I was checking out the fantastic blog, HearYa this morning and they’ve started a new feature about cover songs that are better than the original and the most recent one features Jason covering Patterson’s song, The Assassin, from his solo album, Killers and Stars. Like HearYa, The Assassin, has always been my favorite track from the album and hearing Jason’s electric version of it makes it even better.

Maybe Jason will cover it on his next album…That! Would be awesome.

Patterson Hood - The Assassin

Jason Isbell: Live @ Mercy Lounge in Nashville, Tn:

Sometimes, you just see a band name or an album name and you paint this picture in your mind of what their music is gonna be like. Such was the case with the group Hellsongs. I saw the name HellSongs and the album title Hymns in the Key of 666, and right there I decided this was gonna be some serious Doom Country, in the vein of Those Poor Bastards or Sons of Perdition. I really didn’t even spend enough time on the emusic page to notice the cover art or the “rock/pop” genre classification, hell, I didn’t even bother looking at the track listing. All it took to pique my interest was Hellsongs and Hymns in the Key of 666, and I just knew that it was going to be Doom Country. I was sure of it. Furthermore, not only was it Doom Country, but by the time it made it to my thumb drive and got plugged into my stereo, I had decided it was awesome Doom Country.

I could not have been more wrong.

Hellsongs fashion themselves as “LoungeMetal” and what they do is reinterpret metal classics as acoustic/electronic songs more fit for a coffee shop. Remember when Tori Amos released that cover album which featured a cover of Slayer’s “Raining Blood”? Yeah? Well, it’s exactly like that, except that Hellsongs actually pulls it off and manages to make the songs their own, ala Richard Cheese minus the Vegas lounge kitch. Over 10 tracks these Swedes manage to reinvent Metallica, Sabbath, Slayer, Iron Maiden and others, including a particularly interesting remake of Megadeth’s “Symphony of Destruction”.

I’m not saying this is something you’ll put in heavy rotation, but it is a fun listen. It also makes for an entertaining album to put on when you have company and watch as they have an internal struggle trying to figure out just what it is they are listening to.

Hellsongs - Symphony of Destruction
Megadeth - Symphony of Destruction

Hellsongs - Paranoid
Black Sabbath - Paranoid

Success: Hellsongs - Seasons in the Abyss
Failure: Tori Amos - Raining Blood

Slayer - Seasons in the Abyss
Slayer - Raining Blood


Hellsongs Official Site, Hellsongs on myspace, Buy Hymns in the Key of 666

Original: America - Sister Golden Hair
Good Cover: Bobby Bare Jr. - Sister Golden Hair
Bad Cover: Spanic - Sister Golden Hair

I discovered Sister Golden Hair as a pre-teen kid going through his dads record collection. For some reason the song really struck a cord with me then and I love it to this day. A few weeks ago Aquarium Drunkard posted a Bobby Bare Jr. cover and here I am, reposting it.

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I first posted this back in May. Since then there has not been a single week pass where someone has not emailed me looking for the songs again. So, I decided to make a repost and include a little more information:

The Old Crow Medicine Show version of this song is available on their Troubles Up and Down the Road EP (currently Out of Print). The Jason Webley/Rev. Peyton version is available on bonus disc of their Two Bottles of Wine album. The Dylan version can be found on the 5 disc collection Genuine Bootleg Series 1 and finally the Against Me! version can be found on the Fat Wreck Records compilation PROTECT.

There you go. Without further a do and by popular demand…I bring you the original (and unedited) Wagon Wheel post:

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When I started typing this post I had no idea but today is Bob Dylan’s 66th Birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY BOB.

This morning I was sitting here listening to the new cd, Two Bottles Of Wine by Jason Webley and Reverend Peyton. At the end of the cd is a cover song that I instantly recognized as Old Crow Medicine Show’s, Wagon Wheel. Only, it’s labeled as Rock Me Mama (Bob Dylan Cover).

huh?

