A Small Victory

Continuing with last night's theme of cover songs, because one can never have too many covers in their collection. * You can't go two nights talking about covers without bringing up Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. Covers is all they do. But unlike your basic bar band that struggles every Friday night to perfect the right combo of sexy and scary as they cover Riders on the Storm, Me First has quite the punk pedigree. The story behind this song (or why I like it). When my kids were very young (which would be when Space Jam came out), they loved to sing this song. They even made up a little skit to go along with it and would put on a show anytime we had company. Eventually, they got me to sing along with them and it became more like a really bad, overwrought caberet act. At some point we stopped performing the song because the kids got older and it became a bit embarassing to be singing with your mom. Especially an R. Kelly song. So, when we bought this cd and discovered that the Gimmes had covered I Believe I Can Fly, our caberet act became cool again. Well, only to us. And don't tell anyone, but the original still makes me tear up. (download) * Sevendust - Going Back to Cali', originally done by L.L. Cool J. This totally works, because where LL (mmm....LL) was smooth, Lajon is both smooth and surly. As great as the original, with an extra edge. (download) * Refused - Bullet, originally by the Misfits. One night I'll do just a whole collection of Misfist covers. Refused was an amazing punk/hardcore band that were either way ahead of their time or just really odd in that "what do you mean we're odd?" way. They hailed from Sweden and any hardcore that comes out of Sweden is generally good. And odd. In that endearing kind of way. Perhaps tomorrow night I'll upload one of Refused's own songs, but tonight they do the Misfits and they do it well. For those unfamiliar with song, you can get the subject by this line: Kennedy's shattered head hits concrete, Ride, Johnny ride. Yep, Texas is the reason. (download) * Quicksand covering The Smiths' How Soon is Now. I wrote about this song (the orginal version) here, in one of my Five Songs I Can't Live Without essays. This is by far the best of about 100 cover songs of HSIN. Quicksand was another amazing hardcore band, whose song Thorn in My Side ranks among the best songs in the history of the world. At least, according to me. Another one I may upload for you tomorrow. For now, here they are doing morose Morrisey. (download) * Last but not least - far be it from me to let two nights in a row go by without a mention of Mike Patton. Here, Mike and FNM cover the BeeGees in such a way that make you forget the brothers Gibb ever existed. While the original was close to a masterpiece, Patton takes it one step further and makes the song an exercise in wallowing self-pity, tinged with enough despair and sadness to make you break out in tears even if you aren't drunk and PMS. His voice is next to godliness. No, his voice is godliness. (download) And that's tonight's jukebox. As always, give me a short review of the songs you download. I'd like to know what you think of my selections. (And if you aren't doing anything important in about twenty minutes, don't forget that there's a Command Post chat tonight)