In through the Back Door: (Un)Covering the Classics

Everyone loves a good cover version, but not everyone knows a cover when they hear it. How many Americans heard Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" on the radio and thought, "Gee, these New Wavers have really done a number on Gloria Jones's 1964 northern soul gem"? Probably not many. I flatter myself that I am a pretty big music dork, and I think I found out "Tainted Love" was a cover roughly twenty years after the first time I heard it. If you're a casual music fan and you're not inclined to at least glance at album liner notes, you may not uncover a cover until some radio DJ mentions the original artist or it comes up on some random VH1 special. Hell, you may never know.

All of which inspired the management to make up a list (surprise!) of songs that I only later learned were cover versions. Obviously, as this list is based upon personal experience, it is far from exhaustive. You are encouraged to add examples of your own.

Anyway, I'll start with the most "embarrassing," by which I mean the most recent. (Note: If you actually consider stuff like this embarrassing, you are an insufferable Rock Snob and you have more serious personal issues to sort out.) After that, there is no particular order...

1. Fischerspooner, "The 15th" (2002)
Originally recorded by Wire, from their 1979 album 154. The only reason I feel bad about this one is I was already a huge Wire fan when I first heard the song. I had just managed to skip directly from their first two albums to 1988's A Bell Is a Cup...Until It Is Struck. 154 has since become second only to Pink Flag in my heart. (Years before, I also heard Wire's "Strange" for the first time... but it was being sung by R.E.M.)

2. Soft Cell, "Tainted Love" (1981)
Well I kinda blew this one in the intro. Interesting trivia: Gloria Jones was Marc Bolan's longtime girlfriend and a T.Rex background singer, and she was in the driver's seat when he was killed in a freak auto accident. Their son was named Rolan Bolan. Seriously. Thanks mum & dad!

3. Naked Eyes, "(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me" (1983)
By the time it hit the American top ten, this Hal David/Burt Bacharach ditty had been covered by a bunch of other acts, most notably by Sandy Shaw in 1964.

4. Mötley Crüe, "Smokin' in the Boys Room" (1985)
Oooooh... the Crüe is so dangerous. The song came off as such a pathetic attempt at being "bad" that I was actually relieved to find out it was originally recorded in 1973 by Brownsville Station. Get this: it was the Crüe's first Top 40 hit.

5. David Bowie, "China Girl" (1983)
Sure, David did co-write it with Iggy Pop, but the song originally appeared on Iggy's 1977 album The Idiot. (Morbid rock factoid: Joy Division singer Ian Curtis was reportedly listening to The Idiot when he killed himself.)

6. The Damned, "Alone Again Or" (1987)
The Damned's last Top 40 hit was one of my favorite "modern rock" songs growing up. Imagine my surprise when I heard the even more beautiful version from Love's 1967 Forever Changes album.

7. Blondie, "Hanging on the Telephone" (1978)
Ultra-obscure power pop band The Nerves split up after releasing only one 1976 EP... which just happened to contain this little gem.

8. Cowboy Junkies, "Sweet Jane" (1988)
Awww cut me some slack. So it took me a while to discover the Velvet Underground's 1969: The Velvet Underground Live and Loaded. Guess what, I heard Jane's Addiction's 1987 cover of "Rock 'n' Roll" first, too! And the first time I ever heard "Femme Fatale" and "Pale Blue Eyes"? That's right, both covers on R.E.M.'s 1987 rarities collection Dead Letter Office.

9. Tesla, "Signs" (1990)
This was originally a hit for a Canadian group called the Five Man Electrical Band in 1971. But really, who cares?

10. The Soup Dragons, "I'm Free" (1990)
"I'm Free" is a so/so 1965 Rolling Stones b-side that can currently be heard in a terrible remix on a cell phone commercial. But in 1990 I thought it was a really groovy hit by a Scottish "baggy" band.

11. Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" (1981)
Sure I knew their version of "Crimson and Clover" wasn't the first, but I just found out that this was a cover, too. It was originally released as a single in 1975 by The Arrows. Who knew??

12. The Power Station, "Get It On (Bang a Gong)" (1985)
I don't care what you say, when I was eleven, ex-Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor was still really cool. Robert Palmer, however, was always a putz. Anyway, this was a massive T.Rex hit back in 1972, which we all know now but somehow managed to escape me at eleven. At least I didn't give Bauhaus credit for "Telegram Sam".