I am no Dylan expert but I thought if Wagon Wheel was actually a Dylan cover I would have known by now. This seemed like a job for Google. After a little looking I found this explination from OCMS’s Keith Secor:

“It’d be my pleasure to dispel the myth and rumor about the song Wagon Wheel, or “Rock Me Mama” as Bob Dylan himself called the song when he recorded it down in Mexico in 1972 for the soundtrack of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. This song was not released, and it was not finished either, this is a demo of a practice session of him, Rob Stoner, and a couple of gals doing the chorus over and over again while the bass player learns the bass line. That’s what I heard on a German bootleg about nine years ago in high school. And I wrote the lyrics to the song because I loved the chorus so much and I sung it in my head for maybe a year straight, and then just penned what I penned, which is something of an autobiographical story about just wanting to get outta town, gettin outta school, and just wanting to go play music. It’s sort of autobiographical like that. But yeah, it’s sort of a Bob Dylan co-write with about 25 years inbetween.”

Well there you go. As the late great Chris Thomas used to say, “That’s why you get up in the mornings. You never know what you might learn.”

Does anyone have a copy of that Dylan bootleg? I would really love to hear it. If you do please contact me.

Old Crow Medicine Show - Wagon Wheel
Jason Webley w/Reverend Peyton - Rock Me Mama

edit: Thanks to the overwhelming response from the folks over on Expecting Rain we can now hear the Dylan bootleg.

Bob Dylan - Rock Me Mama

Finally. Here is another cover I found by the band Against Me!:
Against Me! - Wagon Wheel

Okay. This thing has been on the internets for over a month. Admittedly, I am really slow on all things Ryan Adams and generally when another blog makes mention of Ryan I just scan down to the next entry. However, I heard about an awesome cover of Alice in Chains, Down in a Hole floating around and decided to check it out. In my opinion Down in a Hole was the best song Alice in Chains ever did.

I found an entry about it on You Ain’t No Picasso but it’s link was not working for me so I followed that to An Aquarium Drunkard’s post from a month ago about it. Again, dead link. I was beginning to give up but Aquarium Drunkard had a link to Who’s Driving the Bus and I finally got to hear it.

Autopsy Report: Fucking wonderful. Make’s me wonder if I should rethink my whole Ryan Adam’s indifference.

Here is the back story per Who’s Driving the Bus:

“Ryan Adams played a few shows last week to promote the upcoming release of his new album, “Easy Tiger”. These shows saw Ryan confined to playing only the piano and singing after suffering from an undisclosed injury….”

The cover was the show’s encore. You can check out the whole show over at the Ryan Adams Archive.

Ryan Adams - Down in a Hole
Alice In Chains - Down in a Hole (from the album Dirt)
Alice In Chains - Down in a Hole (from MTV Unplugged)

When I started typing this post I had no idea but today is Bob Dylan’s 66th Birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY BOB.

This morning I was sitting here listening to the new cd, Two Bottles Of Wine by Jason Webley and Reverend Peyton. At the end of the cd is a cover song that I instantly recognized as Old Crow Medicine Show’s, Wagon Wheel. Only, it’s labeled as Rock Me Mama (Bob Dylan Cover).

huh?

I am no Dylan expert but I thought if Wagon Wheel was actually a Dylan cover I would have known by now. This seemed like a job for Google. After a little looking I found this explination from OCMS’s Keith Secor:

“It’d be my pleasure to dispel the myth and rumor about the song Wagon Wheel, or “Rock Me Mama” as Bob Dylan himself called the song when he recorded it down in Mexico in 1972 for the soundtrack of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. This song was not released, and it was not finished either, this is a demo of a practice session of him, Rob Stoner, and a couple of gals doing the chorus over and over again while the bass player learns the bass line. That’s what I heard on a German bootleg about nine years ago in high school. And I wrote the lyrics to the song because I loved the chorus so much and I sung it in my head for maybe a year straight, and then just penned what I penned, which is something of an autobiographical story about just wanting to get outta town, gettin outta school, and just wanting to go play music. It’s sort of autobiographical like that. But yeah, it’s sort of a Bob Dylan co-write with about 25 years inbetween.”

Well there you go. As the late great Chris Thomas used to say, “That’s why you get up in the mornings. You never know what you might learn.”

Does anyone have a copy of that Dylan bootleg? I would really love to hear it. If you do please contact me.

Old Crow Medicine Show - Wagon Wheel
Jason Webley w/Reverend Peyton - Rock Me Mama

edit: Thanks to the overwhelming response from the folks over on Expecting Rain we can now hear the Dylan bootleg.

