Category: Cover Versions

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.

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…

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?”

What we have here is 2 bands at polar opposites, yet united by a crappy tenuous connection.  Firstly, we have Pavement. Shambolic college rock from the U. S. of A. with a neat line in whiny vocals and spidery guitar lines.

Then we have the La’s. Perfectionists to the nth degree, they were desperate to create the perfect album that sounded like Merseybeat mixed with Captain Beefheart and the Delta Blues – the sound of the Merseyssippi as Lee Mavers  was keen on saying in every interview he did between 1987 and 1990.

The link? Echo and the Bunnymen. Pavement covered ‘The Killing Moon’ in 1997 for a BBC session. It’s a pretty straightforward version, a bit slower and trippy than the original, with added whoops that make it sound a bit like New Order in places. Get it here. 

In 1987, in their quest for the Mersyssippi, the La’s turned to Pete de Freitas, the Bunnymen’s drummer and fellow Scouser to help produce some sessions. Did you know that ‘Echo’ of Echo and the Bunymen was the name of their drum machine before Pete joined? I digress…. Anyway, the sessions did not produce anything classic though all La’s songs you know and love were tried. The sessions are often referred to as the ‘Echo’ sessions, given that de Freitas chucked a big bucket of reverb and echo over the vocal tracks. In some ways it adds to the tracks, in other ways it kind of spoils them. Anyway, here you’ll find a version of ‘Callin’ All’ that sounds like Love or ‘We Love You’-era Rolling Stones and clatters along in a vaguely psychedelic fashion. ‘Callin’ All’ was meant to be the name of the La’s debut until they dropped this song at the last minute.  I can tell you loads of La’s stories and useless information, and I have a treasure trove full of La’s stuff which will see the light of day at some point. In the meantime, enjoy ‘Callin’ All’ and keep coming back. Cheers!