Goodbye Earl

The Original:  Goodbye Earl was a major hit for the Dixie Chicks written by Dennis Linde.  It was recorded on their album Fly in 2000.  It reached 13 on the Billboard Country listing, and 19 in the Billboard  Hot 100.

The Cover:  This song was covered by the punk cover band Me First and the Gimme Gimmes.  Until I heard this cover, I had never heard of this band, so once again, I am just going to quote from wikipedia.com:

Me First and the Gimme Gimmes (often shortened to just the Gimmes or Me First) is a punk rock supergroup and cover band that formed in 1995. The Gimmes work exclusively as a cover band. The band is named after a children's book of the same name by Gerald G. Jampolsky and Diane V. Cirincione. The Gimmes have a habit of wearing quirky matching costumes during their live shows.

They entered the studio on April 3, 2006 to work on their sixth album, Love Their Country, which was released on October 17, 2006.   The theme of this album is country and western, and includes covers of tracks by Dixie Chicks, Garth Brooks, Hank Williams, Sr. and Johnny Cash  . Prior to the release of the album, Fat Wreck Chords released a digital label sampler, iFloyd which included "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky" by the band.  

Why I Picked it:  When I fisrt heard this song, I thought it was hysterical.  A song about two friends killing an abusive husband.  The funny thing is, even though it's a very dark subject, they sing it in a very bouncy, light hearted way.  As I was discussing this Goodbye Earl with a friend of mine, he told me that this song was "Country Punk".  I laughed and told him he was right. 

And now here we have a punk version of this "Country Punk" song.  There's really not much else I can say about it.

Snowblind

The Original:  Black Sabbath originally recorded this song for their 1972 album Vol. 4.  It was originally called Snowblind do to the number of songs on that contained references to cocaine use.  In the liner notes of the album Black Sabbath thanked the "COKE-Cola company", also during that time, bassist Geezer Butler had a sticker on his bass that read "Enjoy Cocaine".  As you can guess, they were hitting the powder pretty hard at this time.

The Cover:  System of a Down covered this song on the 2002 album The Osbourne Family Album.  It was a tribute album based on The Osbournes television show, which included the theme song, Crazy Train covered by Pat Boone.

Why I Picked It:  I know I've already done a cover of a Black Sabbath song, but they were a great inspiration to me and many other musicians, so there are a lot of really cool covers of their songs. 

The main reason I picked this one is the dramatic flair that System of a Down gives the song, especially in their use of dynamic range.  It starts off loud and angry with a guitar tone that Tony Iommi only wished he could have gotten back in the 70's.  Then for the chorus, they quiet everything down, just to punch it up even louder for the bridge.  They also sped up the song a little bit giving it a frenzied feel, which makes sense since the song is about cocaine use.  The dynamics moving up and down also help illustrate the highs and lows of cocaine use.

Sweet Child o' Mine

The Original:  This song first appeared on Guns N' Roses debut album Appetite for Destruction.  It was there third single off of that album, and went straight up to number 1 in the American Bilboard charts.  It went to number 6 in the UK.

The song was appearently written in a very short time, with Slash messing around with the lick during a rehearsal session, playing the opening riff, the other guys starting to play around, and then Axl grabbing a poem he wrote for his girlfriend Erin Everly. 

In an interview with Hit Parader magazine in 1988, bassist Duff McKagan noted:

"The thing about 'Sweet Child,' it was written in five minutes. It was one of those songs, only three chords. You know that guitar lick Slash does at the beginning? It was kinda like a joke because we thought, 'What is this song? It's gonna be nothin', it'll be filler on the record.' And except that vocal-wise, it's very sweet and sincere, Slash was just messing around when he first wrote that lick."

The Cover:  This cover was brought to my attention by Fanger from the Joe Flyman Show.  It's performed by the Swedish band Taken By Trees.  I had never heard of this band before so I'm just going to quote their wikipedia page:

"Taken by Trees is the solo project of Victoria Bergsman, former lead singer for The Concretes. The act's debut album, Open Field, was released on June 18, 2007. Four demo songs ("Tell Me", "Too Young", "Lost and Found" and "Hours Pass Like Centuries") had previously been recorded under the production of Björn Yttling and were available on the band's official website beginning September 13, 2006."

This song was released as a single in 2008.

Why I Picked It:  The song is played with only a piano, accoustic guitar, and drums.  The minimalist way the song is arranged makes you focus on the lyrics.  The way that Victoria sings the song makes it sound more like a ballad than the original way that Guns n' Roses did.  She also has a mounful quality to her voice, like she's singing about a lost lover instead of someone she's currently with.  All in all it makes for a very interesting take on a very famous song.

Nirvana vs Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give Your Teen Spirit up

Now, I usually don't do remixes for my creative cover segment, but this time I just couldn't resist.

Originals:  "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana.  This was Nirvana's breakthrough song on their album Nevermind #6 in the Billboard charts, and is considered the death nell for '80's hair metal.

"Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley was on his 1987 album Whenever You Need Somebody.  It reached number on status pretty much everywhere.  In the last couple of years it's had a revival with the phenomenon of "Rick Rolling".

The cover: "Never Gonna Give Your Teen Spirit Up" is a mix of the two songs by DJ Morgoth.  I've never really heard of him before, but at the time of me writing this article, it's had 1,241,455 views.  If you want to download this song, or check out other mixes by this artists, you can check out his blog at http://djmorgoth.blogspot.com/

Here's the video from YouTube

"Paranoid"

This week, I bring you a song that is dear to me.  It is a song that was originally by, and covered by two of my favorite bands, Black Sabbath and Type O Negative.

I first heard this cover live at a Type O concert.  I had no idea what it was until half way through the song, I started to recognize the lyrics, and after listening to this cover, you'll see why.

The Original:  from wikipedia "Paranoid" is a song by Black Sabbath that appears on the band's second album Paranoid. Supposedly, the members of Black Sabbath put together this song in 15 minutes based on a solo by Tony Iommi. This song was only meant to be a "filler", but became one of Black Sabbath's most well known songs: the band members were sent back to the studio to record one more song because the record company deemed the album was too short, and planned to quickly record a filler song, but eventually wrote and recorded "Paranoid". The record company changed the album's name from War Pigs, as it was originally intended, to Paranoid out of fear of a backlash from supporters of the Vietnam War."

The song was released in July 1970

The Cover:   Type O Negative covered this song on their 1992 album Origin of Feces.  As a follow up to their debut album (Slow, Deep, and Hard) this album is kind of an oddity.  The record company (RoadRunner) wanted Type O to do a live album.  What they did instead was go into the studio and fake one.  They recorded a set, and added audience sounds, including the audience yelling "You Suck!" at the band.  Half way through the album they have to stop the show because somebody called in a bomb threat.  

Anyway, I'm digressing, the cover is a studio track (even though the whole album was recorded in a studio, this one has no audience sounds, and is much more polished) at the end of the album

Why I Picked It:  First of all, Type O Negative takes a song that was originally 2:48, and stretch it out to 7:21!  Needless to say, they slowed the song WAAAAAY down, and gave it a VERY creepy feeling.  The original gives us a very manic view of the subject matter, while the cover gives us a more depressing view.  The line "Can you help me feel love/ 'Cause I'm not made of steel" has a whole different feel on the cover song.