R.I.P. David Bowie 1947-2016

So one of the pillars of modern music has passed on to the other side today after an 18 month battle with cancer and only a few day's after his 69th birthday and release of his newest album and it's quite crazy to think about when you sit back and realize just how much of an influential and important artist he really was for modern music as a whole across a wide range of genres from glam, alternative, industrial, pop, and everything in between this man dipped his toes into everything and managed to leave an impactful mark on music as a whole that I'm pretty sure will pretty soon be recognized beyond the mans wildest dreams in terms of just how much he really did.

Now with that in mind there's not a whole lot I can really say compared to the variety of touching tributes I've seen all around social media so I think the best thing I really can do is post my personal favorite and the track that got me into this musical chameleon in the form of this timelessly BAD ASS rocker in the form of everyone's favorite fictional rock star.

R.I.P. Bowie The Stars look very different today......

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!

Ok people it's Halloween and if you thought for one damn second I wasn't going to post one of my legit picks for one of the greatest pieces of music ever recorded you'd be a damn fool but still seems appropriate to just wait and of course here you go people the tradition continues Happy Halloween from Sam's Song of the day....

Hmmmmm Sounding Similar?

So people as you know I do love me some 1975 and not too recently they dropped a new single in the form of a little jam known as Love Me which they seem to not want to post the full track on Youtube but you can either listen to it on Spotify or just listen to this preview...





Now as dope as that sounds I just kind of feel it necessary that upon a few listens I've come to realize that this song seems to sound like INXS doing their best rendition of Fame by David Bowie and if you don't believe me well here's the classic in motion for you to compare....





Now this could very well just be me overthinking things but you'd have to admit they do sound really familiar now don't they?

Song of the Day 1-6-15

SO I was trying my best to come up with methods of making the new year a smooth and consistent thing and realizing that I’m not too good at just posting random tunes that just kind of hit me at the most random points I decided it’d be easiest for the time being to have my week’s all follow a theme because while the scheduled weekly things like Tuesday Two-Fer and all that was good for me I think I got to take this blog in a more consistent direction by at the very least having the first few weeks be these themed series of songs while I start really listening to the newest music and albums coming out and start to really get a feel for things considering I just spent a whole month thinking back of the best songs I’ve heard all year.

Now with that in mind I thought to myself what would I do for my first week what could I possibly cover, and that’s when it occurred to me when I’m at work one of my co-workers enjoys having these light hearted bit’s of arguing about how he seems to think every cover version of a song is better than the original to which I often disagree because he seems to enjoy really shitty covers like Limp Bizkits Behind Blue eyes and Shinedown’s rendition of Simple Man which are both Cringworthingly terrible compared to the acts their poorly imitating.

While I do often defend the original tunes it’s not that I’m completely against covers in fact I’ve spent PLENTY of time covering covers on this blog and since their a pretty amusing topic I figured I’d post some halfway decent to pretty damn great covers that I’ve heard but upon coming up with a list I figured I’d not write about songs that I’ve written about MULTIPLE times when Covers come to mind so sadly I had to exclude both Die Die Die My Darlin and Hanging on the Telephone from this week’s list but even so I still managed to come up with some truly interesting  cuts so without any further adoo I figure I’ll start this week with the shortest cover in the form of this amusing little interpretation of the Misfits courtesy of one Guns N’ Roses…

Attitude-Guns N’ Roses (Originally the Misfits)

So  while I find this bands output after GNR Lies to be pretty junky they still managed to pump out a few interesting tunes here and there and even if I find the Spaghetti Incident to be a REALLY poor album it’s most certainly full of its fair share of interesting cuts namely this snarling little dirty punkish number and it’s true to form speedy no-fucks-given sound that’s pretty much note for note like the original but that’s also why the song is so good because it’s the best example of taking a good thing and not fucking it up…

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 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:

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: