Cover Lay Down

If you’ve been playing along, you already know that we’re blogging from the road as we drive North up the California coast, with a day or two each in Eugene and Portland before we head homeward a week from today. In fact, if today goes as planned, we’ll be wand’ring (and camping) amidst the redwoods as this post goes live.

Today, as we approach California’s Northern border, we broaden the boundaries a bit with a look at the California Punk scene through the lens of coverage.


As I noted in our 2009 Year In Review, last November’s study of seminal first-wave Punk Rock covers was our most popular post ever here at Cover Lay Down, and I haven’t forgotten that it came with a promise of an eventual follow-up, which would feature covers from the last 25 years of punk music’s ouvre. While I’m not prepared to present something so momentous while we’re on the road, looking through the archives in search of artists who scream California, it’s hard to avoid the prominence of Punk.

Indeed, though London, Washington DC, New York and Boston all played their part, more than almost anywhere, California plays as major role a role in the resurgence of punk music in the last generation as it did in the Americanization of early hardcore punk music in the early eighties, with thriving scenes throughout the state and a Wikipedia entry on the subject to prove it. Thanks in part to local punk labels such as Fat Wreck Chords, Alternative Tentacles and Lookout! Records, the Golden State is able to lay definitive claim to the origin of the Skate Punk subgenre, and it remains the home to several major players in both the Pop Punk and third-wave Ska Punk hybridizations of the late eighties and early nineties, from Green Day, Blink 182 and the Offspring to Sublime and No Doubt.

As an outsider to punk music, I’m in no position to suggest that there is something sonically distinctive about any or all of these performers or subgenres - though it seems intuitively obvious to note that Skate Punk is often distinguished by its association with both skate culture and the aggressive, fast-paced motions of skateboarding itself. But I will note that, as in the previous incarnation of our Punk Covers series, the vast majority of these songs play out as beautiful, raw, even delicate tributes in the adept hands of these predominantly solo and stripped-down performers. So here’s a short set of songs made famous by the post-second wave California crowd, all folked up and pretty as you please.

• Alvin King: I Miss You (orig. Blink 182)
  (from King Crispy’s Home Recordings, no date provided)

• Bryan Clark & Honeywagon: Dammit (orig. Blink 182)
  (from Grass Stains: A Bluegrass Tribute to Blink 182, 2003)

• Aimee Allen: Santeria (orig. Sublime)
  (from A Little Happiness, 2009)

• Jack Johnson: Badfish/Boss DJ (orig. Sublime)
  (from Look At All The Love We Found: A Tribute to Sublime, 2005)

• Mattafix: Boulevard of Broken Dreams (orig. Green Day)
  (from Triple J’s Like A Version Vol. 3, 2007)

• Hayseed Dixie: Holiday (orig. Green Day)
  (from A Hot Piece of Grass, 2005)

• Veronica Maggio: Self Esteem (orig. The Offspring)
  (unknown source; more Veronica Maggio [in Swedish] here)

• Frank Turner: The Desperation’s Gone (orig. NOFX)
  (live from The Punk Show with Mike Davies, BBC Radio 1, 2007)

• Jamie T: Hoover Street (orig. Rancid)
  (from Triple J’s Like A Version: Vol. 4, 2008)

PS: I looked and looked, but can’t find any decent folk-y No Doubt covers. Got any leads? Leave ‘em in the comments…

As a culture vulture, I have a particular fondness for the iconography of Hip Hop and Hardcore Rap; as a fan of trope and politic, I’ve always admired the complex rhyme and rhythm they bring to the table.

But I never really made a connection with hardcore rap as a cultural form. I’m an outsider on the streets; I can appreciate their gritty reality only as a sociologist can appreciate the poverty dynamic of his cityscape under the microscope. Though a six month stint in Boston’s inner city as a member of Americorps makes me somewhat more than an urban tourist, I make no claim that it gives me credibility to speak to the relative merits of, say, East Coast over West Coast style.

