Cover to Cover - Foo Fighters

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Sure. It's also bound to polarize the hell out of music fans who don't want the perfection of a song in its original state tarnished by some rando-band's half-ass attempt at recapturing what made it great in the first place. I am such a fan, but I'm also open-minded enough to know that every so often a cover song comes along that can hang with its inspiration.

Whether a cover song works or not is purely subjective, though I hope to God we can all come together and agree that Madonna NEVVVVVVVVVVVER should've covered a classic like Don McLean's "American Pie." Scientific studies have proven that the day Madonna's version was unleashed was the day the music actually did die.

From time to time, I'll pick an artist or topic or theme or whatever feels right and present related cover songs for your judgmental consumption. Let's start with one of the best cover bands on the planet (they've had a few pretty solid original songs too). This one's for you, Shelly!

Most of the Foo Fighters' covers aren't on Spotify, so here are my top five cover songs performed by Dave Grohl and company.

5. Tie Your Mother Down / Queen

The hard-rock leanings of this early Queen classic make perfect sense for the Foos to showcase their own brand of rawk on. Grohl headbangs while drummer Taylor Hawkins handles the vocals. 

4.  Born on the Bayou / CCR

Hurricane Katrina brought the pain in 2005, enough so that "A Concert For Hurricane Relief" was aired nationwide to provide awareness and garner donations for the poor souls impacted by the unnatural response to this natural disaster. I watched the entire concert and no single performance dropped my jaw more than the Foos' covering this Creedence Clearwater Revival swamp-jam. 

3. Down in the Park / Gary Numan

Gary Numan has always been ahead of his time. The popularity that electronic and new wave artists would have with sounds that he, and others of the time (Kraftwerk, etc..) pioneered would elude him after his 'one-hit wonder,' "Cars," but science fiction and a dystopian existence would continue to serve as thematic foundations for his icy, synth-driven creations. The Foos rock the hell out of this Gary Numan and Tubeway Army track from the late 70s.

2. Band on the Run / Paul McCartney and Wings

One of my all-time favorite songs by one of my all-time favorite artists. If you're going to cover Macca, you better bring your A-game and that's just what Dave and the gang did here. 

1. Baker Street / Gerry Rafferty

Gerry Rafferty's biggest hit is lodged in my all-time top 20. Year after year. Without fail. It's been a favorite since I first heard it on the radio way back in 1978. The original's iconic saxophone solo is replaced here with a guitar lick that works quite well. There is also a slight lyrical tweak and a heavier overall vibe that enables it to stand up against, and stand out from, Rafferty's classic.

The Waiting Room - Lizzo, Melody's Echo Chamber, GRAVEDGR, Jain, Electric Citizen

I'm always looking to unearth tomorrow's favorite song, today. While these may not be the next big things on a larger scale - or even set up residence in the always-churning, 40-song universe of The Mixtape - they are still getting some ear-time and might just end up my (or your) next jam-du-jour.


Boys / Lizzo - Brand new (released yesterday) and coming soon to a pool party near you. This is a jam and a half that I have to believe would make Missy Elliott proud.


 
Shrim / Melody's Echo Chamber - This one's for the headphones. The last song on Melody Prochet's brand-new Bon Voyage is the one that's sticking out for me as it slithers and shimmers somewhere between head-nodding psyche-pop and toe-tapping dance-cut.



RAMPAGE / GRAVEDGR - I don't always listen to EDM, but when I do, which is borderline 'next-to-never', it's this track by an act I had previously never heard of who only has this one song on Spotify currently.



Alright / Jain - My friend's friend sent him this song the other day. Said friend of mine then sent it my way a short while later. Now it's my duty to pass it on to anyone who is hankering to hear a great pop song with an immediately catchy chorus. Who is Jain? I have no idea, but if all her songs are close to this good, I'm looking forward to finding out.



