Cover Tuesday: Get The Led Out Johnny and Kurt!

By Justin Cates

Clearly the world came off it's hinges a bit last week, so I temporarily shelved this edition of cover Tuesday.

Now that things have settled down for a minute, it seems like a fine time to resume our pseudo-weekly ritual.

First up is quite possibly the best Led Zeppelin cover you'll see anywhere on the Internet.

This comes to us from the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors tribute to the honored Zeppelin.

It features original Zepp drummer John Bonham's son Jason behind the kit and Ann (vocals) and Nancy Wilson (guitar) of the band Heart out front.

Contrary to popular belief, you can in fact cover a song as challenging and transcendent as ,"Stairway To Heaven", just don't ever attempt it in a music store because you will be judged and promptly chastised.

"No Stairway? Denied!"

It's a beautiful rendition, fully fleshed out with a handful of backing musicians and multiple choirs.

The kicker is when you see how much John Paul Jones, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page love the version.

Robert Plant cries! I can't really fathom a moment watching someone play such a wonderful thing and think, "Wow, we wrote that".

It's a moving song to begin with, and the band's reaction adds to the emotions of the moment.




Next on the docket is the late Johnny Cash's cover of Bob Marley's classic, "Redemption Song".

Joe Strummer joins him and as all the covers on Cash's American albums, this one is tinged with a melancholy that can only come from a voice as weathered as JC's

You can hear the weight of his life's experience in every word he sings. It's like the world is sitting on his shoulders and he's just tired of it all.

It's one of Marley's most lyrically poignant songs, focusing on the troubles of humanity but it's also an expression on the great physical pain he was experiencing as he battled the cancer that ultimately took his life.

The connection between the two men performing this song at the end of their lives is obvious. My only complaint is I wish Johnny's was solo just like the original.  




It would appear at this point that I've gone from the musical triumph of the first song to an increasingly dark playlist culminating with Kurt Cobain's piercing wail. My bad.

Cobain was trendy without trying to be, the "Anti-Bieber" in other words. 

I couldn't remember what the third song I had in mind last week was, so I organically stumbled onto Nirvana's cover of the Meat Puppets', "Lake of Fire".

The cut comes from Nirvana's 1994 release MTV Unplugged in New York—remember when MTV was a thing that mattered? I mean really mattered because things like Unplugged were cultural events not just, "OMGZ MTV TRL Bieber takeover in 10 min!!! #Belieber #SoHawt".

That felt dirty just jokingly typing it. Anyway, this Nirvana cover is terrific and one of my favorite moments from that Unplugged session.





Editor's Note: Without trying to, I found pictures of both Johnny Cash and Kurt Cobain holding kittens.   For whatever reason, the Internet goes bonkers for that kind of stuff so I'm presenting them here to show an added dimension to these emotional complex individuals. Plus, it's kind of funny.

Daaaaawwwwwwwww

Creepy but cute. Seems about right Kurt.

Paul McCartney & Nirvana

It was big news last week when the 12-12-12 benefit concert for victims of hurricane Sandy went down.

Major acts like Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones, Roger Waters, and The Who (what's left of it) all came together in New York City's Madison Square Garden to raise money for victims of the October storm.

The headliner—which in this case is a fancy way of saying, "You go on at 1 AM"—was Paul McCartney, a man who at 70 years old rocks much harder than his contemporaries, and even many of the younger acts around.

Recently, Dave Grohl took time from being in every band ever to reunite what's left of his first successful group, Nirvana.

Along with bassist Krist Novoselic and guitarist Pat Smear, Grohl took to the drums and asked Sir Paul if he'd like to jam with the group.

The result is "Cut Me Some Slack", a new song that will be featured on the soundtrack for Dave Grohl's forthcoming documentary Sound City, about the famous recording studio of the same name.

The trailer for the film is below as is the group's performance on from the 12-12-12 concert.

There's a good video of the guys playing on Saturday Night Live last weekend, but the bass isn't as prominent and the rhythm section is what we all really want to hear. It's very vintage.

Memorial Day Hangover Music: Nineties Edition

I hope everyone had a safe and happy Memorial Day filled with grotesque self-indulgence as only America can serve up.

Hopefully, somewhere between adult beverages and ill-advised water sports you had a chance to think of those who currently and previously served in our armed forces. You know, the reason the banks were closed?

Anyway, I'd imagine most people don't feel in top form today if they went all out yesterday, and there's nothing that fixes...well, anything like music.

I've chosen songs from the nineties because (excluding the very end) it was arguably the best decade of the modern music era. I've casually defined that as anything post-1975 in my own mind because tunes from before that are virtually untouchable in a critical or artistic sense.

The music of the first half of the nineties was a complete turnaround from the glossy, over-produced filth of the eighties.

Gone were the "Phil Collins drum sound" and the excessive synthesizers, replaced by angst-ridden wailing guitars, esoteric lyrics and jeans with holes and flannel shirts.

In short, people stopped being stupid and started rocking again.

I do find it odd that after getting away from the pop nonsense of the eighties, the end of the nineties and the subsequent decade saw a return to the over-polished bubblegum pop of before...but WORSE.

We can only hope these things are as cyclical as they've been in the past, but I worry as the coming generation is clearly filled with impatient knuckleheads with the attention span of goldfish who are want to babble incoherently in some kind of bastardized Internet-speak. I'm not even sure most kids today know how to use a pen and paper.

But I digress. I realize this was a bit heavy for curing hangovers.

I've tried to avoid enormous hits with these songs with some obvious exceptions. I love how nineties videos didn't need a plot or obvious meaning. Just loads of weird imagery. That should calm the nerves, eh?

Song Of The Day- Pixies

You might not know of the Pixies directly, but trust me, you know them.

Active in the late eighties and early nineties, the Pixies were pioneers, essentially birthing the alternative rock boom of the early to mid-nineties. The Pixies are credited with being the first to use wide dynamics and start-stop timing, both of which defined the coming alt boom.

Pixies verses are typicially subdued and restrained, while the choruses are loud and feature wailing guitars and vocals.

Two of the most obvious examples of their influence are Weezer and Nirvana. Rivers Cuomo took the quiet-loud-quiet dynamics truly to heart and most classic Weezer songs have those crunchy guitars over the chorus. The perfect example from the weez is "Say It Ain't So", released in 1994.

Kurt Cobain said in a January of 1994 Rolling Stone interview that he was trying to write a song in the style of the Pixies when he penned "Smells Like Teen Spirit".

I was trying to write the ultimate pop song. I was basically trying to rip off the Pixies. I have to admit it. When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily that I should have been in that band— or at least a Pixies cover band. We used their sense of dynamics, being soft and quiet and then loud and hard.

Clearly, the Pixies were incredibly influential and thankfully, finally reunited in 2004 after an 11-year hiatus.

The official song of the day is "Velouria" off their 1990 release Bossanova.

This video was filmed when they were offered to play on the British show Top of The Pops. There was a rule in place that only singles that had videos could be played on the show so the band made a quick video.

The video shows the band running down a rock quarry. It took 23 seconds of footage for the band to reach the camera and they then slowed that down to last for the whole song. Brilliant.