Even when I try to embrace the less hardcore side of the hip hop world, I know I’m just visiting. I’ve seen De La Soul and KRS-ONE in concert, but I felt awkward in the audience. I tried to write a rap lyric, but my friends were right to laugh at me. (Two words: iambic pentameter.)

But where the plastic lip-sync spectacle of Britney Spears (see All Folked Up, Vol. 1) is the polar opposite of folk, and where the lighter forms of Hip Hop are probably closer to R&B spoken-word poetry and Funk than anything else, I think Gangsta Rap can make a legitimate claim as street folk.

Sure, musically, anything built predominantly out of beatboxing, drum machines, and an atonal delivery is about as far from the singer-songwriter model as it gets; you’d be hard pressed to find a folk song with no melody to carry it. And the highly stylized, high-adrenalin street pose of the Gangsta lyric is hard to reconcile with the open-hearted communion that most associate with the folksinger in performance.

But the way that Gangsta Rap captures the authentic experience and emotion of an urban generation is most definitely “of the folk”. The collaborative process which typifies Rap and Hip-Hop performance - both onstage and with the audience - is very much in a vein with the traditional relationship between the folk performer and his audience. The use of sampled sound is a kind of cultural recycling which could arguably be compared to the tendency towards community ownership of traditional song in the folkworld. And if we make allowances for the differences in environment, both the storytelling and the narrative structure of hardcore rap forms turn out to be surprisingly consistent with the way folk has always used the natural world to speak for the inner life of the song’s subject.

To note that today’s songs are, one and all, truly beautiful in their own way is not to deny the beauty of the originals. The high tension between Nina Gordon’s sweet voice and gentle acoustic guitar and the obscenity-laden lyric of NWA signature song Straight Out Of Compton merely reframes the deeply personal history and strong, complex emotion of the original, making it newly accessible. The etherial layers Ben Folds brings to Bitches Ain’t Shit only exposes the frustration family man Dr. Dre feels about the unavoidably mysogynistic pose of the streets to which he owes his life and livelihood.

Gin and Juice comes off wild and desperate in The Gourds’ juked up bluegrass, but wasn’t it always a song on the edge? Alt-punkers Dynamite Hack join in with a great, mellow acoustic take on NWA’s Boyz in the Hood (thanks to Adam, John, and Sledge for the recommendation). U Penn a capella group Off The Beat’s oft-mislabelled version of Gangsta’s Paradise is gorgeous and gospel, more tribute than interpretation.

Grandmaster Flash recorded The Message in 1982, long before urban blight turned to the gangsta life, but the weary note young alt-folkster Willy Mason brings to his recent rendition reminds us how prescient a warning the song really was. And the fact that the highest energies post-dorks Barenaked Ladies can bring to bear on Public Enemy’s political hip hop anthem Fight the Power fall far, far short of anything remotely resembling anger only reinforces just how far most of Canada really is from the streets of the hardcore world.

I seriously considered switching out today’s covers for the originals as an April Fools spoof. But the best hoaxes are subtle, almost beautiful in their believability. And each of these performances is something special, simultanously a hoax and a masterpiece, teetering on the edge of sincerity like a gangster caught between the rock of urban decay and the social pose that is, in the end, all that is left to matter. So mind the language, folks. And enjoy a short set of the folk of the street.

• Nina Gordon, Straight Out Of Compton (orig. NWA)
• Ben Folds, Bitches Ain’t Shit (orig. Dr. Dre)
• The Gourds, Gin ‘n Juice (orig. Snoop Dogg)
• Willy Mason, The Message (orig. Grandmaster Flash)
• Dynamite Hack, Boyz in the Hood (orig. NWA)
• Barenaked Ladies, Fight The Power (orig. Public Enemy)
• Rockapella Off The Beat, Gangsta’s Paradise (orig. Coolio)

Happy April Fools’ Day, everyone. We’ll be back late Wednesday, and again on Sunday, with a serious look at some real folk artists.