Hide It In The Night / Electric Citizen - I stumbled upon this yesterday (thanks, Instagram) and it instantly made me want to grow out my hair, book a precautionary chiropractic appointment, and bang my head like it's 1983 again. Sounding like the best parts of Black Sabbath, Rush, and Blue Oyster Cult, propped up with a swagger reminiscent of early Aerosmith, this 2:59 ass kicking makes me remember why heavy metal will never be anything I consider a 'guilty pleasure'. There's zero guilt in the thrill this song gives me.

The Mixtape 6/26/18: KSG, Kanye, Snail Mail

Happy Holidays 

This past month has been like Christmas for the rap fan in me. A glut of albums (KIDS SEE GHOSTS, Kanye West, The Carters, Pusha T, Rico Nasty) and tracks from Vic Mensa, 'Lgado, Ski Mask The Slump God, and Valee have been keeping the House Party in my head going while a generation behind me, unfortunately, deals with the loss of 20-year-old XXXTENTACION and potential next-big-thing PA rapper, 21-year-old Jimmy Wopo, both shot to death. I'm not going in to the societal elephant-in-the-rooms that are guns and mental illness here, but suffice it to say that my heart breaks at the suicides, homicides, and other unnecessary exits that so many have taken the last several years. Okay...back to the music.

The rap fest resulting from the above artists (and others) makes up around a third of this week's list, but it's not the only genre at the table. I love me a little bit of everything and am happiest when The Mixtape is reppin' most of the genres that I enjoy. To that point, this week has everything from the indie-pop perfection of Snail Mail, Camp Cope, and Hop Along to angsty snot-rock courtesy of FIDLAR, Jeff Rosenstock, and THICK. 

Want to dance? Hookworms, Drake, and the new Chic (💖), Chaka Khan, and Ariana Grande jams  should keep your feet moving. 

If you're in search of a lazy summer day vibe, may I suggest chilling out to the slinky (Natalie Prass), the soulful (MorMor) and the sublimely droning (Beach House). 

Sadly, we're without jazz as Kamasi Washington's nearly 10-minute odyssey, "Fists of Fury," fell off the 40 this week after a couple of months in its lower register. His full-length Heaven and Earth was released this past Friday. Once I commit to diving into it completely, you might see some more of his insanely good creations make their way on the 'tape in the near future.

On the horizon

New albums from Drake and Gorillaz come out this Friday, but I can't say I'm that excited for either. I tend to really like every tenth Drake song I hear and Gorillaz, while a mainstay of my auditory diet during the 00's, are a 'take it song-by-song' kind of act for me these days. 

What I am excited for (as both a music fan and a dorky grammar-loving English major) is the second full-length release from Let's Eat Grandma. Sure, no comma may result in some geriatric drama, but  LEG's transformative tunes are more than worth that risk.

Summer (Song) Time

Happy Summer Solstice, everyone! Summertiiiiiiiime, and the music's breeeeeezy.

What exactly is the "Summer Song" of a given year, anyway? Is it the most popular song between June and September that infects or informs the mainstream masses? Does "summer" need to be included in the title? Does the song have to be released during the summer or can it be a song that just feels like summer? What summer 'feels' like to any given individual is entirely objective, though I believe a majority of music lovers would agree that a Summer Song should replicate the effects of Vitamin D given off by that big flaming ball of gas sitting up in the sky. A fun, joyful jam that gets booties shaking and sound systems quaking. Really though, we already have YACHT's "Summer Song." What else do we need?

Apparently, a lot, considering many sites have already proclaimed their front-runners for 2018's Summer Song:

NPR, Fader, Refinery 29, Esquire, and Rolling Stone are among those that have already named one or more songs that will dominate the summer. If they're to be believed, this summer is Cardi B's for the taking. Billboard (the industry bible of music charts) even has a playlist of their Top 100 Summer Songs of All Time, spanning over 60 years of genre-hopping, chart-topping, and sometimes jaw-dropping tunes.

