You know what grinds my gears?!?!?!

Yes you read that right I'm a steal this bitch right from Family Guy because there's a topic that's been on my mind for a minute and I wanna bitch about it so bear with me because I'm a hella go on a bit of a vulgarity laden romp through my opinion people and the topic that's got my gears grinding today.....Covers.

Ok now I'm not saying that I dislike the idea of one artist covering another artist music at all in fact I've covered that topic plenty of times on here just look back at the old two-fer Tuesday post and you'll see plenty of covers that I found to be very interesting and in many cases pretty fucking good but too often these day's I'm running into many of the uninformed masses of individuals that seems to constantly parade this idea that some cover version of a tune is better then the originals in one to many cases and that shit really annoys the fuck outta me.

My problem with that is simple...people are wrong there's a very VERY small list of songs that I could fully consider to be superior to the originals and after that about 98 1/4% of every other cover isn't as good and it's simple really because there's no reason that you should say person A isn't as good as person B's because if person A didn't kick so much ass then why would person B cover them and also in most cases covering a song is only really done to boost any particular audiences attention to any act because you're showcasing your talents with a tune they don't have to really put a whole lot of thought into and it's a quick dollar.

So in conclusion if you think that Metallica did any song better then anyone else, you think Shinedown's rendition of simple man is good, or you feel like telling me that any cover you heard on the internet by some schlub who couldn't get the views on the merits of their own music deserves to not be allowed to leave the house without an accompanying helmet because you're wrong and the fact that you think you're right really grinds my gears....

Tuesday Two-Fer

SO if you have followed this blog for the 4+ years it's been a thing you should know I FUCKING LOVE HALLOWEEN TUNES and like I've written about a few times I have this love for the song of the same name courtesy of the all mighty godfathers of hardcore punk themselves The Misfits and since Tuesday's my covers day normally and Halloween is Friday I could dust off this tune for yet another covering courtesy of a little ol punk group AFI....

Halloween-Misfits(1981) & AFI (1999)

So I was combing my CD collection and came across my copy of All Hallows EP by AFI and forgetting it's 13 minute run time was less than my trip to work I decided to take it and give it a listen and was reminded that they sound a lot like a Gothy Offsprings but that's irrelevant because this CD has their cover of Halloween which is about as faithful a cover you're going to get when you listen to it minus the odd creepy noise at the end I never much cared for but beyond that it's an honest cover that's pretty damn good.

Now if you read the first link above you know I find this song to be a classic so no matter how hard I try nobody's going to beat the Misfits it's just too damn good a track and since I've expressed this for a few years now I'm just going to fucking blast this bitch as loud as I can in celebration folks...

Misfits:




AFI:

Song of the Day 10/28/14

So with Halloween being this Friday people it's time to start getting the appropriate songs ready and in the process I noticed one Anthony Vincent AKA the 10 second songs guy has recently decided to bust out another 20 styles video in the form of this ode to Thriller which isn't as good as the ones before it but the range of acts covered is nice and the Oingo Boingo section made me smile so here's a good way to kick off a ghoulish week....

Tuesday Two-Fer

Sheena is a Punk Rocker-The Ramones(1977) & Husker Du(1987/1994)

Not going to lie this probably is my favorite Ramones tune right next to Pet Cemetery and I'm sure you guy's are aware of my ongoing quest to find Sheena and what not so I think like this song I'll keep this one short.

Husker Du are probably my favorite punk rock trio of all time people and the fact that they did a cover of one of the best Ramones songs has my inner fanboy just squealing like a bitch and while they honestly didn't do anything different with the song it doesn't fucking matter because it's Sheena is A Punk Rocker people....

The Ramones:




Husker Du: (note the year this was released was 1994 eventhough it was recorded on tour in 1987)

Tuesday Two-Fer

So for some reason or another as I work on getting shit done and this story worked out I find myself listening to a decent range of Pop Punk for seemingly no reason beyond maybe the fact that it's high octane sound and sometimes juvenile lyrics help me kind of mask the large amount of annoyance, anger, and utter disappointment that life occasionally throws my way without feeling like I'm being a whinny little bitch but that's neither here nor there really in the long run of things because for whatever reason my desire to not complain too much has lead me to motivate myself to semi crank out a Tuesday Two-fer for ya that's something interesting.

Apparently in the early 2000's there was this little pop punk outfit called SR-71 that seemed to have some minor success with a few singles according to their Wikipedia Page which isn't really much of anything really until you encounter the odd little bit of Trivia that is that they're responsible for one of the more amusing little Pop punk numbers of the early 2000's in the form of one 1985...

