"Take a Sad Song and Make it Better"

My wife can't stand cover versions of other people's songs.  She bonds with the original and accepts no substitutes.  I'm like that about some things, but not music.  True, there are plenty of insipid cuts from tribute albums cluttering up CD racks and iPods around the world, and one person's cleverly subversive reinterpretation is another one's rubbish.  I like Dread Zeppelin, but I can understand why others wouldn't.  I like Monty Python, too.  Arrested development, not doubt.

Sometimes, though, an artist's song is truly elevated when some other inspired performer transforms it.  Think what Pete Seeger's "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?" gained when embraced and richly harmonized by Peter Paul and Mary - let alone as sung in German by Marlene Dietrich as "Sag Mir Wo Die Blumen Sind?"   Pete gets the royalties, but they made it their own.  And Joni Mitchell's Woodstock clearly hit the big time when CSN&Y laid it down.

You must have good material - although Richard Thompson offers the exception that proves the rule with his impish acoustic version of Britney Spears' Oops I Did It Again.  Thompson's music has been masterfully performed by others - sometimes with the master himself as a sideman on their albums, and he's a big fan of cover music himself.  One of my all-time favorite songs like this is Dave Burland's superb version of The Angels Took My Racehorse Away, a song that premiered on Thompson's debut solo album Henry The Human Fly in 1972, but it takes wings beneath Burland's elegiac delivery and inspired arrangement.

"Well the angels came to see me today
Said "We’ve taken your racehorse away"
And I believe it was that bookmaker from crail
I believe that he put one in her pail
All the finest in the field
Only measured to her shoulders, they only ever see her heels
And I believe (I believe) every sporting man will cry
I believe (I believe) to see his income pass him by

She won the Lanark Silver Bell and she stole every heart away
She stood her stand at sixteen hands and I’d ride her easy
But they’ve taken her away, they’ve taken my racehorse away"

Then there are the songs for which I can't hear enough different versions.  I used to go to a fair number of Grateful Dead shows in my younger days and at one time I had something on the order of 300 bootleg tapes spanning two decades in my collection.  There were certain performances of songs that I preferred over all others, and there was always the possibility at a Dead Show that tonight would be a night like none other, that this would be the legendary version that blew all the rest away. 

Or take Richard Thompson's classic "Shoot Out the Lights", which he has performed in both electric and acoustic versions.  The song has been covered by Bob Mould, Los Lobos - all sorts of folks - and its namesake album by Richard and Linda Thompson is one of the finest records ever made IMHO.  But I adore hearing new takes on it, either by the artist himself or in the capable hands of others.  Folk music has always been that way, even electric folk.  And the old is made new and it moves me all over again.

"There’s a racecourse in the sky
And that’s where all the racing horses must go by and by
And I believe (I believe) every steward, lord and groom,
I believe (I believe) that they’re calling her name

She would look at me in the eyes and that was all she had to say
She stood her stand at sixteen hands and I’d ride her easy
But they’ve taken, they’ve taken my racehorse away
They’ve taken my racehorse away
They’ve taken my racehorse away
They’ve taken my racehorse away
They’ve taken my racehorse away
They’ve taken my racehorse away."

Comments

[GreenmanTim]

d - I would agree about the quality of the Dread Zep show I saw as well. The band was phenominal, so over the top it was brilliant. No Quarter Pounder...

[d]

The one Dred Zep show I saw (Minneapolis 1995 or 1996) was one of the best shows I've ever seen. "Brickhouses of the Holy" -- a Commodores/Zeppelin mashup -- still makes me smile...

[GreenmanTim]

I won two tickets to see Dread Zep at the Living Room in Providence, RI in the summer of 1990 when they had their breakout album. I was working in a package store in Wareham, MA and listening to the weak signal of the college station WSMU. They were looking for the 5th caller, and I was callers 1-5. It was a smokin' hot show. Favorites were Heartbreaker Hotel, Immigrant Song, and the incomparable version of Bring It On Home. That first Album Un-Led-ED still gets airplay at my house.

http://www.google.com/musicl?lid=NOgYUX4lhdF&aid=ImwwJFBMdlP

and the next one too:

http://www.google.com/musicl?lid=HiujljgHX8E&aid=ImwwJFBMdlP

[Kat]

You can count me among the Dread Zeppelin fans. I also love cover tunes. The Marlene Dietrich link was wonderful. Thanks!