For me, a given year's Summer Song is usually something upbeat and sunny that demands my attention more than any other between Memorial Day and Labor Day. It's usually nowhere close to what the mainstream music audience gravitates toward. I generally have different needs and tastes than the music-listening masses so, when I embrace a Summer Song that is high on the charts, it's got to be one helluva track for me to get on board with...something so catchy, ubiquitous or otherwise earwormy, like 2013's "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke, T.I., and Pharrell. I didn't want to like that song as much as I did, but it sounded enough like Marvin Gaye's forever funky "Got To Give It Up" that I couldn't resist it. Much like Gaye's family couldn't resist suing Thicke and company for plagiarism -  a suit they ultimately won and one that was upheld earlier this year.

My Summer Song better brighten my mood the second I hear it and sound dope af when I'm cruisin' 'round town, bumpin' it from the stock stereo of my three-year old Prius. So yeah, it has to be something I connect with and feel so deeply that any reservations I have about screaming its chorus with the windows down are quashed in an instant like that whole Drake / Meek Mill beef from a few months and few thousand news cycles ago.

I can't tell you what my 2018 Summer Song will be until the next few months are in the rearview mirror; however, I can share some of my Summer Songs past and make a few predictions about songs that may be contenders for this year's title.

UPDATE: Cancel all other contenders for 2018. Chic just dropped the first single off their first album in 26 years (coming out Sept. 16), "Till The World Falls." I think we may have a winner. Stay tuned...


      

Girl Talk's 'Feed the Animals' turns 10

I just typed this post's title and damn if I don't feel borderline geriatric. Girl Talk's pop music pastiche 'mash'terpiece, Feed The Animals is a decade (and a day) old and honestly, my feelings on it haven't changed an iota. I was enamored with it when it came out, enough so to write two separate pieces about it - one for a Post-Modernism and Popular Culture college class and a much shorter one (below) that originally appeared on my Left Off The Dial blog on July 3, 2008 - and still find myself hungering to hear it straight through when the urge hits. Which is often.

We'll revisit my decade-old thoughts in a minute, but can I first say that I love this album as much today as I did when it was first released? It spoke to me like nothing else had since the landmark sample orgy that was the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique. As a teenager armed with only a dual-cassette stereo, I managed to make what I called Mega Mixes, essentially a stylistic precursor to mashups. These minutes-long mixes were a labor of love in that each one involved cuing up a pre-determined song part perfectly on one tape, then hitting Play on that tape deck plus Record on the second tape deck simultaneously to capture the few seconds of the track so it perfectly synced up with the snippet that proceeded it and the one that would follow. That process looks like hell when it's written out and would only net me a few seconds of what would often turn in to a five or seven minute mix. I'd sit in my room, hours on end, completely entranced and engulfed in the process. Lather, rinse, repeat. It was the 80s, I was an only child, and I literally couldn't think of anything I'd rather be doing than that. The final product was often worth it - single artist song collages, remixes of remixes, and in my best moments, creations remotely resembling a rough draft of a Girl Talk composition that wouldn't exist for another 20 years. Man, did I kill a ton of time in the sonic sanctuary of my bedroom back then.

Fast forward to present day and I've listened to Feed The Animals so many times that it's recontextualized the way I hear the full-length versions of songs contained in it. My expectations for a song that I grew up hearing all the time, like The Guess Who's "These Eyes," no longer serves as a nostalgic trip to my childhood. Girl Talk has delightfully ruined me to the point that I can't hear that song now without instinctively singing the chorus from Mary J. Blige's "Real Love" instead of "These Eyes...cry every night...for you." The same can be said for others. Lil Mama's one-hit wonder, "Lip Gloss" no longer has purpose without the rapid-fire six-stringed assault of Metallica's "One" propping it up. Salt-n-Pepa's 80s anthem "Push It" sounds infinitely better when it's battling against the yeah yeah yeaaaaaaaaah refrain of Nirvana's "Lithium," And I know for a fact that I'll never hear my favorite Of Montreal track, "Gronlandic Edit", without the expectation that Prince's guitar riff from the Purple One's classic "Kiss" will pop up as the tail-end of ...Edit's chorus ("all of the beauty's waaaaaaaaasted") fades out.

