You guys want blasphemy do ya? Well, it’s always been a victimless crime, so here goes:
World of Skin: I Wanna Be Your Dog (Stooges). I voiced this opinion to another friend who yelled back at me “no way…you have to be the DEVIL to cover that song well!” Little did he know that Michael Gira is so badass, the devil sold HIM his soul at the crossroads.
Foetus: Elected (Alice Cooper). This is documented on a live disc from the tour that he did with William Tucker as his guitarist. Had the good fortune to actually see it live in the flesh; it just felt then as if Alice had written it specifically for Jim Thirlwell to perform.
Killdozer: I Am, I Said (Neil Diamond.) Killdozer has a whole bucketload of mid-'70s covers that they dismantle wonderfully, this is one of the more amusing ones. The schmaltzy ‘everyman’ sentiment of this song is so much more meaningful with the braying jackass vocals and punch-drunk instrumentation.
Thats an understatement of the year contender. The first time i saw them was on the willy wonka tour. Damn, that was insanely good. Ive never done acid but i can imagine that will be the closest i will get without actually doing a tab. Who knew that surreal art had a sound. Primus are fantastic and ill catch them every time they tour my yard.[/reply]
I’ve seen Primus about 16 times since 1993. Most nights, they’re a great band. But when they’re off, they are SO off. I saw them tour for the Brown Album, and Les looked royally pissed from the moment he took the stage to the end of the last encore. The playing was incredibly uninspired, just a kind of go-through-the-motions thing.
I saw them at Roseland in 2006 (2008?) for the Beat A Dead Horse tour. The crowd was so psyched for them that they destroyed the barricade at the front of the stage, the one that separates the bouncers from the mosh pit. Overheard coming out of one of said bouncers mouths: “I’ve seen Slayer here, Anthrax here… never seen that barricade move like that. For Primus? Really?”
On another note, Primus is the only band I like that jams out to the extent that they do. Phish and the Grateful Dead jam a lot, but I find it mindless noodling. The jamming Primus does is so much… groovier.
P.S. EVERY TIME Primus plays NYC, they open with “Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweakers.” Weird.
I guess I’ve been lucky bcause I have seen them at least 12 times and have never seen them have an off night…can’t wait til they roll through town again…
Anyone else here ‘long in the tooth’ enough to remember a compilation called SHUT UP KITTY on (correct me if I am wrong and too lazy to perform a DuckDuckGo search) Reconstriction Records?
That one was the first instance I can remember of an all “industrial” covers album, which would then be followed by a ridiculous deluge of like-minded stuff on Invisible and Cleopatra. Bonus points too for its having terrific Jim Woodring artwork on the cover instead of the millionth instance of a ‘skull within a cogwheel superimposed by a barcode’…
Standout tracks I can remember off the top of my head (and which I consider better than the originals, natch) are Babyland ripping apart Madonna’s “Burning Up” with junkyard percussion, and KMFDM doing a pretty true-to-the-original (but nonetheless better) cover of U2’s “Mysterious Ways.”
Even when this was a relatively new concept, though, there was plenty of filler - a forgettable cover of “Paranoid,” Skrew doing a pretty boring “Sympathy for the Devil” and so on.
I should probably give Wall of Voodoo more of a chance, and while Celtic Frost played a shitty rendition, it’s still better because of how out of left field that was for them. In fact, I think WOV should return the favor and do their own rendition of “Cherry Orchard” off of Cold Lake.
Skrew doing a pretty boring “Sympathy for the Devil” and so on.
I actually kind of dig that one.
That whole “Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame” album is really strong. I found it amongst a box of old artifacts the other day and gave it a spin, wondering if it would sound horribly dated and stale . . . . it actually still holds up.
I was getting a fair amount of those Industrial cover albums too, actually.
COVERED IN BLACK – the AC/DC tribute was actually pretty cool. I also really liked DIE KRUPPS Tribute to Metallica.
The Apocalyptica covers are awesome. Their original stuff is lame.
[reply]Skrew doing a pretty boring “Sympathy for the Devil” and so on.
I actually kind of dig that one.
That whole “Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame” album is really strong. I found it amongst a box of old artifacts the other day and gave it a spin, wondering if it would sound horribly dated and stale . . . . it actually still holds up.
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Ironically that was one of my favorite tracks on the album when I first got it; I guess this was just before I totally overdosed on chunky machine-rock riffing and started grazing in weirder musical pastures.
The new Motorhead cover of the same is not too shabby, actually.
Shut Up Kitty was quite the novelty at the time - then, a couple of years later, Cleopatra would start grinding out industrial/goth “tribute” albums in record numbers.
The best track on that CD, imo, was Death Method’s frightening version of White Rabbit. I was so impressed that I wrote to the guy, who by then had moved onto a more successful techno project called Uberzone. He promised to send me a Death Method tape, but he never did.
OLD - Cocaine (Eric Clapton)
Cheap Trick - Wild Thing (The Troggs)
Braindead Sound Machine - Walkin’ After Midnight (Patsy Cline)
PIG - Head Like A Hole (NIN)
Deftones - The Chauffeur (Duran Duran)
OLD - Cocaine (Eric Clapton)
Cheap Trick - Wild Thing (The Troggs)
Braindead Sound Machine - Walkin’ After Midnight (Patsy Cline)
PIG - Head Like A Hole (NIN)
Deftones - The Chauffeur (Duran Duran)
Nice call on the OLD…although it’s actually a JJ Cale song…Clapton just covered it…