13. Eric Clapton, "I Shot the Sheriff" (1974)
Unless you're not from the U.S., you probably heard the Clapton version first too; Bob Marley's original was only a year old when Clapton covered it.

14. Quiet Riot, "Cum On Feel the Noize" (1983)
Having missed the glam explosion that occurred on another continent when I was an infant, I actually gave the 1980s hair metal bands full credit for their AquaNet-soaked craziness. Turns out glammy British pub-rock legends Slade had a big hit with this way back in 1973.

15. Talking Heads, "Take Me to the River" (1978)
Well it sure sounded like a cover, but I wasn't aware that Al Green had recorded the song in 1974. (Even better, I thought the Heads' "Memories Can't Wait" was a Living Colour song for like two years.)

16. Manfred Mann's Earth Band, "Blinded by the Light" (1977)
Considering the fact that Bruce Springsteen's original 1973 version sank like a stone, I don't think many of us knew this was a cover at the time. And yes, I also thought they were saying "wrapped up like a douche."

17. Phil Collins, "Groovy Kind of Love" (1988)
Phil had cover fever there for a while; he also did "You Can't Hurry Love" around the same time. Anyway, whether Phil's doing it or you're listening to the 1966 version by The Mindbenders... "Groovy Kind of Love" really, really blows.

18. Janis Joplin, "Me and Bobby McGee" (1971)
There's some Wikiversy as to who issued the first recorded version (it's between Kris Kristofferson, Gordon Lightfoot, and Roger Miller), but Kristofferson wrote it and included it on his 1970 debut album.

19. David Lee Roth, "Just a Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody" (1985)
Originally adapted from an Austrian song in 1929, "Just a Gigolo" had been covered a bunch over the years. But Diamond Dave based his on the 1956 Louis Prima medley version. (The Village People also covered this version in 1978.)

20. Jeff Buckley, "Hallelujah" (1994)
It wasn't long until I found out about Leonard Cohen's 1983 original, but for a little while I thought that Buckley kid was a friggin' genius.

**UPDATE**
Feeling covers crazy? Search cover versions by artist or song at The Covers Project. And discover a steady stream of cool and rare cover versions at Copy, Right?

The Nostalgia Files: VHS B-Movie Company Idents

There are already thousands of cult-movie fansites on the interwebs, so I'll leave it to them to rehash the brilliant limited-release and direct-to-video horror and schlock movies of my young adulthood. Any nerd with a Fangoria subscription can break out his copy of From Beyond or Class of Nuke 'Em High, but it's rare that anyone thinks about the unsung heroes behind the great VHS exploitation films that came out between the mid-1980s and the early '90s: the boutique studios and video distribution companies themselves. Luckily, YouTube, Wikipedia, and many of the other Web 2.0 superstars are frequented by such dedicated über-dorks that even the most esoteric quest takes all of 47 seconds.

Today, major-studio offshoots like Dimension Films, Dark Castle Entertainment, Fox Atomic, and Rogue Pictures crank out (relatively) low-budget, high-return genre films, using a model that has flourished since the 1996 release of Scream. But in the decade leading up to horror's box-office resurgence, the best genre films were, by and large, relegated to the limited-run, cable, or direct-to-video markets. A relatively small number of major-studio offshoots and maverick companies made that market possible.

For the 14-year-old horror movie fanatic in 1988, nothing gave you a better indication of how the next 90 minutes would be spent than the roughly 15-second studio ident logo(s) at the beginning of the tape. And so the management is happy to present a brief salute to some of the distribution (and production) companies, large and small, (many defunct, some still around) that made VHS (and even BETAMAX) truly fun.

