Need Song Suggestions - Bad Cover Versions...

[Guest]

For wired and/or strange Covers take a look hereCoverville

( but seems to be down at the moment )

[Guest]

and also very funny are Hayseed Dixie and their German cousins The Boss Hoss

[Scooter]

William Shatner or Leonard Nimoy had some hysterical covers. Or the CD Golden Throats: The Great Celebrity Sing Off.

[Nebbin]

For a very interesting set of covers, you should listen to some of the Leningrad Cowboys productions, such as these nuggets from their "Happy Together" album:
- "It's only Rock 'n Roll" by The Rolling Stones
- "Happy Together" by the Turtles
- "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" by Bob Dylan
- "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin
- "California Girls" by The Beach Boys
- "Sweet Home Alabama" by Lynyrd Skynyrd

The Soviet Red Army Choir backing helps create a very original sound. Their newer album "Zombies Paradise" (with a heavier sound) also adds:
- "What Is Love" by Haddaway
- "Goldfinger" by Shirley Bassey
- "My Sharona" (I actually really like this version) - by The Knack


Or, if you're feeling like some pain - try some of the covers done for the specialty Ballroom Dancing CD's (cf Casa Musica, Dancelife, Dancehouse etc). They often need to create their own recordings of songs in strict tempo, and this can sometimes lead to a real "what the ... ?" moment.

So many of today's radio friendly "dance" tracks are covers of older songs (usually from 70s or 80s) - such as Eric Prydz "Proper Education" (Pink Floyd), or Rogue Traders' "One of My Kind" (covering/mixing INXS's "Need You Tonight")

Then you have all the piano tribute albums (eg for Iron Maiden)

If you like Kraftwork, then you could always get the "8-Bit Operators" album - a tribute with a number of different artists covering Kraftwork's material using only old 8-bit sounds (eg from really old game consoles/computers). It's not as painful as it sounds

You may want to check out all the parody works (such as by Weird Al Yankovic), but these aren't actually cover's I suppose.

Nils Landgren released an interesting album in 2004 called "Funky ABBA", where a host of ABBA tracks are recorded, but completely transformed into Funk variations.

Years ago, there was a series of record releases called "Hooked on Classics", which had a full orchestra playing classical music over a disco-like beat... crazy stuff. Now days, a couple of Orchestras are doing something similar, but playing well known pop songs with just the Orchestra. The main ones I'm aware of are:
- "The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Plays Genesis Hits and Ballads"
- "The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Plays Hits of Pink Floyd"
- "The London Symphony Orchestra Performs the Music of Sting"
- both of the above have also done a cover of "Stairway to Heaven"... of course

Then there are the other odd hits & misses like:
- Def Leppard doing David Essex's "Rock On" (2006 "Yeah!" album);
- Erasure covering Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill";
- Apocalyptica (a string quartet) covering Metalica's "Enter Sandman";
- Tori Amos covering Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on piano;
- David Hasselhoff covering Ted Mulry Gang's "Jump In My Car" (oh God, did he HAVE to ????);
- Fatboy Slim covering (and I think improving) Groove Armada's "I See You Baby";
- Men Without Hats covering ABBA's "S.O.S.";
- The Muppets singing the Beachboy's "Kokomo";
- Sandra covering The Hooters classic "All You Zombies";
- Marilyn Manson covering Soft Cell's "Tainted Love";
- (PS: Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" is also actually a cover - originally recorded by Gloria Jones.);
- Shirley Bassey covering Pink's "Get this Party Started" (it grows on you );
- Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" sampled / remixed so much of "Under Pressure" by Queen & David Bowie I feel it's only a half step away from being a true cover;
- Bananarama's terrible cover of The Beatle's "Help";
- Hot Chocolate's "You Sexy Thing" was covered by T-Shirt and by Clock (practically at the same time), and also by Deee-Lite;
- Danzel covered "My Arms Keep Missing You", originally by Rick Astley
- The KLF (as the Timelords) created "Doctorin' the Tardis" basically out of Gary Glitter's "Rock & Roll (part 2)" and the Dr Who theme.

and of course there's one which I have to finish on:
- William Hung's stupifying cover of Ricky Martin's "She Bangs" (I'm dumbfounded this was recorded and published????)

[Nebbin]

Oh, I forgot one:

Paul Young put out an album called "Rock Swings". This curiously used the same title as Paul Anka's album (as suggested by an earlier poster) - for pretty much exactly the same purpose, just different song choices... these guys really should communicate more

In place of Paul Anka's versions of "Eye of the Tiger", "Tears in Heaven", and "Smells like Teen Spirit" etc... we have Paul Young covering "Tainted Love", and "Enter Sandman".

[Scratchy]

Some interesting covers I came across recently,
Gnarls Barkley's Crazy covered by Ray LaMontagne
Radiohead's Kid A covered by John Mayer
Radiohead's Paranoid Android - superb jazz piano cover by Brad Mehldau.
Talking Heads' Psycho Killer covered by Velvet Revolver on their new album.
Neil Young's Cortez the Killer covered by Dave Matthews Band

but definitely strangest of the lot,
Snoop Dogg's Gin and Juice covered by Phish (in a kind of cover/pisstake )

[Guest]

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/writing/2 ... wrote.html

Little known fact: Bob Dylan wrote every pop song since 1963.

[Weatherman]

Even funnier is Rolf harris singing "I touch myself"...forget the original but it goes like. - "When I think about you I touch myself..". It is absolutely hilarious. I believe it is a one-off he did for Radio 1 (UK), and I got it from Limewire.

Happy to upload it if there is anyone with some communal webaspace and then we could all share in the wonder that is Rolf.