Depeche Mode

Shake The Disease – Hooverphonic

Some Velvet Morning – This was a song that was performed by Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra sometime in the late 60′s. When listening to this psychedelic song, you can’t help but get mesmerized by Hazelwood’s country vocals. The video is pretty classic as well. I mean the guy is riding a horse on a beach with what appears to be wearing some type of futuristic garb for the time, and Nancy looked like she just floated down from freaking space. I’m wondering who can cover this song and bring the same level of mystery to it? That band would be Slowdive and the song is off their album Souvlaki, which was produced by Brian Eno. Another band that also did a cover of the song was Primal Scream with Kate Moss, but I wasn’t too keen on it.

Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra

Some Velvet Morning – Slowdive

Superstar – That’s right people your reading it correctly and there’s nothing wrong with your eyes. I know it was sung by The Carpenters, but you’re just lying to yourself if you can’t admit how good this song really is. It’s a prime example of a hopeless love song and has been used as a measuring stick for all the other love songs that came after it. Okay, I’m exaggerating, but I hope you get the point. In 1994 a tribute album called If I Were A Carpenter was released. From then on my senior year in high school was playing Sonic Youth’s cover of Superstar very loudly in my 92 Civic. It was okay though, because it was Sonic Youth. Fast forward 14 years later and it now shows up on Juno’s soundtrack. I guess it was a good cover then.

The Carpenters

Sonic Youth

Strangers In Paradise – Now there are many cover versions of this song and I can’t really tell you who the original singer was, but the more popular one would be Tony Bennett. The remake that I really like was Saint Etienne’s version of the popular tune. They added their groovy 60′s style to the song and made it just really chill, and of course Sarah Cracknell’s voice made it bliss.  I found a video of Tony Bennett singing Stranger In Paradise to a collage of Hedy Lamarr on YouTube as an example. Goodness gracious, actresses now can’t even hold a candle to the way these elegant beauties looked back then. I also was lucky to find the Saint Etienne version as well, but it’s not the actual video.

Tony Bennett

Saint Etienne

Well, there you have it. Those are some of my favorite covers that I truly appreciate, but I was thinking of doing a part 3 sometime later. I think I opened a can of worms with this topic and I certainly have more songs to discuss. Until then…

So I what I did was compiled a few songs that I really liked that were covers. Each one of the songs has the cover bands’ style all over it and it sounds like it could be an original. I apologize in advance for the sloppy examples. What I’m trying to do is let you compare the originals to the remakes, but they’re all in different formats. So, let’s get started.

Blue Flower – The original band that performed this was Slapp Happy in 1972. They were an avant-garde band formed in Germany by an an experimental English composer. Now that sounds avant-garde to me. Two remakes that were most noticeable of this song were Mazzy Star’s version from the album She Hangs Brightly and Pale Saints off the album In Ribbons.

Slapp Happy – Blue Flower

Mazzy Star

Pale Saints

Vapour Trail – This song I hold dear and so does every other shoegazer fan. Ride’s Vapour Trail off the album Nowhere was a song that captured it all and was one of those songs that was always on a British Indie / Shoegazer compilation album.  Now the band that covered the song were originally from Southern California, but relocated to a much cooler Seattle, Washington. In cooler I mean a great place to live type of cool. The cover band’s name is Trespassers William. My friend had this song playing on his Itunes and I was like ” Who the hell is this?! This is a Ride song!” After calming down I thought this was actually a pretty good cover and I like what they did with it.

Ride

Vapour Trail – Trespassers William

St Swithin’s Day – The original was written and performed by an English musician named Billy Bragg. He’s more of a mix between folk, and rock and he knows how to write a damn good song. Without this song I may have never heard of a band called Dubstar. Their version of St. Swithin’s Day is epic with its electronic pop grooves and Sarah Blackwood’s voice is just icing on the cake. This is such a good song and has been on many of my self made compilations. The video for Billy Bragg’s version is not the real video, but I wanted the full song to compare to and it’s the only example I can find.

