “Lake of Fire” by the Meat Puppets), predecessors (like “The Man Who Sold the World” by David Bowie), and musical ancestors (like “Where Did You Sleep…” by Leadbelly)—tradition and innovation all rolled into one.

Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Unplugged-style albums have followed.   Indeed, if I were on the proverbial desert island,  I could probably be happy with any of a number of these offerings:  Steve Earle’s Train A-Comin’, Uncle Tupelo’s April 16-20, 1992, Chris Whitley’s Dirt Floor, or even The Rolling Stones Stripped.  Yes, without any doubt, the format has, by now, become formulaic and obligatory, and so is no longer really innovative or, in some cases, even interesting or entertaining.  However I feel that it remains a useful exercise and the fact that it has become de rigeur and a rite of passage is good, healthy: if what you’re doing doesn’t sound good in an acoustic setting, then maybe it’s just smoke and mirrors, hot air.  If you’re gonna be someone now, you better be able to do what you do with only the basic tools: voices, acoustic guitars, and not much else.   You’ve gotta show that you have:
-skill as well as passion
-subtlety as well as bombast
-tradition as well as innovation, and
-great songs, period.
If you don’t, then you’re not really a Big Deal.  Period.  If you do, then maybe you’ve really got something.  Indeed, there are MANY musicians—Bruce Springsteen, Jeff Tweedy, heck, even the Rolling Stones-- who I would rather see in this kind of setting than with their whole damn band.  Brought to you by MTV, Eric Clapton, and Nirvana (quite a triumvirate!), Unplugged sets have made the rock and roll landscape a richer place.