the way you treat each other really makes me feel ill

 Sometimes I wish I could tell other people they're being myopic when they harp on their pet issue and don't see the larger picture of ye olde shite being messed up muchly. But that's a fool's errand, and therefore I get the catharsis out in big riffs and taut punk rage.


echobelly - scream

REM - crush with eyeliner

the verve - so it goes

radiohead - lucky
ride - howard hughes

lush - superblast

wire - mannequin

mission of burma- progress
stiff little fingers - suspect device
the pagans - street where nobody lives

the wipers - D-7

the gits - beauty of the rose
the clash - I'm so bored with the USA
X- the phone's off the hook (but you're not)
soft boys - I wanna destroy you

the ruts - dope for guns
the undertones set - you've got my number (why don't you use it), teenage kicks, family entertainment, hypnotised

billy bragg - to have and to have not / help save the youth of america
the adverts - no time to be 21

sleater kinney - turn it on
discount - sleeping motor boy
tomahawk - waratorium
torche - in pieces

50 foot wave - long painting

nirvana - lounge act
fugazi - burning/give me the cure
jawbox - lil shaver

god machine - tremolo song

quicksand - how soon is now?
screaming trees - witness

cover me part 2

Also awesome, though I'm sure I'm missing a few...

 

cover me, part 1

College Radio Homie tells me he doesn't think much of cover songs, and there have been some bad ones, but there's something that I really like about when a band covers something and does it well, or turns it into something that you didn't expect that still works.

I was thinking about this because I was listening to a bunch of Screaming Trees b-sides last night while doing some reading for class. Evidently grunge bands and tales of nuns getting demonically possessed go together in my brain, but anyway, there's certain folks who can take a song and totally make it work, and other times it just feels utterly unnecessary or just plain wrong.

There are those covers where the original is rendered irrelevant or at least not as pleasing to my ears.

 The ones that do a complete deconstruction.

 Greg Dulli's remarkably good at this kind of thing. Thanks to Prince being a copyright goon, I can't find the stellar rendition the Twilight Singers did of "When Doves Cry," which is totally a first world problem. Still there's some other great ones here.

Longtime readers know I dig pretty much anything Mark Lanegan's ever done except those records with Isobel Campbell. The Christmas EP might be essential holiday listening now. That voice pretty much makes most songs awesome. That being said, I hoped that him and Martina Topley-Bird doing my favorite XX song would have been more awesome than it actually turned out to be. Still, the covers below are pretty swank.

 The air of menace in this Leadbelly cover gives it a sense of doom that's not necessarily apparent in the original. I know Cobain gets a lot of props for his version of this on MTV Unplugged, but this 1989 one where he's playing guitar is still my favorite.

Kristin Hersh always gets props:

I'm also partial to the Ramones' version of 'Somebody to Love'

 Jawbox was also extremely awesome in the cover song department. 

 

Other Joy Division covers that do it for me:

 

And the Mighty Melvins

One of my fellow DJs starts his show off with a Sabbath cover or two every week. Sometimes they're awesome, sometimes not so much. I want to track down a physical copy of this one since it's not even on itunes if I wanted it and this copyright chilling effect business makes other routes unconducive. 

 

Speaking of Sabbath covers:

all the love in the world

My sister's having me over for dinner tonight, so I'll get the love of my nephews and hang with the folks and maybe decamp to Algebra or a greasy spoon for some homework time and tea, we'll see. Life is pretty damn good, no need for single awareness days or gross candy or self-indulgent pity. Just big riffs and little babies. I see way too much drama around me to desire anything more than what I've got.

Though I love my misanthropic yearningish tunes. I don't think my inner teenage goth kid will ever grow out of it.