Well the pleasure, the privilege is mine

There are bad covers. There are mediocre covers. There are good covers.

And then there are fantastic covers.

Go here - http://thesmithsproject.blogspot.com/ -these are amazing. Buy some songs, they are lovely. Janice Whaley has made something truly beautiful and intimate. Transformed, reinterpreted - but still true.
(Thanks, oddly enough, go to @michaelianblack on Twitter for the tip on this. Comedy AND good taste in music!)

I suggest starting with one of my favorite songs in the world - There Is A Light That Never Goes Out.

Or  the classic - Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now

Or - I Won't Share You - which to my surprise features Thomas Lennon on guitar - which just means my comedy/music world is just blowing up all over! His appearance is less surprising though, given Lt. Dangle's love of Morrissey.




******************************************************************

This actually led me to a post I have been considering for a while now, so that was handy since I had already pondered other good Smiths/Morrissey covers and picked the rest of these in a draft. I love The Smiths, and I adore Moz, so for me to like a cover of one of their songs - that in their original form I've already spent hours listening to, that already has personal meaning, that is already so ingrained in my heart - it has to have something special, a little more than with most other stuff. A certain twang or spark of feeling... I can't explain it. If you love a song one way, a cover has to hit you just right. Very rare.


"Sweet and Tender Hooligan" - covered by Nouvelle Vague 






"First of the Gang to Die" - covered by Zee Avi






Hmmmmm, those first three feature female vocals. Interesting how perfectly that works. Great job, ladies!    Now a few male vocals for equality -

"Every Day is Like Sunday" - Colin Meloy (of the Decemberists)





And of course,
"The Headmaster Ritual" - Radiohead




What say you, readers, what have I missed?
And what bands/songs that are precious to you have you found good covers of?

You Could Have It So Much better

Whatever happened to Franz Ferdinand? I liked them. They just came to mind this morning, I had to add some of their stuff to my phone playlist.   I guess word is that they may have music coming out in 2011? Let's hope so.

So many literature references... who else would have a song (Love and Destroy, live performance link) inspired by the Russian classic The Master and Margarita? (Which you can get as a graphic novel? Want! Also, I feel that book comes up all the time... I am a Russian lit fan, but it wasn't one of the first ones I read. And yet in the years since reading it I feel like I see/hear a lot of refs. Maybe I am just too shocked to find other people who read? LOL I am a snob.)

Most recently -

Apparently they worked on a Dior campaign - "Eyes of Mars":


And did a song on the Alice in Wonderland soundtrack - "Lobster Quadrille" - which is fantastic:




And thankfully, the old stuff is still a delight:


"Darts of Pleasure" - One of my favorites. Just the way he says 'so leisured' and 'words are poison darts of pleasure...' RAWRR. However, there's a lot of teeth in this video, and I am not a huge fan of mouths/teeth displayed in such fashion. Kinda gross. Still good.





"This Fire"






"The Dark of The Matinee"






"Take Me Out"




"Can't Stop Feeling"  - which is a more recent video (2009), and the song is not my favorite, but they showcase a little adorkalicious dancing midway, which I pretty much always approve of. Also I think someone gets hit with a prosthetic/mannequin leg? Also approve.

Songs about cities, continued! Sweet Home San Diego

So since I just did two songs about Portland, OR - I figured I should probably show a little love for my own hometown of San Diego, CA. "America's Finest City" (according to the seal on our police cars). I actually couldn't think of that many, possibly because San Diego is a big city, but it's not like a big city -

 we're not NYC




we're not Los Angeles




we're not even San Francisco





And I feel songs about places in general can be tricky, is it an homage, or just where the song was written, or is it just the feeling evoked in/of that place. Some places are probably namechecked a lot more frequently than others, and San Diego is not one of those places. Which is kind of sad, because it is lovely. Sand and water and desert and Mexico next-door, that should be plenty of inspiration, right?


California as a whole gets a lot of love - for example, this classic ode, where 2Pac does in fact say "it's all good from Diego to the Bay."






*** But just about San Diego?***






One of the most famous San Diego related songs, though it is mentioned solely in the title,  is "San Diego Serenade" - Tom Waits - which is an amazing song. (Tom Waits grew up in San Diego, see, we are like, connected!). That voice! I love him. Hard. Which reminds me that Tom Waits is one of the few people on my list of people I would like to see live in concert before I die. I need to get on that!






Then because I was a teenager then, you get two 90s songs about San Diego. Neither of the videos really prominently features SD places though, which is really sad. According to YouTube comments, the Sprung Monkey song is actually filmed in San Pedro?? Very sad. I have to say I am mildly irked that these are the limited offerings out there! These songs got a lot of airplay on SD local radio, so hearing them again really makes me nostalgic, LOL, even though the videos are not great / do not do the place justice. The music is very classically of that time/place though. Ska/punky... oohh the joys of my adolescence.

