The Pet Shop Boys

Another music meme, this one being started by Terrance: Cover Me.

Here it is. Do these three things, either in the comments on this post or in a post on your own blog that trackbacks to this post.

This one’s not easy, especially given the size of my music library. I’ll try, though…

List your three favorite cover versions of previously recorded songs.

• Tori Amos, Smells Like Teen Spirit, originally by Nirvana: I never knew how heartbreakingly beautiful this song could be until Tori did her cover. Almost an entirely different song.
• Creedence Clearwater Revival, I Heard It Through the Grapevine, originally by Marvin Gaye (?): A great 12-minute long jam on the classic Motown track.
• Bigod 20, Like A Prayer, originally by Madonna: American pop meets German industrial. While that’s hardly a new thing, this particular version stays at the top of my list in this particular little sub-sub-sub-genre.

(This is by no means a “final” or “definitive” list. Trying to pin down just three of all the ones that kept popping into my head was difficult enough, and I know that there are tons that I didn’t think of. I’ll be coming up with more and kicking myself for the next week. I’m already coming up with more possibilities — there are a ton of good covers of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, for instance, and I don’t think I’ve heard a bad version of The Temptations’ ‘Papa Was A Rolling Stone’, not to mention Tom Jones and the Art of Noise taking on Prince’s ‘Kiss’, or Sid Vicious ripping his way through ‘My Way’…argh!)

List three songs you’d like to hear cover versions of, and the artists you like to hear perform them.

1. Ain’t Goin’ Down ’til the Sun Comes Up, originally by Garth Brooks, re-done by Ministry with Les Claypool of Primus on vocals

I know we’re supposed to come up with three here, but this particular dream has been in my head for so long that it’s the only one I ever seem to come up with. Take a fun fast country song, re-do it with Ministry’s trademark high-speed distortion-heavy guitar work, and throw Les doing his best country bumpkin patter over the top of it. I’d pay good money for this to become a reality.

List three songs you would like to cover, if you could. (Assume you would have the musical abilities to do it well.)

1. The Pet Shop Boys, It’s a Sin: One of my all-time favorite 80’s tracks, and at times, one that has seemed all too fitting in my life.
2. Indigo Swing, How Lucky Can One Guy Be?: Great swing, and this is one of my favorite tracks off of an album that I have a hard time picking single favorites from.
3. Queen, Dreamer’s Ball: Queen just kicking back and having fun with a silly little ditty. The live acoustic version of this is particularly good.

(Again, hardly a definitive list. One of these days I’ll actually get suckered into Karaoke, and then we’ll see what I can actually come up with…)

“Stagger” by Underworld from the album Second Toughest in the Infants (1996, 7:37).