Sugar Sugar by Julie London.
See several posts above.
Getz/Gilberto+Astrud Live at Carnegie Hall is quite possibly my favorite jazz album. And that’s a very, very tough call from a very very long list.
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I don’t know it, but will listen to it. My guitar teacher’s ex-wife put together a tour of guitarists back in the 90s, that consisted of Joe Pass, Pepe Romero, and Leo Kottke. After that, because of Romero, Pass recorded an album of jazz on nylon string classical guitar, Unforgettable. He was dying of cancer when he recorded it, and it was released after he died. It’s brilliant.
Anyway, you could make a pretty convincing album just of covers The Clash had on their records.
There are any number of covers records by worthwhile artists, Pinups by Bowie, of course, The Church did one called Box of Birds and they designed the sleeve to where you can decide which of the eight photographs they chose, one shot by my friend Marty, the fellow that named the parasite after me, would be the cover shot. Staying in the ch section, Alex Chilton did one called Cliches that I really like. He plays acoustic guitar over all sorts of, I don’t know, torch songs, maybe, and it’s something I can listen to most any time and get a lot out of. And straying not too far down from there, Cafe Tacuba did two, one called Avalancha de Exitos and then an EP of covers of songs by a Chilean band called Los Tres that’s called Vale Callampa. I don’t know what callampa means but vale means worth and vale callampa is a Chilean way of saying something is worth dick, and the first time Cafe Tacuba was in Chile they were standing around on the street and a car passed by and someone shouted out the window Cafe Tacuba vale callampa! so don’t tell me these guys lack a sense of humor. Those two discs contribute at least four songs to their current setlist, and I find it odd that covers they recorded twenty years ago or more have had that kind of staying power, but they have.
I’m not going to spend the next six hours sifting through my records to try to figure out which five covers I like the best, I’ll just mention two. Alejandro Escovedo put a live version of Mott the Hoople’s I Wish I Was Your Mother on a sort of CD EP that featured The End/Losing Your Touch. I like this period of Alejandro best of all, he was on an upward trajectory and hadn’t yet become completely full of himself and super serious (sorry Brandy). His version of the song is very moving. And of course Some Girls’ Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me). If you don’t know that song (and record, for that matter) intimately, I feel sorry for you.
I was going to stop there, but of course I won’t. Tribute records are often interesting. About as often as they’re total trainwrecks, I’d say. But there’s a tribute to Gram Parsons that I really like and Whiskeytown’s version of A Song For You is pretty great. Emmylou Harris is all over that record so surely Neil likes it. There’s a tribute to Leonard Cohen called I’m Your Fan that’s well worth knowing about. I don’t know if that’s where John Cale’s Hallelujah first came to light but it’s there. I especially like Ian McCullough’s Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye and Lloyd Cole’s Chelsea Hotel.
And I guess I will finish with a record called Feels So Good When I Stop by Joe Pernice which is billed as a ‘Novel Soundtrack,’ as in songs meant to accompany his novel of the same name. It’s a bunch of interesting covers, from I’m Your Puppet to Chevy Van and who knows what else in between, and it’s quite good. I really love Joe Pernice, so I’m easy. Now that I think about it, he recently released a record of Barry Manilow songs that he claims to have recorded with no irony whatsoever. I haven’t heard it, but if you like Joe Pernice and you like Barry Manilow, I would say this record is a no-brainer. Maybe you’ll find room in your top five list for Joe’s Mandy, who knows.
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I thought we were talking about the same album
Alejandro’s version of Sway is one of my faves.
And that Return of the Grievous Angel is a fucking gem.
I fucked up in my covers, my all-time favorite cover is the Sun Ra cover of Pink Elephants on Parade.
The truth is that good and even not-so-good material always gets covered, again and again and again. Some great musicians never did anything but covers, and jazz is constant covers of the American songbook. How many great covers of 'Round Midnight could you find if you looked just a wee bit? My all-time favorite cover is My Favorite Things by John Coltrane, the notion of which is that even the stupidest song is brilliant if covered well.
And my all-time favorite cover is Here, There and Everywhere by Emmylou Harris, which was not a stupid song to begin with, but no one has ever had better taste in covers than Emmylou Harris.
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I’ve heard him play Sway live, but I don’t know that I know of a recorded version of it. Where is it? Sway is a stupid great song anyway. I like to think of albums in terms of their first three songs for some reason, and for my money SF is as good as it gets in terms of the first three songs. I mean, come on.
We were, but I was trying to explain my list by repeating your list. It was your list, not mine.
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More Miles Than Money. Live album.
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For that matter, classical music is arguably almost nothing but covers, save for composers like Philip Glass and Michael Nyman who perform their own works.
It has a great version of Iggy’s “I Wanna Be Your Dog” too.
Ah, thanks. I just looked and guess what, I own that record. I guess that’s the fate of a fellow who’s an inveterate record buyer and not a lover of live records.
I’m not too crazy about live stuff either but that one plays like a studio album.
See, I was going to say. I know you and I disagree on Floyd’s Money, and that’s cool, and I guess we’re going to have to disagree here, too.
I just don’t really like that song, I guess. Although I did recently hear a version done by Uncle Tupelo that had a little pep to it and wasn’t too bad.
I’ll put it on here in a minute.
Thanks. Just pulled up a YouTube version of Alejandro singing I Wish I Was Your Mother, and it was a treat.
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BTW, saw the Avett’s again last weekend. They’re still very compelling live.
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Mi falta, I’m trying to watch some basketball at the same time