You can’t get much farther from the stripped-down authenticity of folk music than the lip-synch spectacle of top 40 pop songs; the odd Springsteen or Dylan anomaly aside, the stuff we favor on Cover Lay Down doesn’t see mass market radio play. But that doesn’t necessarily make every folk cover of every song originally performed by a half-naked ex-Mouseketeer a joke. A good song is a good song is a good song — and sometimes it takes a jolt to the system to allow the listener to bring new meaning to the overly familiar.

To prove this theory, for our Halloween special, I went in search of the most disturbing set of folk covers I could imagine.

Folk covers of Britney Spears songs.

And the scariest part is, some of them are quite good.

Some are not, of course. It’s hard to make meaning out of something played to death, harder still to keep the MTV imagery from invading the brain, corrupting any sincere attempt at rehabilitating a popsong. It’s easier to make a joke out of the familiar instead, making easy laughs and easier cash on a novelty act.

Today, in an attempt to explore this admittedly simplistic model for envisioning the pop cover song’s purpose, we bring you a double trio of folked-up Britney cuts: the merely covered, and the genuinely recovered. Some may make you weep. Some will make you laugh. One or two will make you wonder why Max Martin (the man behind the Britney throne) is wasting his time writing tunes which will never be truly appreciated by anyone above the age of fourteen.

My recommendation: listen to each of these through, tricks and treats alike, until you can truly appreciate them for the meaning their coverartists bring. Even novelty is worth something. And plucking a tired backbeat from the radio to breathe new and vibrant life into it, making something golden out of something glittery? In the world of coversongs, it’s the holy grail.

Let’s start, then, with the good stuff. Ladies and Gentlemen, we bring you Britney Spears, recovered.

• Stevie Ann, Toxic
  Netherlands native Stevie Ann — my current music-crush — covers Toxic as a lush, poignant paean to poisoned love. The link here is the produced version, courtesy of Guuzbourg of french girlsinger blog Filles Sourires; but you can and should also see an absolutely incredible live-on-the-radio cover sans saxophone over at Coverville, after which you, too, will wonder why this young woman is still only touring in her native country.

• Richard Thompson, Oops! I Did It Again
  In the “original” live recording of Richard Thompson’s version of Oops! I Did It Again, off coveralbum 1000 Years of Popular Music, his audience thinks he’s making fun of the song. This much tighter solo cut from an NPR session reveals otherwise. Thompson’s rough voice, loose tempo, and all-around angst bring just the right note of self-flagellation and regret to the tune. Originally via always great oft-folk musicblog The Late Greats.
• Fountains Of Wayne, Hit Me Baby One More Time
  Okay, Fountains Of Wayne isn’t folk, but I’ve missed the band at two folk festivals so far, so I’m going to allow it. Their all-male electrified alt-geekrock version of Hit Me Baby One More Time turns what had been a dubiously anti-feminist anthem of love at all costs into a soft plea for the sensitive guy trying to make sense of a world full of Britney-lovers.

Second verse, same as the first — but where the folktunes above are genuinely successful attempts to rescue surprisingly decent songs, these either play the songs for laughs, tongue firmly in cheek, or try to interpret beyond their reach.

• The BossHoss, Toxic
  Kitschmeisters The BossHoss, Germany’s bluegrass/country/rock answer to Richard Cheese, take on Toxic. They’re tight, and worth the novelty, but really, if you’ve heard one Hayseed Dixie, you’ve heard them all. Still, their cover choices are fun; kudos to Motel De Moka, the music blog with a knack for the perfect themed playlist, for spreading this around just when I needed a pick-me-up.

