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Covers Ideas

1. Covers that change the melody or just don't sound like the original

Wild Side of Life – Charlie Feathers

Groovin' – Aretha Franklin

People Get Ready – Aretha Franklin

It Was a Very Good Year – Shirley Bassey

Pride of Man – Quicksilver

2. Covers where there is something (melodic, instrumental part) added that wasn't in the original

Summertime – Janis Joplin (Big Brother)

For You – Manfred Mann

Well Alright – Blind Faith

3. Cover of a cover -- sometimes seems like the third artist doesn't know the song is itself a cover

Red Red Wine – UB40

You Don't Miss Your Water – Red, Red Meat

Cherry Oh Baby – Rolling Stones

4. Covers of lame songs by people who don't seem to grasp that they're lame

Angel – Shaggy, cover of Angel of the Morning

5. People don't know or might be surprised that it's a cover

Black Betty – Ram Jam

Black Betty – Odetta

6. Self-covers: Early versions

Questions – Steve Stills

Suite: Judy Blue Eyes – Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young

I Am a Child – Neil Young

Sugar Mountain – Neil Young

“Questions” and “I Am a Child” are Buffalo Springfield, from alb Last Time Around

Long May You Run – Neil Young

Harvest – Neil Young (I probably mean “Harvest Moon” here?)

Ivory – Bob Seger System

Hollywood Knights – Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band

'Ivory': 'You were born with a face / That would let you get your way' 'Hollywood Knights': 'She had been born with a face / That wouldn't let her get away / He saw that face and he lost all control'

Tobacco Road – Jefferson Airplane

Cruisin' – Jefferson Starship

Melody is similar, but particularly rhythmic similarity. This is an original, self-rip-off, of a cover

7. Self-covers: Rewrites and retreads

Old Man Down the Road – John Fogerty

Run through the Jungle – Creedence Clearwater Revival

The famous example

Don't Go – Yaz

No Disco – Depeche Mode

The Vince Clarke connection

Soul Survivor – Rolling Stones (Exile)

Moonlight Mile – Rolling Stones (Sticky Fingers)

8. Gratuitous covers: Needless, obvious covers that just shouldn't have been done

Almost any cover that has charted since sometime beginning around the late '70s. To state an arbitrary beginning, let's say Captain & Tennille's cover of Shop Around, Miracles

9. Criminal covers: Same as Gratuitous covers, but where someone actually might get hurt

Starting All Over Again – Hall & Oates

Covering Mel & Tim. Mel & Tim had only two hits. Their other one ('Backfield in Motion') on radio very once in awhile. Mel & Tim's 'Starting' very limited play on Adult Contemporary into '90s (too mellow for Oldies). Hall & Oates's gratuitous, obvious cover supplants plays of M&T version; then, because H&O version mediocre, neither version survives on radio

10. Covers where the new interpretation grasps a subtlety in the original lyrics

Walk on By – Isaac Hayes

Hayes sings 'broken in two' instead of 'broken and blue.'

Understandable. “Broken in two” is a common phrase. Hayes says the opposite of what Lameasses Misusing a Common Phrase say. “Broken and blue” comes too close to the common phrase. Hayes is correcting Bachrach & David's error

Tainted Love – Gloria Jones

The “if I don't I'll pack my things and go” gets garbled, this time in the original; Marc Almond (not Mark-Almond), straightens it out in the Soft Cell cover

Three versions of 'Orange Blossom Special' that speed up at the end

Will the Circle Be Unbroken

Country Gentlemen

Doug Kershaw

Other versions of 'Orange Blossom Special'

Bill Monroe

Covers-like similarities in bluegrass

“Little Maggie” shares verses with “Darlin' Corey”; there are musical similarities

The Melody of “Battle of New Orleans,” Johnny Horton (Jimmie Driftwood, songwriter) is the fiddle tune “Eighth of January”; is this fiddle tune Civil-War era?

"Pappa's Billy Goat" swallowed the "Turkey in the Straw"

Fiddlin' John Carson's Pappa has a section where the melody morphs into “Turkey in the Straw” and adds some words for it, in case one would want to do a vocal version of Turkey in the Straw

Lately vocal versions of “Whiskey Before Breakfast” and “Dixie” are being performed. I assume that these were almost exclusively instrumentals for decades

chapters/covers.txt · Last modified: 2009/06/29 00:52 (external edit)
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