Girl Talk took my teenage obsession of curating and crafting Mega Mixes to a whole different planet than I could've possibly imagined. I mean, seriously...I'm still writing about Feed The Animals 10 years later and, with a little luck, I'll still be chirping about it when the album celebrates its 20th anniversary. Until then, here's what I had to say about it shortly after its release.

Girl Talk's Mash-up Mc Nuggets

Juxtaposition. A $10 word that is the crux of Girl Talk's latest (and for that matter every) album, Feed The Animals. Greg Gillis is Girl Talk - a downright polarizing artist - hellbent on taking his brilliant 2006's Night Ripper to the next level. Essentially the musical equivalent of George Dubya- you're either with him or against him - Gillis doesn't allow for middle ground with his art. That's because his “songs” are constructed from all that has come before him.

Gillis serves up a musical stew of others' lyrical snippets, beats, and music to create something familiar, yet wholly unique. Hip-hop and slightly tweaked, yet quickly recognizable guitar parts, are his meat and 'taters. Sticking with my gastronomic analogy, Gillis' unique placement of obscure and ubiquitous samples provide the broth that brings it all into a steaming hot bowl of…well, that depends on interpretation. Detractors say it's derivative and akin to thievery. Supporters praise Gillis for creating postmodern sonic pastiches that stand on their own as original constructions. I lean with the latter, due to Gillis' inventive brilliance.

The concept of a mash-up - taking two songs and blenderizing them - is this decade's version of a cover song. Like most cover songs, a mash-up's noble intent is often not enough to prevent a horrid end product. Gillis takes mash-up's ideology a step further and then proceeds to clone it repeatedly in each "song". What the listener often gets is an alternately awkward and brilliant 25 sample pile-up that is the result of a four-decade excavation of pop, rock, hip-hop, soul and funk. Feed The Animals finds Gillis one step closer to perfecting this formula.

Outkast and UGK get busy over the Spencer Davis Group’s 41-year-old chugging bass line/organ intro of “Gimme Some Lovin’.” Unk’s unstoppable club jam of the last 18 months, “Walk It Out,” and Pete Townshend’s 25-year-old “Let My Love Open The Door” exchange greetings. Rapper T.I. and Sinead O’Connor bounce off each other while a Too Short line about fellatio assumes the roll of chorus. At least for 15 seconds. That’s just the album’s first track, “Play Your Part (pt 1)” - a primer for the 53 minute ADD fest to come.

Gillis has a knack for taking older favorites and slamming them up against the latest hits. The result is a series of memory lane strolls and “WTF?!?” moments that re-contextualize a few generations’ worth of musical nuggets. Avril Lavigne’s smash “Girlfriend” and the well from which it draws (Toni Basil’s “Mickey”) are snipped, clipped, and reshaped into a canvas for Dolla to rap, “Who The Fuck Is That?” over. This is just the first minute of “Shut The Club Down,” which eventually plucks Rod Stewart’s “Young Turks” from the back of pop music’s collective consciousness, re-imagining it as a backing track for Ahmad before Lil’ Jon crashes the party altogether. "WHAT! WHAT?!?"

Gillis has effectively bridged the gap between ubiquitous and obscure. There are tons of these head-scratching and booty-shaking moments on Feed The Animals, commanding multiple listens to absorb it all.

Girl Talk’s aural collages invite music fans regardless of age or genre loyalty. The truly initiated will discover new within the recognizable and never hear the familiar the same way again. There's a little something in this stew for everyone to love or hate.

Whether you call him a a genius or an easy target for copyright infringement lawyers, Gillis acknowledges every sample in his liner notes to avoid becoming the latter, yet never fully realizes the former. Instead, Gillis and his creations lie in the gray area. A place his audience and critics will not be spending a lot of time in. This particular blogger, however, has leased a timeshare in Gillis' musical scavenger hunt.