Billy Brag

St. Swithin’s Day – Dubstar

Everybody’s Talkin’ – Harry Nilsson’s 1969 song was made popular by the movie Midnight Cowboy starring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman. For some reason whenever this song comes on everybody just has to sing it, and you know which part I’m talking about. Now the cover version done by the English band Moose is another great remake. Moose may of started as a shoegazing band way early in their career, but they definitely moved on and found their own unique sound. They’re a great band if you are into the whole British indie / rock scene.

Harry Nilsson

Everybody’s Talking – Moose

Stay tune later in the week for part 2 of My Favorite Cover Songs.

10pm rolled around and my wife and I decided to get off the couch and see what the hoopla was all about. We got to the place and waited for an hour and the band finally made it to the stage. I think the place was having sound difficulties or what not and they were running behind. It was definitely a interesting mix of people that’s for sure. Oh, let me just start off and say it was in Riverside so you know where this is going. First off,  Bros don’t mix with Depeche Mode. It’s like water and oil, it just doesn’t mix. You have a group of muscle bros with their flat bills and cool (fill in blank) t-shirts just looking utterly out of place. I don’t know, you think they would have a better time at a bar that plays Disturbed or something.  The rest of the people were either regular dress adults, college kids, goths, all black dress people, creepy old men, and old men with their old girlfriends who look like they should be listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd. Now you know why I said it was an interesting night.

The band actually did a pretty good job covering Depeche Mode. There were all dress like the 3 band members except one of the members looked more like Alan Wilder than Andy Fletcher.  I felt sorry for the the guy who dressed like Martin Gore, man those were some uncomfortable short, shorts. Maybe he’s used to them by now. The singer had all the David Gahan moves down especially the microphone twirl that Gahan does at every concert. They played everything from Photographic (I take pictures…) to the poplular Enjoy the Silence. Their set was about and hour and a half, so they played the gamut.

Overall it was fun, but like my wife and I were discussing, we enjoyed hearing the songs; however,  we couldn’t get too excited because it wasn’t like a real Depeche Mode Concert. I think we just didn’t know what to take from the situation.  Maybe we’re getting old or something.

I do give credit to Blasphemous Rumours though, they do cover many of Depeche Mode’s songs well.  On a side note Depeche Mode is working on their next studio album and are preparing for the “Tour of the Universe” in 2009.

Here’s a video of one of my favorite Depeche Mode songs that they didn’t play.

This past weekend reminded me why I love the winter months coming up ahead; however, here in California there’s not really a true winter season. To me winter is just a reminder of those calendars in elementary school with the image of the snowman and leaves being swirled up with a bunch of lines symbolizing the cold wind. So, when there’s an actual day of dark overcast skies, a touch of sprinkles and a cool breeze, I tend to enjoy it more.

There’s always been certain songs that I listen to through the years that reminded me of winter, or I should say a California winter. So What I’ve done is made a playlist of songs that reminded me of cool winter bliss. I decided to use the Yahoo Music Player instead of the usual links to the Apple ITunes store. I searched around for a music plugin for Word Press, but couldn’t find one that I trusted and have heard of. I did some research and the Yahoo Music Player was suppose to be real easy to use and it actually really was. I wanted you, the listeners, to experience more than just the 30 second clip of music. Those measly tidbits is not a good representation of what I’m trying to get across here.  Just make sure that you have your javascript turned on and you should be good to go. You can either click on the play arrows, or on the music player that will show up on the bottom of the page. I hope you enjoy the playlist titled Cloudy Days.

• Plainsong – The Cure
• But Not Tonight – Depeche Mode
• Just Like Honey – The Jesus and Marychain
• Atmosphere – Joy Division
• Primal – Slowdive
• Sarah – Mojave 3
• This River Will Never Run Dry – Moose
• Sometimes – My Bloody Valentine
• Ballerina Out of Control – The Ocean Blue
• The Process – Saint Etienne
• Here’s Where the Story Ends
• Vapour Trail – Trespassers William
• Catch The Breeze – Slowdive
• Blue Moon Revisited – The Cowboy Junkies
• Flowers in December – Mazzy Star
• Kinky Love – Pale Saints
• Asleep – The Smiths