Project 14: Anything Goes
Let’s start 2022 off easy. Pick a song. Any song. No constraints, except you can only pick one. Maybe it’s a song you shared on a playlist but really wanted to cover yourself. Maybe it’s a song you always wished would come up in one of our projects but didn’t. Whatever you want. Now is your chance. Pick one song and cover it.
All songs were due around January 30, but I’m taking a few late arrivals. ;)
Colby Heston covers Don’t Laugh, I Love You by Ween
I was chatting with Neil after Project 13 and mentioned how much I wanted to cover a Ween song.Here it is...late.
"...and when you locked me in the sun, to the tinkle I would run."
You can check out Ween’s original version of this song here.
Jacob Sharff covers Judy is a Punk by the Ramones
The story of Jackie and Judy is an interesting one to imagine. These two juvenile delinquents seem like they were going to some weird extremes to have a good time. Going to Berlin to join the Ice Capades. Signing up with the Symbionese Liberation Army. These girls were wild. In the song The Return of Jackie and Judy, they went down to the Mudd Club and they both got drunk. The Mudd Club was a pretty crazy scene in the late 70's. Very avant garde. Apparently it was named after Samuel Alexander Mudd, the physician who treated John Wilkes Booth in the aftermath of Abraham Lincoln's assassination. But that's a different story and a different song..
Judy is a Punk is pure rock-n-roll bliss, distilled down to its simplest and purest form. Magical. It was probably the first song that made me realize that if arranged correctly, 3 chords and a minute and a half is all you need. That, and maybe a little bit of glue... heh, heh. No frills. Zero extras. I mean, even the first 2 verses are identical. I have to admit I've always thought that was pretty brilliant. According to Wikipedia, this repeated verse is a reference to Herman's Hermits rendition of "I'm Henry the 8th I am". Maybe it is... who knows? Wikipedia also claims that the chorus of Judy is a Punk is a reference to the children's song "There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly" (Perhaps She'll Die). Again.. maybe? Who's in charge of these so-called Wiki facts?
Once again, this one was thrown together pretty last minute and so I didn't attempt anything too ambitious here. Was basically just trying to make something (anything) as quickly as possible without thinking too much about it. Used an acoustic guitar and a crappy old Casiotone MT-205 and then hacked away at it in garageband for a bit. Tambourine got thrown in last second. Not sure this went quite in the direction I had envisioned, but since I'm just feeling good about getting something (anything) made before the submission deadline, I'll just end with this quote from Dee Dee...
“I'd like to thank myself, and congratulate myself, and give myself a big pat on the back.” ― Dee Dee Ramone. ...
Noah Warren covers
Over at the Frankenstein Place by Richard O’Brien, The Rocky Horror Picture Show 1975
Meatloaf has always been my number one Karaoke go-to. When I head he passed I felt sad, but a part of me braced myself for some anti-vax lameness. Dammit, Janet, I hate when I’m right! I was listening through his catalog and slowly getting pissed when suddenly, his song from Rocky Horror Picture Show came on and I forgot how nostalgic I was for this movie. I would incessantly rewatch the VHS and show it to any person who’d fallen prey to considering my friendship.
I believe this was his first movie and I thought the best way to honor his passing is to do a cover of “Over at the Frankenstein Place.” It’s a great song to hear on your way to purgatory :). For those who have a life and aren’t familiar with this musical: This is the song Brad and Janet sing after they’ve suffered a flat tire in a thunderstorm. They see a light on at Frankenfurter’s castle and Riff Raff, a Quasimodo/Renfield/David Bowie-esque man-servant is observing their approach.
I love how much this song from the cast recording reeks of mid-seventies dingy glam. Rocky Horror and the Jesus Christ Superstar film were on heavy rotation in my household. Anyway, Meat, I hope my half-baked and harried harmonies provide a proper dirge for you as you exit this earthly plane. Hot Patootie, bless my soul, heaven can wait.
Check out how this sounded in the movie here.
Randy Dever covers Gold by John Stewart and Stevie Nicks
This is another good highway tune that Q98 in Fargo introduced to me.
It is a bit more straightforward than most of the other covers I’ve done.
I don’t really know anything about this John Stewart except that he made a song I like and got Stevie Nicks to sing on it. She doesn’t appear in the music video, however.
Oh yeah, here’s where it all started.
Jeff Kearns covers Now Be Thankful by Fairport Convention
Spent the better half of January on the Big Island. This song had been circling me. Sheshed on the lanai with uke. The coqui frog chorus providing the nightly backdrop. Recorded on phone then fleshed out the rest at home. Trying to milk the island vibes for all they're worth.
Check out the original song here
Neil covers Close to Me by the Cure
I saw Close to Me by the Cure as a compelling cover opportunity, because it’s essentially just a bunch of little riffs and noodles laid over one another like a handful of different little modular blocks. The Cure released a few different versions of Close to Me and explored variations in which they reassembled these parts differently, from the Head on the Door album to Galore, The Singles compilation to Mixed Up. Each version introduced it’s own unique flavor but stayed true to the core ingredients.
Working on this song, I realized that I favor process over product when it comes to my Basement Sketches covers. I think more about the things I’m trying to figure out than the listenability of the finished product. In this case, I was trying to come up with different ways to recreate these melodies using my random assortment of instruments and limited computer options. As is often the case, Tom helped me get rolling by providing a nice solid beat for me to build upon.