Vestron Video
A distribution company that released a treasure chest of B-movies up until 1992. (Notable examples: Ghoulies, Future-Kill, Lifeforce, Re-Animator, Troll, From Beyond, The Gate, The Running Man, Waxwork) STUDIO IDENT

Golan/Globus Productions and Cannon Films
These notorious schlockmeisters, a pair of savvy Israeli brothers, made some of the most memorable low-budget action films of the 1980s, both with their own production company, and as the heads of Cannon Films and Cannon Distribution. They also helped bring the world Michael Dudikoff and his more popular replacement, Jean-Claude Van Damme. (Death Wish II, Ninja III: The Domination, Lifeforce, Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, Cobra, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II, Masters of the Universe, Braddock: Missing in Action III, Bloodsport, Cyborg) STUDIO IDENT

New World Pictures
Prolific film production and distribution company that started releasing exploitation films in the late 1960s. (The Slumber Party Massacre, Children of the Corn, C.H.U.D., The Stuff, Vamp, Hellraiser, Zombie Nightmare, House, Return to Horror High, Creepshow 2) STUDIO IDENT

Media Home Entertainment
Another great video distribution company. (Blood Beach, The Dorm that Dripped Blood, Basket Case, Liquid Sky, Sleepaway Camp, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Class of Nuke 'Em High, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Dead Ringers, Nightbreed) STUDIO IDENT

And here are some other defunct or discontinued 1980s idents that might take you back:

DEG
Thorn EMI
Orion Pictures
AVCO Embassy
Embassy Pictures
New Line Cinema (1984)
United Artists

And then there is the dynamic duo of Hong Kong cinema:

Golden Harvest (Think Jackie Chan)
Golden Princess (Think John Woo)

And, finally, the contemporary homage to 1970s idents:

Grindhouse Releasing

And speaking of Grindhouse, why not entertain yourself with Eli Roth's fake trailer for Thanksgiving, and then catch a sampling of real trailers that inspired all these shenanigans in the first place.

"Ye Cannae Deny the Laws ae Physics!"

Engineering, report.

Perhaps this is a more fitting tribute?

Perhaps not.

Anyway, here's to you, you beloved Canadian character actor, you!

"I Wear Black on the Outside 'Cause Black Is How I Feeeeel on the Inside"

In the comics, Peter Parker was a put-upon nerd with some standard teen angst and the whole "my uncle's dead" thing. To this day, he is also known as something of a jokester; he's a lovable smartass. In the movies, Peter Parker was a put-upon nerd with some standard teen angst and the whole "my uncle's dead" thing...until now. Now, Peter Parker is considering getting an emo band together. He wears black. He wears eyeliner. He cries... a lot. So, for that matter, does everyone else in Spider-Man 3. Even the villains cry. Really. All three of them cry at least once. In fact, I think someone told Sam Raimi that he was directing the most expensive Connor Oberst video of all time. I almost cried, too... when I thought about the $12 I would never see again.

Spider-Man 3 is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Like, worse than The Hulk, Fantastic Four, and X-Men: The Last Stand combined. When Richard Roeper called it "pure camp," it was an insult to pure camp. Kirsten Dunst sings... three times! Tobey Maguire has two dance sequences (one of which is basically a shot-for-shot redo of the "jazz flute" scene in Anchorman, without the flute)! The entire audience--children included--groaned when they were supposed to laugh and laughed (hard) when they were supposed to "feel." Simply put, I want two-and-a-half hours of my life back, I want Kirsten Dunst to become a Jehova's Witness and give up "acting," I want Tobey Maguire's double chin to swallow his face, and I want Snow Patrol to stop making music.

Anyway, here's the important stuff: the Sandman effects were really cool, Topher Grace wasn't that bad, someone gets half their face melted off and it's hilarious, and there's lots of good/bad duality that's conveyed through the oh-so-subtle employment of black clothing. (Presumably, having characters repeatedly grow and shave off evil goatees was ruled out because it would have made the film seem even longer, which is hard to imagine. However, they did flirt with the "Evil Superman" five o'clock shadow.). Also, the film broke every box office record in creation.

By the way, Stan Lee was on 60 Minutes. Just watch that instead.

(I'm Always Touched By Your) Banjo Dear

You know how Debbie Harry is arguably the coolest chick in rock history? Let's just say Joan Jett and Chrissy Hynde dropped a few more notches when I saw this:


**UPDATE**
First voicemail allows Alec Baldwin's ungrateful little whelp to tarnish his reputation. Now YouTube is letting the spoiled fruit of The Hoff's loins hold her poor daddy's fun hostage. Just listen to her blatant attempts at paternal intimidation:

These kids nowadays... not a moment's hesitation in their flagrant violation of Commandment #5 (#4 if you're Catholic or Lutheran).