Bob Dylan - Rock Me Mama 

Finally. Here is another cover I found by the band Against Me!:
Against Me! - Wagon Wheel

If a person is going to dis hip-hop, inevitably they will mention sampling. “Fucker’s can not even write their own songs! Take someone else’s music and talk over it….where is the talent in that?” blah blah blah…. While there are a multitude of angles from which to attack this argument, I am not here to convince people of the legitimacy of hip-hop as an art. If you can not recognize it on your own then you are probably an asshole. The other day I was listening to the new Swollen Members cd, Black Magic, while I ran some errands on my lunch break. Something in the song Torture reminded me of a long-ago cover of Natural Born Killaz by the band Christ Analogue. The cover was from a 1996 release titled Operation Beatbox put out on the now defunct Re-Constriction Records. Operation Beatbox was a compilation of industrial bands covering hip-hop songs. While it was largely forgettable it did contain some real gems such as the Christ Analogue cover. This chain of thought quickly lead to how much I like The Gourds version of Gin and Juice. Somewhere amidst my stack of cds I have a Drive-by Trucker bootleg where they do a quick cover of Outkast’s song Roses in the middle of one of their shows. I guess that as the high-school and college kids of today grow and their bands start to gain recognition you’ll see a lot more covers of hip-hop jams. They were raised with hip-hop and see it for what it is. See, Puffy is to hip-hop as Hinder is to metal. Lloyd Banks is to hip-hop as Kenny Chesney is to country. What I am saying is none of those mentioned artists are really representing their claimed genre. They are just pop music in the correct and carefully selected/marketed uniform. That, at the core, is the most annoying aspect of trying to defend hip-hop to people who do not care for the genre. They only see hip-hop as MTV. All of this bled over into the afternoon where I sat in my cubicle downloading hip-hop covers I suddenly wanted to hear. I figured I would share some of them with you today. I am gonna post the cover and the original. See who did it better.

Original: Natual Born Killaz - Dr. Dre and Ice Cube
Cover: Natual Born Killaz - Christ Analogue

Original: Gangstas Paradise - Coolio
Cover: Gangstas Paradise - Battery

Original: Gin and Juice - Snoop Doggy Dog
Cover: Gin and Juice - The Gourds

Original: Renegades of Funk - Afrikka Bambatta
Cover: Renegades of Funk - Rage Against the Machine

I made mention of these covers on a message board I frequent and a friend of mine sent me a link to a cover of Natural Born Killaz that his band rec|use did. Personally, I think they did a phenomenal job. Check it out:

rec|use - Natual Born Killaz

While I was doing all of this I ran across an ooooolldddd school hip-hop jam that I loved back in the day and since I have no idea if or where I would be able to post it again I am gonna drop it on y’all now:

Man Parrish - Boogie Down Bronx

When I first saw the SAOSIN cover in Vinyl Fever I knew it looked familiar but I could not place where I had seen it before:

The Pitchfork posted a review of a cd by an artist named Josef K and I knew immediately where I recognized both it and the SAOSIN cover from:

They remind me of some X-Marks the Pedwalk albums I used to have:

Not exact matches but it was enough to remind me of X-Marks. I’ll bet I have not thought about or listened to those guys in 5 years. Wiki says they released a greatest hits in 1998. I think I might pick it up.

X-Marks the Pedwalk - Facer

MTV has the video for God’s Gonna Cut You Down from the American V album….I do not know why but I think it is a pretty good video all things considered. Check it out if you are willing to brave the MTV mess.

Here is the video for Johnny’s version of `Hurt’…..a cover so good it eclipses Reznor’s version…seriously, they should award the copyright to the Cash version based on complete superiority…..In 20 years nobody will remember that Trent wrote it anyhow.

Originally I was not gonna bother posting about this. All of the important Blogs had already mentioned it….but damn it….I like it…I think he did a really good job with it….Also, I think it is funny that Idolator slammed it w/o bothering to listen to it. So, here is a live version of Chris Cornell covering Micheal Jackson’s “Billie Jean”.

Chris Cornell - Billie Jean

Reviews in the world of blogs are pretty mixed….What do you think?