Wait I bet you're telling yourself that didn't Bowling For Soup do that song and you'd be right but if you look at these guy's they look pretty much exactly like Bowling for Soup minus one really heavy set member but even then that still doesn't really get us anywhere so let me inform you of something.

Yes we are all aware that Bowling For Soup had a good sized hit with 1985 but what's interesting was that it was written by SR-71's Mitch Allan and originally recorded by the band just before Bowling for Soup covered it and proceeded to make it a good sized hit by basically changing a few lyrics around but keeping the song pretty much the exact same as it was originally recorded.

So yeah today's a cover but I'm pretty sure it's obscured enough to were most of you didn't know that to begin with so like I do with it all I'm going to post the two versions down below and you can tell me what you think and of course like I enjoy doing make sure to go check out The Official Facebook Page where you can get updates every time I post...

SR-71:




Bowling For Soup:

Tuesday Two-Fer

So a few day's ago a friend of mine called me up and was like, "LISTEN TO THIS RIGHT FUCKING NOW!" and I was sitting there hearing a very blury sounding song that I couldn't quite make out before it finally hit the chorus and I came to realize I was listening to Maroon 5 covering Sex and Candy....

Sex and Candy-Marcy Playground(1997) & Maroon 5(2014)

So it's interesting when you come to realize this songs 17 years old people and in all honesty in that time there's not a whole lot I can say about the alternative rocker it's a straightforward kind of tongue and cheek kind of number that's still rather funky today but isn't anything to spectacularly amazing and the fact that it's managed to maintain some sense of groove all these years is about the best thing I can come up with.

Maroon 5 for whatever reason decided to take what's a fairly dirty number, slow it down, crank up the funk, and try to sex it up even more for a deluxe edition of an album that's both a not so cleaver method of saying it's their 5th album and also letting us all know what their target audience mostly possesses by this point. All jokes aside it's actually a pretty groovy cover that I don't dislike surprisingly enough and while it's not making this song any better it's doing what all great covers do and not making it any worse either and for that I raise a glass and let this funky little number kind of groove off into the sunset.

Listen below and tell me what you think...

Marcy Playground:





Maroon 5:

Tuesday Two-Fer

So I was talking to a buddy last night and she told me to check out this cover by Glass Animals of Love Lockdown and it was pretty cool actually because they took the song and kept it's heavy electronic assets minus the auto tune that so heavily carries the original and in turn along with these odd vocal samples gives the song a more old school kind of R. Kelly 90's r&b sound that's both sensual and kind of classy at the same time.

Love Lockdown-Kanye West(2008) & Glass Animals(2014)

West:




Glass Animals:

Tuesday Two-Fer

So it’s Tuesday and that means that it’s time for yet another exciting edition of Tuesday Two-fer and with that in mind I think I’m going to try something different with today’s tune because it get’s difficult to do what I’d say would be more legitimate covers.

Now when I say that what I really mean is that the songs selected got an actual recording for an album weather it was as a bonus tune for a deluxe edition or greatest hits package and I prefer to do those because to be blunt anybody can record a cover for Youtube and just let it do its thing which isn’t bad and I’ve taken that liberty every once in a blue moon because occasionally people do some interesting things.

With that in mind I found myself driving home and was listening to this CD I have where I basically took J. Coles Born Sinner album and tacked on some tracks at the end and I was reminded of this really bad ass song that’s kind of more of a reimagining then a cover but I figured that since it still maintains a decent amount of the thoughts, feelings, themes, and beat of the song it’s re-doing I’d figure I’d cover it today so not really a cover per say but rather a different take…

1979-The Smashing Pumpkins(1995) & 1997-XV(2008)

So before I get into the songs in question I figure I’d give some background into how I came across this little tune.

As I’ve posted before I use to spend a lot of time on the Smashing Pumpkins official Forums and whenever I wasn’t being ignored in the main band section I’d often go troll the general music thread and one random day I was just looking around and I saw some post labled 1997 and with curiosity in tow I saw a link to a Youtube video that I proceeded to click on and was greeted with a video of this rap song that was sampling 1979 to a video montage of the Sandlot and it blew my fucking mind just how appropriately amazing this was.

With this new found interest in mind I did some research and was able to pull up that the rapper in question XV is actually from Kansas which is pretty cool and he has a couple of other random songs that I enjoy but kind of eventually phased him out whenever I spent more time just kind of listening to other genre’s that I more preferred, but that’s beside the point because this song just kind of more so then anything else I could care to listen to by him has a more timeless feel to it that to this day I still find myself kind of rapping his verses when I hear the original.

