Category: Cover Versions

Cover Versions, Sampled

Pass It On (part 2)

Craig McAllister

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Simple Kid is a one-man band. All battered acoustics, a bit of banjo and a smattering of electronics and new technology. He’s an Irish Beck. I suppose you could call him Feck. Hee hee. Anyway, his first album ‘Simple Kid 1‘ was pretty good. I have had a copy of it since it was released but I recently picked up the genuine article in Tesco for 97p!

More recently I heard him do a song called ‘Lil King Kong’ which sounded like it sampled/borrowed/stole the riff from Led Zeppelin‘s version of Robert Johnson’s ‘Travelling Riverside Blues’ (get it on the BBC Sessions album). Pretty good I thought. And pretty cheeky. Cos it’s not like Led Zeppelin are going to sue him. After all, they’ve made a career out of ripping off the old blues guys and crediting everything to Page, Plant, Bonham and Jones. Even their version of ‘Travelling Riverside Blues’ is credited to Page, Plant and Johnson. But I’ve never been able to hear where they enhanced the original. Unless you count the drums. But then surely the credit should have Bonham added to it somewhere.

Actually, they probably would sue, being the corporate money grabbers that they are/were, but I digress. These 2 tracks are posted in the spirit of the first ‘Pass It On’ post – that the best songs and tunes of the past usually end up being recycled in some way years down the line. Listen and compare, pop pickers.

 Led Zeppelin ‘Travelling Riverside Blues’               

 Simple Kid ‘Lil King Kong’

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Cover Versions, Dylanish, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find, Most downloaded tracks

The toppermost of the poppermost

Craig McAllister

Here you go……the Top 10 Plain Or Pan downloads to date.

A cover-heavy Top 10, with a combined total of

4326 downloads!

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My computer is playing funny buggers. Hence the wonky spacing and no numbers 2-10. It’s taken up enough of my time for the night so this is as good as it gets.

You can find out more about these recordings by scrolling through the pages. Or you could just be lazy and download them from here.

Cover Versions, Hard-to-find

My kinda Persson (ouch!)

Craig McAllister

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I’ve been hearing a lot of that New Manic Street Preachers single recently, featuring Nina Persson of the Cardigans. It’s not bad, but I’ve heard it all before, and the Manics to me these days are about as relevant as the NME. To these ears it sounds a bit like ‘Little Baby Nothing’ which the band at the time wanted Kylie Minogue to sing on but had to settle for porn star Traci Lords cos Kylie’s ‘people’ had never heard of them. Actually. D’you know what? The new single is bad. It’s really bad. It’s stinkingly bad. It’s boring and repetitive aural wallpaper. Charlotte Church made it sound even worse when she duetted with the band on her teevee show the other week. I won’t be buying it, and while I’m sure there is still a hardcore of Manics fans somewhere, I can’t think of any 20 year olds who’d buy it instead of the latest Muse or Biffy Clyro offering.

But Nina Persson. Raaaaaarrrr. (That’s a cat noise by the way.) Great voice, great face, great rock/pop star. I loved the Cardigan’s ‘For What it’s Worth’. I thought it was the best single never to make number 1. About a year ago, during a hiatus from the Cardigans she acted in a Swedish black and white movie, ‘Om Gud Vill’. You might just have caught it down at your local Odeon. If you did, you would have heard her singing a fantastic version of the White Stripes ‘Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground’. It’s not much different to the version you are familiar with, but I liked it so much I included it on my Best Of The Year CD that I swap with my friends in our Christmas cards every year. Nerds? Trainspotters? Sad? Yep. Here‘s the cover. And here’s another gratuitous picture of Nina for you.

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Cover Versions, Gone but not forgotten

Kitsch Korner

Craig McAllister

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I heard Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra’s ‘Summer Wine’ on the radio yesterday and that had me digging through my record collection and a pile of mp3s to bring you these gems.

In his musical lifetime Lee Hazlewood did it all, and is still doing it all to this day (thanks, Jackson!). You can find out loads about him if you fancy going from blog to blog. Suffice to say he must be one of the most blogged of all musicians and his influence reaches far and wide, with artists today from Jarvis Cocker, the Tindersticks, Primal Scream and many more owing him a huge debt. Not only did he invent Duane Eddy’s twangy guitar sound, he had the best baritone voice in the business and was a shit-hot arranger/producer on many recording sessions. He wrote loads of hits for Nancy Sinatra, including her most famous/overplayed song (delete where applicable) ‘These Boots Are Made For Walking’. Here is his demo version. At least, I think it’s a demo. It’s the backing track you are more than familiar with, with added brass/trumpet stabs and him singing/talking over the top in that big voice of his. You put on your boots and I’ll put on mine and we’ll sell a million records any old time! Brilliant.

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Next up, two Nancy tracks. Her version of Day Tripper is just on the right side of camp. All brass stabs and ‘ba-ba-ba’s’ where George Harrison’s guitar riff should be. There’s even a wry nod to ‘These Boots…’ at one point. It is the true sound of swinging London, even if it was recorded in California.