A few different versions: the Head on the Door version and the Mixed Up closer mix version.
TOOTH (Dale Flattum) covers Gut Feeling by DEVO
…and for reference, here’s the original, not that you don’t know it, but I’ve been including them for all of the submissions.
Bill Fricke covers Beware of Darkness by George Harrison
I kind of had this one locked and loaded, but I didn’t know it until I went back to it after attempting something else. I went through a George Harrison “All Things Must Pass” phase earlier this year and recorded three songs from that album, which turned 50 last year.
George was my favorite Beatle and All Things Must Pass is his best album. Beware of Darkness is second only to All Things Must Pass in terms of my favorite songs from this album.
This is my attempt at a “Bill’ Spector production as Phil produced the original. There are a lot of little hidden things such as choir, strings and several acoustic guitars.
The vocals are right at the edge of my range but I managed to eke out some decent vocals, and I’m kind of proud of them. Not to mention that I had to figure out slide guitar by trial and error.
And the lyrics are so incredibly pertinent to today, despite being written over 50 years ago.
In case you want to hear the original again, here it is.
Tom Stromstodt and Jay cover Brokedown Palace by the Grateful Dead
This cover was by request. I’d like to tell a fresh faced boy in a Fugazi shirt that he’d cover the Dead as an old man. He would have punched me in nuts.
I tried to keep the rollicking level and looseness high by one-taking most of it, so mistakes abound.
Jay played Ukulele and sang sweet backup.
Here’s how the Grateful Dead version sounds.
Grant Eull covers Slider by T.Rex
Once again it was extremely difficult to decide on what to record… more so this time than ever. Our options were endless; should I cover a Mats tune? I have always wanted to cover Within Your Reach and I have the drum machine and flanger to do it, but wait what about something off Weezers Pinkerton, I had just learned all those songs this summer and always loved The Good Life … could I sing it? That record made such a huge impact on me… wait what other records made big impacts on my life, there are too many, but…
Anyway I spun around like this for more then a week. Ultimately, I decided to go for a T-Rex tune because I loved how Dandy In The Underworld turned out from our Project 10. T-Rex Slider in my humble opinion is the ultimate “cool” song. The strings were a huge challenge but I found a free plug in by Spitfire Audio that had a nice sampled Cello and it all worked out ok. I may get around to some of my other ideas as I continue sketching, in the meantime “I slide”. Enjoy.
The original version of the Slider by T Rex is here, just in case you’d like to hear it again.
Eric “Czahr” Scott covers
Bucket by Neutral Milk Hotel
I will try to keep this as short as possible. Neutral Milk Hotel is very, very near and dear to my heart. I don’t generally pick favorites because it’s too difficult, and ultimately pointless, but I would be lying if I said In the Aeroplane Over the Sea doesn’t always immediately pop into my head the moment anyone asks me “what’s your favorite album”. There are many reasons for this. It was the soundtrack to my most formative years as a music lover and as a young adult navigating their first Serious Relationship.
It all began with a late night answering machine message from one very serious sounding Neil Fasen. “Czahr. Neutral Milk Hotel. They’re fucking amazing. I can’t explain. This is Neil.” It was brief, cryptic and I knew it was meaningful. I had just woken up in the morning for work and knew Neil would still be sleeping so I didn’t call him back for details. I looked online (this was 1998, there was very little) and saw they just had an album come out. I had time to stop by the Electric Fetus before work, so I rushed there, found the album and headed home to check out a little of it. I remember the clarity of those first chords and how they hit me. I was instantly transfixed and paralyzed by the music and had to struggle to turn it off so I could go to work. Holy shit. It was like weird aural voodoo, hitting my brain in a different way than anything else I had listened to.
This is already too long, but there’s more. When I got the message and the album, I was a couple days away from leaving for a trip to the Czech Republic to visit my girlfriend who was studying abroad. All I had for portable music was a cassette Walkman, and I wanted to travel light, so I put Aeroplane on one side of a cassette and On Avery Island (which I had rushed back to the store to buy after finishing Aeroplane) on the other side. For my ten days traveling around Europe, Neutral Milk Hotel was my only soundtrack – but I LOVED it. That trip was one of the high points and low points of my life. My girlfriend broke the news to me that she realized she was a lesbian and broke up with me on a train, with the unspeakable beauty of the Swiss Alps passing by through the train windows. That one moment is my favorite moment, believe it or not. And to top it off, the last day of my trip involved me losing my passport and plane tickets and spending an unplanned day in Amsterdam with a copy of The Diary of Anne Frank that I had purchased at the airport to pass the time until the US Embassy got me sorted out. And as we all know, that just happens to be the book that inspired In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. When I found that out later, it kinda blew my mind.
So, Bucket. Bucket was actually the first Neutral Milk Hotel song I ever heard. After listening to Aeroplane for the first time, I recognized the singer’s voice and realized they were the band that did my favorite song on the Periscope Records compilation that I had recently bought solely for the rare Beck song on it. Bucket is simple, fuzzy, low-fi and the same progression of four chords throughout the entire song. But I love it, and when Neil said we should cover anything we wanted, Bucket immediately popped into my head. I tried to keep it faithful to the original. Enjoy.
Have you heard the original version of the song, “Bucket” by Neutral Milk Hotel? Check it out