• Fuck, Oops! I Did It Again
  I don’t know much about the unfortunately-named Fuck, and if this lo-fi, experimental cover is any indication of their prowess and style, I’m okay with that. The subtle vibes and cello (and wind machine?) aren’t bad, but the plodding speed only underscores the overly simple, maudlin interpretation. Thanks to coverblogger extraordinaire Copy, Right? for originally posting this, though — everything’s worth trying once.
• Travis, Hit Me Baby One More Time
  Travis‘ live attempt to unplug and slow down Hit Me Baby One More Time turns silly far too quickly. Bad sign: the band starts out trying to play it straight, but can’t keep from cracking up when they hit the falsetto call and response of the chorus. Worse: they seem ruefully surprised at their own laughter, despite the fact that they clearly rehearsed the vocals.

As always here on Cover Lay Down, all artist links above lead to artist websites, which in turn lead to the artists’ preferred source for music-purchasing. Follow these links — and the links to other coverblogs scattered throughout — for the best door-to-door treats around.

You’re on your own for buying Britney, though. Some things are too scary, even for Halloween.

Welcome to Cover Lay Down, folks! Hope you found us okay. For a short letter of introduction/explanation covering why the world needs another cover blog, and why this just might be it, click here.

Our inaugural cover set below trumpets Richard Shindell’s recent South of Delia, a full album of covers released earlier this year. In presenting it, I’m trying to establish a posting template of sorts, wherein posts will include (wherever possible) both a featured cover and one or more bonus covers which are related to the feature in some way. Enjoy the music!

Richard Shindell is no stranger to cover songs. Many of the new generation discovered him through Cry Cry Cry, a one-shot folk supergroup which brought Richard, Dar Williams, and Lucy Kaplansky together for an covers album and a short tour a few years back before tension between the two women in the group brought the collaboration to an end. And his cover of Dar’s Calling the Moon gives me shivers.

But it says what it needs to, I think, that though Dar was surely the most widely known of the three, Cry Cry Cry only included one song by one of their own members on that single, seminal album — Shindell’s Ballad of Mary Magdalen.

Shindell is a singer-songwriter’s singer-songwriter, a member of the same second-gen folk movement that brought forth Suzanne Vega, Shawn Colvin, and John Gorka, and a man who is just as happy to play guitar along with them as he is to share his own well-written songs. He is known among his peers as a slightly shy, somewhat reclusive genius who hides deep insight in a plethora of storysongs ranging in subject and imagery from catholicism to the refugee’s plight. Ask any folksinger of a certain age to list the ten best lyrics they’ve ever heard, and you can bet Shindell’s work will be up near the top.

So many of us were left scratching our heads when we heard that his next release would be a full set of covers. And wondered, as well, what was up with the lack of press, and the release on the living-room label “Richard Shindell Recordings”. Was this merely a labor of love?

Naysayers fear not: South of Delia is a rich tribute indeed. Shindell manages to reassess and reimagine a broad set of tunes, bringing a new poignancy to deepcuts from the familiar (Dylan’s Tales of Yankee Power, Peter Gabriel’s Mercy Street, The Band’s Acadian Driftwood) to the neofolk (the Josh Ritter and Jeffrey Foucault covers are especially well done, and let me say here: it takes both guts and grace to cover the younger generation, and to do it well.) His choices of song well fit his own songwriter’s bent, telling tales of the downtrodden, the refugee, the lovelorn, the lost — an especially masterful tactic in the case of songs which were, in their original form, produced to emphasize music and mood more than lyrics.

But don’t take my word for it. Here, take a listen to the deep yearning for place and racial acceptance Shindell brings to Born in the USA, which many folks consider Bruce Springsteen’s least meaningful song. I promise you’ll never hear it the same way again.

• Richard Shindell, Born in the USA (orig. Springsteen)
• Richard Shindell, Northbound 35 (orig. Foucault)

South of Delia is Shindell’s first album on the “Richard Shindell Recordings” label. You can get it in the usual places, but I prefer purchase through the artist websites whenever possible, so buy Richard Shindell’s South of Delia here.

Today’s bonus coversongs:

• Richard Shindell covers Dar Williams’ Calling the Moon
• Solas covers Richard Shindell’s On A Sea of Fleur De Lis
• Cry Cry Cry covers R.E.M.’s Fall on Me