Lastly is Nancy Sinatra’s Coca Cola jingle. Somebody requested this in an email to me. And as promised, here it is, in all it’s kitsch innocence. “Now Nancy Sinatra with a word to the wise”

You’ve been out 6 nights this week and  I don’t know where you go. Tonight you’re staying home with me there’s things that you don’t know. Like groovy things and other things and boy it’s time you knew. We’ll mess around do lots of things and drink a Coke or two.

Cos, things go better with Coca Cola, things go better with Coke. Life is much more fun when you’re refreshed. And Coke refreshes you best!

Cover Versions

Down By The River triple-whammy

Craig McAllister

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On heavy rotation chez moi at the moment is Neil Young’s ‘Live at Massey Hall’ album, the second in his much anticipated (by me at least) Archive Performance series. Roll on the 8CD box set. If you’re a fan of Neil Young you’ve probably got this already but for those in the dark, this release is of a 1971 Toronto show which took place after the release of After The Goldrush and before the release of Harvest. It is generally agreed that it should have been released in its own right at the time, but for whatever reason it is only now seeing the light of day. Highlight for me is the version of ‘Down By The River’. Unlike the many versions of this song Neil Young has done over the years, this one features just Neil, his acoustic guitar and his whiny voice. I love it. Neil can often overdo this song. I have a few 17+ minute versions with Crazy Horse and umpteen squealy guitar solos. I also have a 31 minute version somewhere that you need to hear once before having a long lie down. But it’s still one of my favourite Neil Young songs, and has been covered to great effect by many artists including…

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Buddy Miles. Buddy’s version is more soulful than the original. It features some Isley Brothers-esque guitar (check out that sustain!), some wah-wah and some jazz tastic Fender rhodesy keyboards. At 6.15, you might think it goes on a bit, but not as long as….

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Roy Buchanan‘s version. Just short of 9 minutes it features some trademark 70’s lead guitar, Gimme Shelter-copying female backing singers and a vocal track that sounds like the Eagles on sleeping pills. Oooh sha la la the weather. She can take me over the rainbow, send me away. Like, laid back man! Here it is.

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Joey Gregorash does my favourite version.  It’s faster than the original, features scrubbed acoustic guitars, bongos and an angry wasp in a jar electric guitar sound. Dig it! Here! A fellow Canadian (like Neil Young, also from Winnipeg) Joey covered Down By The River in 1971. It was never intended for release until some sharp-eared record company executive thought the better of it. The radio stations then picked up on it and in classic style decided to play ‘Down By The River’ instead of Joey’s new single. Eventually the record company were forced to rush release an edited version of the album track and Joey’s 15 minutes of fame were complete. Add that to yer Wikipedia and smoke it!

Cover Versions, Hard-to-find

Raconteurs! In session!

Craig McAllister

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I’ve had these tracks for nearly a year, but I really think I should be sharing them. You might have heard them already, but if not get them now.

Two Raconteurs tracks recorded for the Dermot O’Leary BBC Radio 2 show on the 25th March 2006. I recorded them at the time and have listened to them many times since (usually in the car or on my iPod cos Mrs Plain Or Pan just disnae like all those electric guitars). You may well be familiar with the Raconteurs album, but the version here of ‘Steady, As She Goes’ is something else entirely. Y’see, the Raconteurs album came out a year after it was recorded (due to White stripes stuff and record company politics). In the meantime, the band had been out on tour and really learned how to play. As a result, the songs that featured on the album were stretched, mangled and morphed into feedback soaked blues freak-outs and daintily picked acoustic run throughs straight off of Led Zeppelin 3. This ‘Steady, As She Goes’ sounds like something the Kinks would have been happy to release in 1965 – it’s loose, funky and the drums sound great. It has a great double lead vocal a-la Ray and Dave Davies and it even manages to sound kinda reggae. I love it. You will too.

The second track here is the Raconteurs version of ‘It Aint Easy’, made famous (though not written) by David Bowie on his Ziggy Stardust album. It’s pretty much a straight run through of Bowie’s version of the song, but you need it, cos the band have never really played it since.

Next week I plan to put up more Raconteurs session stuff – I have a fantastic version of ‘Store Bought Bones’ recorded for Radio 1 that sounds like a fight between a Marshall stack and a Big Muff fuzz box in a hammond organ shop. Stay tuned…

Cover Versions, Dylanish, Gone but not forgotten, Hard-to-find

Just Like Jeff Buckley

Craig McAllister

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Elsewhere on these pages you’ll find Jeff Buckley’s rather excellent version of Dylan’s ‘Mama You Been On My Mind’. That track remains the most downloaded song from Plain Or Pan?, and helped catapult my blog into the dizzy heights of ‘3rd fastest growing music blog on the ‘net for January’. So, thanks!

