Love me dead, A Cappella, Done well. Need I say more?
music covers
I love covers of stuff. I love acoustic versions of stuff. Put simply, I love hearing alternate versions of songs. The other day, My friend reminded me of an awesome acoustic cover of Hey Ya (originally by Outkast) done by some guy named Mat Weedle, who apparently normally performs with the band Obadiah Parker. I had heard it a couple of times on The bi-weekly radio KoL broadcasts by the devs of Kingdom of Loathing, but I had never actually taken the time to seek it out until now.
You know how sometimes you can look for one single small thing on Wikipedia, and it turns into an hour-long dive into a pool of pure fantastic information?
That pretty much just happened to me, only in about 10 minutes. I’ve found 4 different blogs to check out, a piano artist on Youtube who knows his shit, and a couple of different covers of great soungs already.
(dammit, just looking at this comic, I had to go check to make sure that fatal laughter actually exists. It does.
the Outkast cover is, in and of itself, utterly fantastic. Adding to that, I noticed on the ‘related videos’ tab, that someone had added piano to it. In my opinion, it makes the song even better. Pianomusings has simply played the piano over the recording, but it really serves to make the song even more exciting.
Looking at a bit more of Pianomusings’ stuff, he’s got a lot of potentially good stuff that I didn’t listen to, but I did happen to click on the link for his medley of superman, how to save a life, and She will be loved. It is a wonderful, wonderful thing: everything ties together perfectly, and the transitions are seamless.
Looking for an mp3 of the Hey Ya cover, I came across a blog for ametuer covers, that I have now sadly lost somewhere in my list of closed tabs. The blog that it linked to, however, provided me with even more fodder for this post: Cover Me.
I’ve gotten so many covers to listen to already, that I really don’t want to take the time to list all of them, but here are a few that stood out:
Van Canto is a german band. I don’t know what they normally do, but in this case, they did a cover of the metallica song ‘battery’. It’s an acoustic cover of a metal song. This alone got me to watch part of the video. I didn’t like the song, but seeing a proffesionally shot music video for a cover song was intriguing enough for me to link it here.
I never liked Limp Bizkit, but that was only by association. For whatever reason, I associate him with crappy music. He just blew my mind with an amazing cover of ‘behind blue eyes’. It gets kind of weird in the middle, but other than that, it’s an utterly fantastic cover, from an unexpected source.
Lowry is responsible for this cover of Africa. frankly, I want to hate it, but part of me just won’t stop listening. It’s an interesting twist, if nothing else. incidentally, I just realized that the line is ‘rises like Olympus above the serengeti,’ which is awesome. never realized that.
Boyce Avenue, which I did not just discover, deserves a mention here. They have made countless awesome covers of acoustic songs, including a bearable version of Umbrella, an pretty OK version of How to Save a Life, and a cover of Mr. Brightside that I consider to be better than the original (more singing, less talking, you see.)
Speaking of Mr. Brightside, in searching for that link, I came across this cover of it, which would be unremarkable, if not for the interesting harmonies.
Finally, I can’t talk about covers without mentioning what may be my favorite cover of all time: Rumal Noorkuu’s cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit. Ring ding g-dang g-dang indeed. (The page also has a link to a very weird and interesting version of ‘across the universe, if that’s your thing’) I once again have the fine fellows at Assymetric.net to thank for this. It used to be one of the regulars on the thursday radio show. Something else that I just discovered while looking for a link: Tori Amos’ cover is cool and different and cool too.
I’ll get back to you after I’ve dug through some more of these covers.
On Music
I went and bought a bunch of music on Amazon tonight, in order to remove a number of links to lyrics on my firefox toolbar. (The lyrics were acting as a reminder to buy the music, of course.) I’m finding lately that my taste in music is expanding itself with or without my prior written permission. Where am I going with this? I am going to list the songs I bought. That’s where I’m going.
(artist name first, song name second, just to be clear…)
The Title of each song is a link to the music video, or closest I could get to one, on Youtube. I haven’t watched any of these, so I have no idea if the’ll make your brain melt or anything.
Rusted Root- Send me on my Way
I heard this on the Jick Show recently, and I think I’ve heard it before that. It’s one of those songs that makes me happy, and It’s what I would describe politely as a ‘Nirvana-esque’ song. That is, I have enormous difficulty figuring out the lyrics just by listening to it.
Talking Heads- Once in a Lifetime
By all rights, I should hate this song. It is composed almost entirely of somebody talking, which I generally hate. The refrain totally balances it out. I foresee this being a fun ‘a bunch of people in a car singing along’ song. heard this on the Jick show also. as a side note, there is a video up on Youtube of Kermit the Frog performing this. If you haven’t already, file this under awesome.
Sometimes, late at night as I drive home, when I don’t have the energy to sing along, I like to listen to songs like this- slower paced and more emotional. (Not that I wish to imply that most songs aren’t emotional. on the contrary, I find that music is about the best way to express my emotions is through music.) I found this one a couple months ago when when I went to the Large Collection of Assorted Accoustic Music Store (LCAAMS?), but I only just got the original version. Or tried to, anyway. That’s a seperate story.
This is a fun song. I can’t pinpoint the first time I heard it, but I’m positive I heard the parody of it first. Weird Al does a fantastic spoof on ‘One Week’ on his album ‘Running with Scissors’. It was played somewhat recently on the Jick Show, (sensing a pattern yet?) And I heard the parody for the first time in quite a while when I was tracking down a copy of ‘The Saga Begins’ a coupla’ weeks ago. The fast-talking, clever lyrics are awesome.
I think that this was a song that was either on a CD in my parent’s car, or just on the radio constantly when I was younger. I liked it then, I like it now. For some reason, I had thought that it was a song about someone coming home after being away for a long time, and being much, much wiser than when they first left. I found out tonight that it’s all about someone burning down her house. huh. Sunny Came Home plays in my store somewhat frequently, which is the only reason I still remember its existence.
Another one from the Jick Show, even though I usually skip the opening song, I happened to hear the first couple of notes, and liked them. This was fortunate, because, as it turns out, the entire song is pretty good.
Looking up, we have a variety of tastes and styles, which makes me happy. I never really branched out much until I got my driver’s license and car, (and by extension, the CD player in the car,) halfway through my junior year of High School, and even then, I was only picking up the scraps from my friends as it were. I don’t listen to the radio, so I have to work to find new songs.
And since I’ve mentioned it a 11 or so times, the Jick Show is a weekly radio show done by the developers of the fantastic, beautiful, hilarious, webgame Kingdom of Loathing. they are some of the funniest people I have ever listened to without being able to see.
