can't sleep with the covers on
 

one of my housemates found me listening to the cannanes cover of 'don't rear the reaper', and after asking who performed it, went on to comment that he likes the original more, which is common enough, often thoughtless.

because i'm hell-bent on standing at the far end of my uselessness, i bunched up my panties instead of sleeping. humour me this moment.

i'm in love with the neurotic and the fetishistic. the original 'don't fear the reaper'--the original of any cover-- centers on the origin of voice only, not going on to trace the narrative of voices found in song but unable to sing--what produces interpretation is a fragment of historical possibility. where my housemate hears a cover as the disguise of voice, i hear voice conceived as the past of its own historical absence; complete only if immediately absent, no song can ever be disguised.

i'll slip off my fucking face i'm so oblique, my ideas tend to be made of multiple ways of standing in front of a thing without paying attention, so please:

what exactly is a 'good' cover? is it possible for a cover to be more essential than the original song? can it be reduced to a categorical imperative? what the fuck were rammstein thinking when they covered depeche mode? why does joy division's original version of 'love will tear us apart' only echo slumber party's for me? why am i no fun?


for reference, the cannanes' cover: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxpuSACoRgo

I like the instrumentals but it felt like they should have changed the vocal melody more and got rid of the vocal echos.

great original http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJeoYnmqbw
awesome cover http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZMvjYOmsvo

i'm sorry but don't fear the reaper is untouchable

me either, i have to at least have a sheet

I like covers when the artist truly makes the song something of their own vision. If it's too identical, it's shit. finding nobody's post was an example of a great cover.

I don't think you can quantify a 'good' cover, just as I don't think you can quantify a 'good' song.

I suppose one way of identifying one though is when the cover sort of becomes the standard by which other versions are judged. In that sense I'd say that all but the most blinkered Dylan fan would say that Hendrix's 'All Along the Watchtower' is the version against which all others (including the original) are compared. Ditto The Beatles' cover of 'Twist and Shout' and Soft Cell's 'Tainted Love' (I'm sure almost nobody who heard the Marilyn Manson version of that song was comparing it with the Gloria Jones original). I suppose in that sense it's when the band that make the cover manage to make it their own. Although, obviously, that can simply be a result of having greater exposure than the original had.

I suppose there can be times when a person simply prefers a cover over the original (I know someone who admits to preferring Guns N Roses version of 'Sympathy for the Devil' over The Stones' original) but that hardly makes it more 'essential'.

Another way I suppose is when the cover is so radically different to the original (Scissor Sistor's version of 'Comfortably Numb' or Tatu's 'How Soon is Now') that while it may not become the definitive version, it does have its own validity, almost as an original in its own right.

In that sense, just as interesting a question is what makes a 'bad' cover? Why are Megadeth's version of 'Anarchy in the UK' or Ronan Keiting's 'Fairytale of New York' or Britney's 'I Love Rock n Roll' so dreadful?

IMO Motley Crue do a much worse cover of Anarachy in the UK, simply becuase they replace all the UK stuff with USA stuff, and that just doesn't work for me.

Britney Spears' version of I Love Rock n Roll just sounds completely watered down, and her voice just doesn't have the badassery required for that song. Not to mention it was the centerpiece of her vehicle movie...all of that adds up to raping the song.

Yeah, I can't disagree with that. Atleast Megadeth tried to do something with the song, MC's version is just flat out appalling.

Rage's cover of The Ghost of ol Tom Joad...
Patty Smyth Because the Night

not quite, remember that great great movie Scream? yeah, skeet ulrich crawled through the bitch's window while a gus gus cover of the reaper played. fucking eat it.

This has to be a joke. A thread about possibly the most pretentious art-rock song of the 1970s? This must be purgatory, right?

Troll buster. Serious thread is serious.

How is that song so pretentious?

"Pretentious" isn't much of a criticism if you can't demonstrate what is invalid about the pretenses.

Ok, I'll just leave it at it's a terrible song, pretentious or not.

Well of course it is pretentious, everything is except your autonomic functions like your heartbeat and anything else that is supra-subconscious.

Can's Tago Mago was released in 1971. Is your music collection a fucking radio?

Nonsense. Subconsciousness is a functional superimposition of consciousness, or superego if you must be Freudian. As such, it can only be understood from the perspective of a functioning (Cartesian) consciousness. Any talk of an 'autonomic' subconscious is blighted by the inelecutable (and often obscure, ineffable) machinations of the consciousness. Without consciousness, there is no notion of the 'autonomy' of somatic functions. Just because the notions of consciousness, 'supra-consciousness', 'subconsciousness' or the 'unconscious' are complex and contestable doesn't mean that any discussion of human nature and culture is inherently 'pretentious'. That's just lazy Darwinism, or bad Heideggarianism. Just because music is a troubled topic to talk about, with little in the way of ontological criteria doesn't mean that the 'objective' criteria are unassailable, or worse, white elephants.

tl;dr: what else do people do on the internet if not talk shit?

patty smyth =/= patti smith



fuck y'all. don't fear the reaper is unfuckwithable.