"My Town" - Buck O Nine



"Get Em Outta Here" - Sprung Monkey









Going in a completely different direction from that type of music, the always-amazing Stephin Merritt's side-project The 6ths have a wonderful song entitled "San Diego Zoo" (no real video of course, but listen to the song, it's great - link goes to a YouTube with animal pictures set to the audio). Again no footage of beautiful SD, or our fabulous zoo (the zoo by which all zoos are measured!).


Then I just googled San Diego songs, which led me to a Yelp discussion thread which basically just mentions these same few songs, and then this video: "San Diego Song" - The Coronas - I have never heard of them, apparently they are Irish or something? Parts of the video appear to be beachy. I find this rather bland.








San Diego, we could be doing better. Not just in terms of songs, but videos too - I want some great shots of downtown at night, I want the Coronado Bay bridge...




I am tempted to include the theme song to the now-defunct but spectacular-while-it-lasted Terriers, which was set in Ocean Beach (which is part of SD, but portrayed in the show as being more distinct/own police etc), and filmed there. Which helped draw me into the series, and also made me horribly homesick every week as they traipsed around town, like when they'd go to Balboa Park. Why aren't more shows filmed thereabouts? Loved it.

The theme is great and very surf-rock vibey and catchy. It definitely makes me think of home. And they reference Ysidro (San Ysidro is part of SD and has the world's busiest land border crossing to Mexico according to Wikipedia), so that counts as a San Diego song in my book.

"Gunfight Ephiphany (theme from Terriers)" - Robert Duncan







WOW. I know this post is much much larger than I intended now. Sorry. I got carried away. (I also thought I should look at some YouTube videos of flyovers of San Diego scenery, but that made me a little sad so I had to stop that, haha.)

So I will end this with the most recent, and my favorite of this list (or at least tied with Tom Waits cause that's a classic). And it is perfect because it mentions both where I came from ("the birthplace of the summer") and where I live now ("where the forest and the water become one"), which seems to me almost like fate, because what are the odds of that happening, statistically? I certainly never thought about it when I first heard this song a long long time ago.

"June on the West Coast" - Bright Eyes







Any ones that I have missed, other native San Diegans?
Or thoughts about your own hometowns, readers?

In Portland, you can put a bird on something and just call it art

This is from last night's premiere of the hilarious show "Portlandia" (on IFC) starring Fred Armisen (SNL) and Carrie Brownstein (of Sleater Kinney fame). This was the opening, as they lovingly explain the dream of the 90s and where it can still be found.

Does your flannel shirt still look fly?








And if we're already discussing the great city of Portland, Oregon - we can also enjoy the brilliant Loretta Lynn/Jack White collaboration of the same name (where Portland + sloe gin fizz = love):

Map of Tasmania

Warning for people of delicate sensibilities - if you may be offended by a song about pubic hair and a video full of glittery crotch shots... then you may want to skip this one. It is not for everyone, and with the pulling up of skirts and whatnot, might not be appropriate for the office (though I don't think there's any real nudity).

But it is so fun! The song is super catchy, and the video is pretty much exactly what you would want to go along with it - very dance-alicious and happy. I like the total randomness of the song/video (on her blog, linked below, you can read about when/how she wrote it and the making of the video). The video is like a crazy party thing with lots of flashing, which is appropriate for a short, quirky song of this subject matter. It couldn't be too serious.

Even if you're not a fan of her or her work/image/ethos - I think the video is hilarious. And on a slightly serious note, it has an important message - Amanda Palmer's blog has a quote from the video's director, Michael Pope who says:

"On the surface its a song about girls growing out their pubes. Underneath that however is a call to everyone, woman and man alike, to discover the courage to be themselves. Whoever that may be. No small order in a world that is constantly bombarding us with who and what we “should” be."

"Map of Tasmania" - Amanda Palmer

Thursdays can be slow

Two very different songs were stuck in my head today. No connecting threads that I could figure, just what popped up. The first was a shuffle play that I had pretty much forgotten I had. And the second I actually didn't have on my iphone's playlist (my iPod is giving me trouble so I've been relying on the phone lately, which is much more space limited) - and when I realized it wasn't there it made me extremely sad, so I had to set a notice to remind me to be sure and add it tonight.



"Miss Independent" - Ne-Yo: Which I just find amusing because you don't hear a lot of songs about men valuing women for having all their bills paid on time without a man (as opposed to say, T.I.'s 'Whatever You Like'). So that's kind of nice (although maybe it veers into trying-too-hard-to-win-us-over territory?). I don't care, I just wish I worked in an office with hot well-dressed people (Actually, that's a lie, cause I'm too lazy to dress cute every day, my office of jeans-wearing academics is pretty much perfect. And if anyone looking like that walked in, I probably couldn't get any work done anyways. So I'm fine without it. But still.)




AND

The Cutter - Echo & The Bunnymen: "Will I still be soiled/ when the dirt is off..." (What. A. Voice.) I am not really sure what goes on in this video, there's a lot of standing around and a lot of snow. But that's acceptable because I just spend the time being mesmerized by that voice coming out of those lips. 

Echo And The Bunnymen - The Cutter

Rab | Myspace Video

Echo makes me so deeply happy.