So 1997 why does this particular tune stick so well with me…well it’s in all intensive purposes the fact that the lyrics almost paint the perfect picture of life for me when I was 12 or 11 and the use of what’s a really dreamy Pumpkins tune that to this day kind of has this very innocently child like carefree vibe to it partly because of it’s amazing music video and it’s fairly care free open ended lyrics and looping electronic sound with probably the most pop sound that any Smashing Pumpkins song had ever reached it’s a song that was kind of remained and not taken away from its initial themes and sounds.

The original of course a classic in its own right kind of already had lyrics that even when I was a kid felt like an expression of youthful glee and discovery and it’s the fact that XV managed to have the same exact thoughts but with a series of verses that more directly address that which leads me to appreciate it so much because it’s not a cover and it’s not relying on a gimmick instead it’s the best re-imagining of a tune I’ve ever heard and it maintains all the joys of the song it’s sampling but it also manages to be a good tune on its own and it’s that reason that it’s good enough to be covered on here…wow that was a terrible pun…

So of course I love them both but feel free to tell me what you think down below…

Smashing Pumpkins:

XV:

Tuesday Two-Fer

So it's time to start digging a bit deeper in the covers bin with something a bit random but interesting in how I can't really find anything negative to say even if the other artist in question is well...

Why'd You Only Call Me When Your High?-The Arctic Monkeys(2013) & Miley Cyrus (2014)

So before i get into explaining things I'd like to make note that in what's the most sultry and confident series of hits I've heard in quite some time from a band that only seems to get better and better each album in the form of the Arctic Monkeys have yet another smooth kind of slow burner of a tune that is probably the most accurate statement of the perils of being all fucked up with nowhere to go and managed to make it sound so good....

Now on the inverse we have one Miley Cyrus former miss Hannah Montana with her continued efforts to show that she's not that character doing her own impromptu version of a very non pg tune in an unplugged environment and performing in a very suggestive fashion to continue with her whole good girl gone bad thing and...well...it's actually not to bad which is kind of awkward to say because by no means am I a fan of this chick in any way really but this is a solid rendition that does it's best to not ruin an already good tune by trying to make it more commercial or feel as if she's solely doing it to look like a wild child no it's a solid rendition that does a good job of showing some vocal talents of this fairly middle of the road pop singer and doesn't make me mad that I sat through and herd her cover such a good tune which in it's own right is pretty damn impressive.

With that in mind here's the two versions and you can tell me what you think yourself down below or on the Official Facebook Page...

The Arctic Monkeys:




Miley Cyrus:

Two-fer Tuesday...kind of

So I'm rather late to posting today and I couldn't come up with a decent cover to actually write about but I figured since yesterday was the release of the Adore recording of let me give the world to you by The Smashing Pumpkins I'd link you guy's to a really interesting article I saw on Alternative Press' website about the 23 best Smashing Pumpkins covers that I'd honestly say that maybe 80% are subpar as fuck but still it's nice to see so many bands give great songs a shot and some of them are actually pretty good....


Click Here

Tuesday Two-Fer

You know of all the forgotten 80's alternative acts that managed to break that mainstream mold and carve out a good niche for themselves even though they really did deserve more earlier based on a solid foundation of quality material I'd have to say INXS would be one of my personal favorites for the fact that they weren't anywhere near as pretentious sounding as U2 and could craft either fairly epic pieces of music with some of the most killer chorus' or they just knew how to make some truly catchy little pop minded rock songs that weren't too alternative for the mass public to really get a grip of but still had enough girth to stand apart from the crowd of other new wave acts looking to become the next big thing and with that in mind I was randomly reminded of my favorite song by them and an interesting little cover done...

Don't Change-INXS(1982) & AFI(2006)

So what we have here is probably the biggest sounding kind of semi-inspirational rocker that I've heard form INXS and it's larger then life chorus is only enhanced by the fact that it employes a very kind of trancey jangly intro that just picks up pace continually before Michael Hutchence's vocals come in and bring forth some fairly introspective lyrics about love and loss and it just kind of fires and works on all levels which kind of makes me wonder how this isn't one of the tunes that got them to become a household name.

In comparison though if you were to take that kind of epic sound that the original has and completely strip it of all of that and make it a rather bleak kind of slow-paced mildly acoustic number you have AFI's cover which isn't really a bad thing in that they still manage to kind of build up through the course of their cover they just don't really lead to any resolve and it feels suffocated in some odd way which is a shame because this song's pretty spectacular eventhough after listening to the cover I don't dislike it it's just a difficult number to match but like I say every week you can listen down below and judge for yourself...

INXS:




AFI: