Cover Tuesday: God Save the Queen and Other British Stuff

By Justin Cates

Ryan Adams is a man of many tastes musically speaking.

He's worked with country legends like Willie Nelson, founded the alt-country groups Whiskeytown and The Cardinals, played loads of rock and just recently announced the formation of a new punk rock group called Pornography.

Given that, it shouldn't come as any surprise that he covers some interesting songs.

"Wonderwall" is one of the myriad of hit singles form the classic Oasis album (What's The Story) Morning Glory?

The New Musical Express (NME), Britain's most popular music magazine named Adams' cover of "Wonderwall" the number one Oasis cover.

I was going to feature three songs from the list, but most of them are pretty bad. So instead here's a loosely related list.



Now here's Noel Gallagher of Oasis performing The Beatles' classic, "All You Need Is Love".

I can't tell how much of the rest of the band is there, but if you look closely you can see his brother Liam just chilling in the background. Probably so they would shut up and stop fighting for three minutes.



Finally, playing off that British connection we finish off with a pair of covers because i didn't want to show preference to one of John Lennon's kids.

The first is a cover of classic cut "Julia" performed by Sean Lennon, John and Yoko Ono's son.



The final track to be featured is from Julian Lennon, the only child from John's first marriage.

"I Need You" was released by the band America in 1972. It's a powerful song, especially when you consider it in the context of a father/son relationship. Julian sounds much more like his father vocally and I've always felt bad for him.

John wasn't much of a dad to him until later in life. In fact, Julian was much closer with Paul McCartney.

Paul and I used to hang about quite a bit...more than Dad and I did. We had a great friendship going and there seems to be far more pictures of me and Paul playing together at that age than there are pictures of me and my dad. -Julian Lennon

Julian was the direct inspiration for three Beatles songs, "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds", "Hey Jude" and "Good Night".

McCartney wrote "Hey Jude" (originally titled, "Hey Jules") to console Julian during the divorce of his parents.

So here we are at the end of a random jaunt through British music. Here's hoping you enjoyed it.

Cheers.

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.

Song Of The Day - August 7, 2008

After a lengthy period of sporadic internet access (which may continue for some time as my computer appears to have died) I return today with a song of the day reaching back into the past over 40 years. In 1966, Brian Wilson who had stopped touring with The Beach Boys to focus more on writing and working in the studio, found an incredible challenge in The Beatles album Rubber Soul. "I really wasn't quite ready for the unity", Wilson said. "It felt like it all belonged together. Rubber Soul was a collection of songs ... that somehow went together like no album ever made before, and I was very impressed. I said, "That's it. I really am challenged to do a great album."

So Wilson went to work creating the songs that would make the track listing for Pet Sounds, one of the most critically acclaimed and influential records in pop music history. As The Beatles inspired Wilson, Paul McCartney would later say that Pet Sounds served as his inspiration in turn for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

McCartney has said of the album, "It was Pet Sounds that blew me out of the water. I love the album so much. I've just bought my kids each a copy of it for their education in life ... I figure no one is educated musically 'til they've heard that album ... I love the orchestra, the arrangements ... it may be going overboard to say it's the classic of the century ... but to me, it certainly is a total, classic record that is unbeatable in many ways ... I've often played Pet Sounds and cried."


Today's featured cut is "God Only Knows", one of the most beautiful pop tunes ever crafted. It shows Wilson's heavy use of orchestra, as that's pretty much where all the instrumentation comes from on the track. This video has some cool photos of Wilson at work in the studio with the band and the multitudes of session musicians used on the album (over 60).

Song Of The Day - July 24, 2008

Today's rendition comes from that band across the pond whose music was considered innovative, creative, cutting-edge, inappropriate, weird, and awesome all at the same time. The Beatles are one of the greatest rock bands of all time. In fact, in 2004 Rolling Stone magazine selected them number one on their list of 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. The Beatles are  well known for stretching the envelope and innovating in the recording studio by introducing instruments, sound effects, sound loops, double tracking, and many other studio tricks. With more than 40 singles, albums and EPs that reached the number one sport on the music charts it is difficult to select just one of their masterpieces, so expect more from Paul, John, George, and Ringo in future song of the day posts.

Without question, today's song is from perhaps the strangest album produced by the band. The Yellow Submarine album is unique in that the band did not consider it to be a true studio release since several of the songs had been previously released on other albums (including "Yellow Submarine" and "All You Need Is Love"). Today's song was initially supposed to be called "Hey Bullfrog", but unexpectedly started to bark during the recording sessions and the title was changed to "Hey Bulldog." The video is a clip from Yellow Submarine (the movie). This version of the film was only released in Europe (the song was a bonus segment) because it was thought at the time that American audiences would not be comfortable with the length of the movie. Behold, The Bealtes in animated (and no doubt drugged) brilliance.

Fun fact: the Yellow Submarine album was produced by Apple Corps, a record label founded by The Beatles. Ten years after its formation in 1968, Apple Corps filed a lawsuit in 1978 against newly created Apple Computer for trademark infringement. A settlement was reached in 1981, although relations between the two companies have always been on thin ice. Since the original settlement, several additional lawsuits have been filed. For a better synopsis of their embattled history, click here.