Today, I’m posting Jeff Buckley‘s version of ‘Just like A Woman’. Like ‘Mama You Been On My Mind’, it was recorded at Bearsville Studios, New York State (?) in September 1993 at the sessions for the Grace album. It features just Jeff and his Telecaster-played-through-Fender-twin-reverb and sounds beautiful. He kinda makes this his own song, which of course is the mark of a good cover.

Just a quick note – the vocals are slightly distorted in places, but I guess that as this was a recorded-in-progress demo, the engineer had little or no time to adjust the levels accordingly. But that shouldn’t spoil your enjoyment of what is an excellent performance.

For all you trainspotters, I have also included a shorter version that fades out here.

Coming soon – If You See Her, Say Hello and another couple of Mama You Been On My Mind outtakes! Drop by again!

Cover Versions

Cover version of the month.

Craig McAllister

I found this whilst trawling the net and thought, “That’s going on the blog, no-one will have heard that!” Then last night (last nite) I heard it on Craig Charles Funk and Soul show on 6 Music. Bastard! Never mind.

I love the Strokes. I realise they’re probably uncool nowadays but I’ve never been cool, and at my age I’m not about to start trying. I bought the first Strokes ep way back in 2000 and thought they were fantastic. Great drummer, vocals drawled through a megaphone and a guitarist who looked like 1966 Bob Dylan. ‘Last Nite’ on the ep was a bit slower than the single/album version that came out in 2001, but the version here is way, way different.

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Jumbonics are a jazz/soul/funk outfit from the south of England. I imagine they’ve got goatee beards and wear expensive trainers. I don’t really know. But their version of ‘Last Nite’ is a vinyl-only hammond ‘n’ shuffly drum reworking of The Strokes finest 3 minutes. It could be a cracker, it could be a stinker, I’ve yet to make up my mind. It is pretty strange and pretty funky and pretty well the Plain Or Pan ‘Cover Version of the Month’. So far.

*stop press. hmmmmm. it’s a bit of a stinker really.

Cover Versions, Hard-to-find

Mike Love, Not War

Craig McAllister

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Norman Blake does Dennis Wilson’s ‘Only With You’ here.

In years to come I like to think that people will be discussing whether they’re a Norman, Gerry or Raymond fan in much the same way that nerdy trainspotting males argue over Lennon and McCartney. “Yeah, but Lennon never did the Frog Chorus!”. “Only ‘cos he was shot first!”. I don’t imagine it’ll ever be a national debate but if it was I would sit firmly in the Norman camp.

‘Only With You’ is a cover of a Dennis Wilson song that first appeared on a tribute album called ‘Caroline Now!’ The Beach Boys version is on their 1973 album ‘Holland’ if you’re interested. And you bloody should be. But anyway. Norman’s version is amazing. The harmonies and 12 string electric guitar means it is 1000% Byrds, and by the time the string section slides in you’ll find yourself wishing you were getting married so that you could have this as your first dance. Or maybe not. You might prefer ‘Love Is All around’ or that Bryan Adams one from a few years ago. But anyway, this track is the real deal.

Girls. Download it. Play it to your fella, and if he’s half the man he says he is, he’ll be off to the diamond ring section of JH Samuel’s. If he’s half the man you know he is, he’ll probably be half way out of your life forever. But, hey, give it a try. 

Boys. Download it, play it to your special someone, and if your not doin’ the do by the time the string section has kicked in, you need to ask yourself “Is it really worth the hassle?”

Cover Versions

You Really Got A Hold On Me Double Bill

Craig McAllister

Valentine’s Day is fast approaching….

This is one of those songs I wish I’d written. Bob Dylan was right to call Smokey Robinson the best poet in America (or whatever it was he said). Anyway. Killer tune. I love the original, and I’m a  big fan of the Beatles Motown-aping cover (on ‘With The Beatles’), but these 2 versions for me are the best there are.

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Way back when Michael Jackson was getting regular beatings from his Dad rather than the World’s media, he and his brothers were knocking out 3 minute pop classics before breakfast. Their version of YRGAHOM is so good it makes me dance on my tiptoes. It could rouse your Granny off her death bed and send her back to the bingo with a wee spring in her zimmer. Get it here, and prepare to dance your useless butt off.

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In contrast, the Zombies look like they’ve never danced the mashed potato in their lives, but who cares when they were one hell of a brilliant r’n’b band. Note – that’s r’n’b as in rhythm ‘n’ blues, not Usher. This version was recorded in one take and includes elements of Sam Cooke’s ‘Bring It On Home To Me’, which Led Zeppelin would later rip off to great effect and pass off as their own song (but that’s a whole other blog site somewhere). The Zombies version is every bit as soulful as the Jackson 5’s, a bit less funky maybe, but a whole lot more swinging. Which makes me think, wouldn’t it be great if Frank Sinatra did a version of it? Maybe he did. I’ll google that later. In the meantime, get down with the Zombies here. You can also find it on ‘Begin Here’, the Zombies debut album from 1965, or on the warts and all excellent box set ‘Zombie Heaven’.