I recently discovered Morrissey's version of Magazine's "A Song from Under the Floorboards". I like Morrissey's laconic, more melodic take better than the more awkward and abrasive original. For those who are not familiar with the original, here it is:
Billy Gibbons & Daryl Hall are no Sam & Dave, but they're not bad at all...for a couple of white boys. This also IMO blows Gibbons' version of the same song with ZZ Top out of the water.
One of Joan's influences, Suzi Quatro, covered an Elvis Presley song. Reportedly, Elvis loved her version. And kudos to her for not changing the gender pronouns.
(My Mom once glowered at me for playing this on the tape deck in her car. Parents. No sense of adventure, I tell you...)
Arrgghh!! Xmas is over and I didn't spin this even ONCE! [slaps forehead] Gonna' rectify that this instant!
In related news, I still love my Mom but she's still a total musical square.
Cleome, LOL I had the opposite problem with my mom & dad's music. I loved their record collections so much* that my classmates would make fun of me for liking "old people's music," even though I also liked a lot of stuff that was aimed at young people.
*DAD: Beatles, Bob Dylan, James Taylor, Sam Cooke, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, Cat Stevens, Neil Young. MOM: Donna Summer, ABBA, the Carpenters.
(Still looking for a good, change-of-pace cover to post. Stay tuned.)
FL, my folks' tastes ran towards Broadway musicals and Opera mostly. When young, my sister and I did love hearing some of the (now classed as Easy Listening) stuff they also loved: like Robert Goulet, later Nat "King" Cole, and the later Mills Brothers. Oh, and Theodore Bikel of course.
There are probably still a few very well-loved Jazz LPs on my Mom's shelves: Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins, etc. But those were given to my Dad by a painter friend when he moved to Paris and didn't feel like hauling a bunch of stuff along on the boat. But I don't think anyone touched them again until I reached college and found them on a high shelf.
As far as my parents were concerned, Bob Dylan ceased to exist after he went electric. I conquered that prejudice, at least.
Hey, Kids! My "Cranky and Kitschy" collage art is now viewable on DeviantArt! Drop by and tell me that I sent you. *updated often!*
Cleome, LOL. Ah, folk purism and the ever-renewing vicious circle of the conflict between selling out and reaching a wider audience.
Reminds me of Lenny Kaye's liner notes to Suzanne Vega's best-of CD, "Retrospective" (which I think is one of the greatest best-ofs in my collection -- out of 21 tracks, 19 are GOLD, with Kaye's liner notes as the bonus.) When Suzanne was in her early 20s, she was part of what has been described as an EXTREMELY uptight and anti-commercial folk scene which was determined not to repeat the mistakes of Dylan's generation of folk artists. In hindsight, she has claimed that she never fit into that scene, but I'd like to think that the quality and integrity of her music is proof that she absorbed the most important and less extreme principles of the scene.
Back to covers & Dylan, I actually have a slew of my favorite Dylan covers waiting to be posted in my Soundtrack of My Life thread, but I'll select one for this thread. Which one shall it be? Stay tuned.
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