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