« domestication | main | God’s Universe? »
Randy revisits Revolver
17 Sep 06
Last night on Randy’s Vinyl Tap, he played the Beatles’ Revolver in honour of its 40th anniversary. After each song he played a cover version of the same song, almost all of which were done by indy bands. There’s a reason why most indy bands stay indy. Randy’s initial intention was to play each cover in its entirety, but he decided the first one was so bad he just cut it off, after which it became kind of a gong show approach (only, sadly, they had no actual gong). While I didn’t always agree with his assessments, the covers were generally quite weak, and interestingly we agreed most strongly on the one that was best. I say interestingly ’cause I’ve never been a big fan of either of Randy’s well known bands (1, 2) and am not therefore surprised to find that our listening tastes differ. But something was nagging me the whole time about the reasons why Randy said he didn’t like the cover, so I sent him this email:
Dear Randy:
I just listened to your Sept 16 Vinyl Tap show “Revolver Reloaded”. I was born in 1966, so I can’t say I remember much about how Revolver was initially received, but it’s been one of my favourite albums since I discovered it when I was 12. I really enjoyed listening to the show, and I thought the format of playing the original followed by lesser-known covers was a lot of fun.
I have to say I agree with you that most of the covers you played ranged from boring to insipid. However, I have to quibble with you on your criteria. Maybe I am misinterpreting your comments, but you seemed to say that the covers you didn’t like were, generally speaking, not enough like the originals. You stated a number of times that the songs didn’t have the spirit or the energy of the originals, that it wasn’t a good idea to change the tempo or mess with Paul’s melody.
The key to a good cover is to make the song your own. An angry song can become a sad song, fast can become slow, melodies and even lyrics can change, as long as the artist doing the cover is able to add something or create something new and interesting. Jimi Hendrix’s All Along the Watchtower is a perfect example of a genius covering a genius. The song is radically different from Dylan’s original, but Jimi is able to find things in that song that know one else could have found. The Violent Femmes do an awesomely quirky version of Do You Really Want to Hurt Me, Sonic Youth bend Get Into the Groove almost beyond recognition, and both are examples of outstanding musicians making interesting work out of formulaic crap.
And it seems to me that the cover artists you played generally understand this. They tried, in some cases too hard, to make the songs different and new. The problem wasn’t that they weren’t enough like the Beatles, it was that in most cases, they were unable to wrest the song from the Beatles’ grip. It’s relatively easy to make a song different, but another thing entirely to bring those differences to life. The bands you played couldn’t make us forget the original, couldn’t make us feel that what they were doing wasn’t somehow wrong. Which I guess isn’t really that far from where you were at.
Thanks, again, for a great show.
Peter Zimmerman
Windsor, Ontario
There you have it. I’ll update here if I get a reply.
Posted by pzed on September 17, 2006 at 7.09pm
Categories: music
Comments on "Randy revisits Revolver"
Because Randy’s show is on CBC, I think it’s the law that you have to include a Canadian example. The Cowboy Junkies’ version of Sweet Jane is a great one, not only scrapping all the verses in favour of spinning out the bridge into a whole new song, but turning it into a husky-voiced crooner-wrapped-around-the-mic-stand sort of gritty nightclub masterpiece. In my opinion.
Also, I think you are aware that calling “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” formulaic crap cuts me to the quick.
Posted by jodi on September 17, 2006 at 10.25pm :: link