And for all y'all music nerds like myself, here's a cheat sheet of samples on Feed The Animals.

The Mixtape 6/19/18: Kanye, Snail Mail, Beach House (again)

While it's same as it ever was at the top of the 'tape, there's all kinds of new tunes, mostly of the hip-hop / rap variety, popping up just in time for summer. I'm legit stunned that a Jay Z and Beyonce joint release (let's be honest, it's Bey's album, Jigga is window dressing) came out and is somehow available on Spotify. EVERYTHING IS LOVE (remember when caps lock abuse was the equivalent of digital screaming; not just a titling trend that should've started and ended with Kendrick's DAMN. last year) was a left-field surprise in a month-long parade of release party wonkiness brought to you by the guy that used to produce the 'greatest rapper alive'.

Am I still bitter that the bulk of Jay Z's catalog is not available for streaming on Spotify? Entirely possible. It's just nice to hear Jigga man on something other than his Linkin Park MTV Mash Up thingy. I miss The Blueprint (just the first one, though). I'll take Hova's The Black Album over Metallica's any day. And seriously, I could use some Reasonable Doubt in my life right now. But for now, there is The Carters (it's a family affair). A victory lap of sorts after the raw revelations of Bey and Jay's Lemonade and 4:44. 

In other news, Nas failed to impress on his latest, Nasir, Kanye's latest release on his GOOD Records label. It was the fourth straight week of a live-streamed listening party followed up the next day eventually with a digital release. Hopefully Nasir's track list won't fluctuate like KIDS SEE GHOSTS has the past couple weeks. Seriously, Ye, stop shuffling your tracks and the songs behind their titles. It's confusing as hell and no one needs that kind of drama in their life.

About KIDS SEE GHOSTS...a couple tracks from that Kanye / Kid Cudi collabo have settled in nicely to my daily rotation and this week's top ten. But it's not just the 'Ye show up top. Courtney Barnett released her second full-length solo album, Tell Me How You Really Feel last month and "Charity" from that great sophomore release is proving to be a standout on an album packed with well-crafted songs.

As I mentioned, there are a bunch of new entries this week. The Carter's "EVERYTHING IS LOVE" bows, as do tracks from Vic Mensa and G-Easy, Rico Nasty, Ski Mask The Slump God, and miss Chaka Khan, amongst others. I had zero expectations for a new Chaka Khan release, her first release in over a decade, but color me pleasantly surprised. "Like Sugar" is an old-school funk fest that's keeping me dancing in my chair throughout the work day and quickly becoming an early dark horse contender for my 2018 Summer Song. The booty wants what the booty wants.

In addition to Chaka bringing the funk and the aforementioned glut of hip-hop / rap that entered my world this week, I'm also geeking out to Natalie Prass' slinky "Oh My" which sounds like it could've been released in the 80s. Speaking of the 80s, George Benson is back in action on Gorillaz' "Humility". He's not singing, but his signature guitar breathes life in to would probably otherwise be an unmemorable song. Also, it's really weird (and quite awesome) to say that George Benson, who was on my weekly list back in the 80s with hits like "Give Me The Night" and "Turn Your Love Around", has returned to it in 2018. Anything is possible. Cue the Rick Astley comeback. Oh god...please don't.

Happy Father's Day

My dad and I never really talked about music. We just didn't have that common ground. We were close and he loved me like I was his own - he came in to my life when I was 4 and passed away when I was on the cusp of 23 - but he was often working two jobs to make ends meet and wasn't around as much as I wish he would've been. You know, "Cats in the Cradle" shit.

That said, he was a beautiful human, possessed a very kind heart and incredible work ethic, and I'm proud to say that I see many of his better qualities in myself. He was the rock of our family and a role model for me in multiple aspects of my life. Happy Father's Day, big guy. I miss you. Hey...wait. I do remember he liked and listened to "Mack the Knife" by Bobby Darin from time to time. It's the only song I remember him caring about. Not a bad choice at all. This one's for you, dad. 💖