Wednesday, June 3, 2009

I am familiar with all internet traditions....but what is this "meme" you speak of?

This is the cover meme, which I was tagged with via Sunny Skeptic at Sunny Skeptic.  Rules:  name the worst and best covers done for a song , and tag 4 other bloggers to do the same.   I imagine it is like some sort of strange ponzi scheme, except with more Marilyn Manson.

There are oh so many options, that I can scarcely bring myself to choose.  So, I'm pretty much just going to come up with the first ones I can come up with that are worthy of mention.  It took much consideration to determine the worst, because there is such a large candidate pool.  I specifically debated including many of the covers of Personal Jesus (there's a cover that was done by Johnny Cash for fuck's sake!), Rebel Yell, and a recent rock cover of the song Careless Whisper by Seether (oh boy, was that hard to turn down).  But, I think I am going to have consider Stahlhammer's cover of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" to be the greatest crime against good music that I could manage to find.




Just so that you could have a reward for your eardrums, and in order to fully appreciate how horrible that cover was, here is the original.


For the best cover, it is a tough call.  White Zombie did an excellent cover of "I'm Your Boogieman" but by completely changing the tone of the song and repurposing too much for me to be able to say that it was actually an improvement.  The Ataris did an excellent cover of Don Henley's Boys of Summer, but did not improve it by that much and merely capitalized on what was a rather good song to begin with.  Korn did a cover of Creep that was essentially as good as the Radiohead original.  But, I've got to go with a pet favorite of mine:  Gary Jules' cover of the Tears for Fears song "Mad World". The only difference is one of tone, pacing, and sound effects, and both are very good. But, I think that the cover is an incredibly effective alteration of the original to achieve a similar purpose.

The original:



And the cover version:




Well, that's that, I suppose. I tag you: mac, Pliny, Mandar, and Maze Monster. Have fun.  Over and out.



Edit: Changed version of the original "Another Brick in the Wall" video to one that has less filler.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Like your pick for best cover, but I have to say for worst cover you really picked an awful one! Way to go! :)

pboyfloyd said...

I heard the Jules cover first and the original sounds like a 'you-just-didn't-get-it' tunified cover.

Having seen musicians 'in action' the Jules version seems the obvious way to go with the sadness of the tune matching the sadness of the words.

on the 'worst' one, I'm going to have to take your word for it that it is worse than Shatner's version of 'Rocket man.' compared, as I believe my head would explode if I listened to 'the worst version of the 'Time', unless it was actually live, in which case I could just feel sorry for them.

Pliny-the-in-Between said...

You Suck seeker for forcing me to re-confront some of the worst crimes against art that I have tried to purge from my memories ;)

What are the rules? How do I link the videos (omg I hope there aren't any!)

I have 2 that popped immediately back into my consciousness, one of which surely has already been chosen - William Shatner's cover of MacCarther Park!, but the original is so putrid to begin with its more like abuse of a corpse than ruining music so I'll post greater actual crimes.

Pliny-the-in-Between said...

I suppose with a reread I should clarify - I'm not saying that abusing a corpse is not a bad crime, just not one of the musical variety.

Asylum Seeker said...

Oooo, including things sung by William Shatner in your pool of possible worst covers? Now that's just stacking the deck!

I don't know much about the rules except the simple choose the best cover, choose the worst one, link to four other people to do the same. The embedded videos are optional, but you can do them just be searching youtube for the song, and then copying the code labeled "Embed" in the right-hand description box on the video page. Paste the code into a new post when you are in "Edit HTML" mode (as compared to "Compose"). Of course, video links work just as well, if you can even find a video for it at all.

Asylum Seeker said...

So, since I think I didn't answer your question correctly the first time about video links: you can link to a youtube video page, to an mp3 that you find of the song that happens to be free, you can embed the video, you can basically do whatever you can to just make sure that we don't have to just take your word for it when it comes to the cover song (also, note that you need not have any such links for the original song as a rule...I just really wanted there to be a contrast).

pboyfloyd said...

For some reason, by the time I got to commenting I thought that the cover was of the Pink Floyd song 'Time'.

I had a listen to the faux, "'Nother brick in the wall." and I came out half way through, hardly any worse for wear.

Surprisingly so!(no urge to stick ice-picks in my ears.(check!)

Hey, maybe it's the skepticism. Nothing could be 'that' bad, same as nothing could be 'that' magical, I suppose.

Asylum Seeker said...

It isn't as bad as Shatner, I'm sure. But, I just don't care for making death metal versions of incredibly good songs that are simply not suited for the format (save for the purpose of comedy). So perhaps I took off too many points for that...

pboyfloyd said...

Oh, I agree, it's horrible.

mac said...

OK, if I must ;-)

I've got to admit yours are pretty good. I do not, however think Creep can be done by anyother than Radiohead.

Michael said...

that cover of pink floyd was horrible... I've taken you up on the challenge and posted as well.

Asylum Seeker said...

Good to hear that the rest of you are reluctantly agreeing to comply. Resistance is futile, I assure you. And, mac, you are pretty much right. Korn only did an adequate cover of Creep, and it was probably the worst among the good covers I mentioned, and just barely to not be significantly worse than the original. That's really all you can ask for! (Just enough to justify giving them the gold...not by far...).

mac said...

How about best covering of oneself?



Clapton Layla

Maybe not a great job, or even a cover(just a reworking) but better than the original?

The Maze Monster said...

i took ya up on the challenge and posted :-)

i totally agree with yours too

Anonymous said...

Just an aside Asylum, you think the first few seconds of Stahlhammer's cover sound like Dave Mustaine with a sore throat?

Stacy said...

I can't do this one ... hopefully Sunny will forgive me - The only album cover that I can even think of is

Sugar Hill Gang - Rapper's Delight. :-)

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