Cover songs are like the ultimate contagious disease. It’s true. If a cover song is done right, it can boost bands from obscurity and into the limelight. A cover song is a great way for for fans of certain artists to get turned onto other bands/artists that they may not even know they would like. There is a dark side to the art of playing a cover song though. Some bands strive hard to take a song and make it their own and while it’s admirable that they would want to do something different with it, it is very thin ice that is walked upon. This action can either bring you praise or you can be held responsible for ruining a perfectly good song.
Last night the wife and I were making dinner. I went and put on a The Rolling Stones’ “Exile On Main Street” album to play in the background as we cooked. “Loving Cup” came on and she looks to me and says, “Is it sad that the first time I ever heard this song was when it was performed by Phish?” I told her that I thought that was actually really awesome and that Phish had done their job. She didn’t quite understand what I was talking about so I elaborated more. I told her that when a band plays a cover song, it works two ways in my opinion. One, it’s fun for the band to play a song by an artist that was a huge inspiration and influence to them and two, it’s a great way to turn on your audience to an artist that they may have never given a listen to. So everybody wins.
Bands have been doing cover songs for as far back as one can remember. Now while I can’t speak for classical musicians, I do know that early blues masters such as Leadbelly, Muddy Waters and Cisco all took traditional songs of old and worked them into their own repitoir. Many of those old blues songs were songs that the slave workers would sing in the fields, while working on the railroad and in churches. As time moved on, these songs to spread person to person and were modernized for the times. Bands like The Rolling Stones, early Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan took these old songs, dusted them off and made them new again turning an entire new generation onto a style of music that had never been heard before. Its impossible for me to say just where it all started and there are many gaps but do you get where I’m going with this? The “cover song” is a tool and a very powerful tool at that. It can literally make or break you!
I can remember hearing “When The Levee Breaks” off of Led Zeppelin IV and thinking that it was such an amazing song. Many years later I would be at a bluegrass concert by Leftover Salmon only to hear them playing “When The Levee Breaks”. How cool? A bluegrass band covering Zeppelin. What I would later learn is that “When The Levee Breaks” was an old American song that was modernized by Led Zeppelin and then made Bluegrass by Leftover Salmon. So what we have here is a song that was a cover of a cover. I even learned the same thing about the Jimi Hendrix song “Hey Joe”, a song that is shrouded by mystery as to who actually wrote the song but was passed around the 60’s folk circuit only to be picked up by Hendrix and turned into a monster powerhouse Rock & Roll classic. Talk about blowing my damned mind!
So why do bands perform cover songs? Performing songs by other acts can be as I said before, thin ice to walk upon. Some bands perform covers by obscure artists and you may never know it was a cover in the first place. When I first heard Quiet Riot doing “Cum On Feel The Noize” back in 1983, I just assumed it was a kick ass song by a kick ass band. This song is what pretty much made Quite Riot a huge name for themselves and it was a few years later that I would learn it was a cover song originally performed by a 70’s British rock band called Slade. Hearing this song made me go check out Slade only to be disappointed that they really had no other good songs. The thin ice that can be trodden upon is evident with Warrant’s 1992 cover of Queen’s “We Will Rock You.” First off, why would Warrant ever think they were remotely talented enough to cover a band like Queen. This wasn’t a great move for them and much like everything else after this, this song just solidified Warrant as a bunch of talentless douches who had proven that they could actually make you hate a truly amazing song.
The good side to covers is hearing a band that you love cover a song and giving it a little bit of extra TLC and making it a bit of their own at the same time, not playing it note for note or identical to the original. In 2004, Italian Goth Metal band Lacuna Coil had a hit single with a “metalized” version of the Depeche Mode song “Enjoy The Silence”. I have never been (and still aren’t) a Depeche Mode fan but they nailed this song and I can listen to it on repeat and not get tired of it. This is a great example of taking a song, making it your own but doing well with it and still honoring the original enough to not piss off fans of the original. I just recently heard singer/songwriter Cat Power doing a version of Bob Dylan’s “Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again” that was so mind blowing that I picked up her latest album “The Greatest” and absolutely loved it. I would’ve never given her a listen based on what I had heard “about” her but after hearing that great cover, it opened me up to checking her out.
In the Jam Band world, the art of the cover song is taken to new leaps and bounds. I’ve heard a lot of my favorite jam bands do some great and some not so great covers. Sometimes these covers are taken very seriously and others not so much. I’ve heard God Street Wine jokingly play “The Girl From Impanema”, I’ve heard Phish absolutely slaughter “Sabatoge” by the Beastie Boys yet at the same time hear Widespread Panic so an amazing version of The Grateful Dead’s “Cream Puff War” and hear The Allman Brothers Band give me goosebumps covering Dylan’s “Just Like A Woman.” Even the gods of all Jam Bands, The Grateful Dead, covered songs by their favorite acts such as Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan and George Jones as they introduced their audience to genres of music like folk, blues, country and good ol’ traditional Americana but in the Jam Band world, the gods of the “cover song” are hands down Phish.
In the past, Phish has covered many quirky and fun covers such as Zappa’s “Peaches En Regallia”, “Whipping Post” by the Allman Brothers Band and many Grateful Dead songs but on Halloween night of 1994, Phish managed to take the cover song to a whole new level. The band took the stage that night and performed The Beatles’ “White Album” in its entirety as their “Halloween Costume”. Like any attempt this ambitious, it was met with mixed reviews but for the most part, they pulled it off and did it well. I can also guarantee that a lot of hippies ran out the next day and picked up a copy of “The White Album” if they didn’t already have it. I know that in 1996 when Phish performed The Talking Heads’ “Remain In Light” album, I only knew the two or three hits they had but sure enough, after hearing them cover this album I went out the next day, bought “Remain In Light” and had my mind blown.
And last but not least, lets not forgot the phenomenon known as “the tribute album.” This is an entire album of covers that usually consists of various bands/artists paying “tribute” to a particular band. These can run from the really great to the downright awful. About 12 years, there was an album released called “Encomium” that was a tribute to Led Zeppelin. This contained some really great covers of Zeppelin songs like “Out On The Tiles” by Blind Melon, and even some really surprisingly great covers of songs like “Hey Hey What Can I Do” by Hootie & The Blowfish and “4 Sticks” by The Rollins Band. Another one on the good side are “Nativity In Black” which was a tribute to Black Sabbaths that had some really great covers done by Ugly Kid Joe, Bruce Dickinson and Corrosion of Conformity. While these two are examples of the good, you also have the downright awful. Try the tribute to KISS called “Hard To Believe”. This is a collection of really crappy indie/punk/alternative bands doing horrible renditions of KISS songs with a cover of “Do You Love Me” by Nirvana being the “big one” off this collection. This one made me even wonder if these fuckers ever even listened to KISS. Also on the bad side, you have ANY “tribute” put out Perris Records. This is a metal/hard rock label that usually puts out half-assed tributes to bands featuring other 3rd rate hair bands/singers fronting other bands. These can commonly be found in cutout bins or under someone’s beer at a party.
The cover song is truly a powerful tool. It can make you and/or break you as an artist and as a listener, it can either excite you or piss you off to no end. Either way, the cover song is what it is. Its a door into another realm of music whether you like where it takes you or not.
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