The Return of Cover Songs III

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And this is an interesting one. Violet Orlandi, another favorite vocalist of mine, first recorded a cover of "Age of Aquarius" at 14. At 28 and with an impressive musical career developing, she revisited both the song and her original recording. The new performance is interesting, probably the first time that I have seen this song done acoustically, but the real treat are her comments on her old recording of it as she looks back with 14 years more experience under her belt.


And I barely recognized her here. The red hair is real switch from black with a white highlight, which was her look through most of the pandemic.
 
Ren makes cover songs his own style. Sometimes they sound a bit closer to the original than others. The chorus is a sample of a song called Do You Believe, by a 70s folk singer named Melanie Safka. I hadn’t heard of her before. It’s a beautiful sound. The distortion he puts on it reminds me of Moby, from the late 90s. (Sad song one f word - hauntingly beautiful sound imo - this man’s music has got me hooked)

 
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@Mendalla you know I had to go looking for a cover of Brand New Key. This version, by a punk band (I just found) with a female lead, called the Dollyrots, has the best twist on it I’ve found so far! :):cool: The rest lacked something interesting.
 
Kimmio Laughterlove said:
This version, by a punk band (I just found) with a female lead, called the Dollyrots, has the best twist on it I’ve found so far! :):cool:
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Interesting. Must give listen. Currently writing a punk-themed story for my NSFW writing site. The story prompt is more about punk literature like cyberpunk and steampunk, but I am doing near-future dystopia-punk with much of the action happening in a seedy basement club.
 
Kimmio Laughterlove said:
@Mendalla you know I had to go looking for a cover of Brand New Key. This version, by a punk band (I just found) with a female lead, called the Dollyrots, has the best twist on it I’ve found so far! :):cool: The rest lacked something interesting.
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I am listening to The Dollyrots this evening. Good band with a fairly long history (20 years or so). It's actually a married couple who've known each other since Grade 8 plus a drummer. Wife plays bass and sings, husband plays guitar and does backing vocals.
 
LOL. This one is great. "Da Doo Ron Ron" mashed up with The Ramones' "I Wanna be Sedated".


PS. I'll post some of their original stuff in the "So what are you listening to?" thread sometime soon.
 
That’s good! It fits. At least they’re admitting that their style of punk is just sped up rock n roll. And it’s more bubblegum than antiestablishment actually - dare I say, so were the Ramones just as much as the Beach Boys? They probably know that and aren’t trying to be controversial anyway. They’re fun. I like it.
 
I just looked it up because I’m mostly familiar with the Beach Boys version but I wasn’t sure. Speaking of covers - the Crystals did it first, and yes I definitely had heard them sing it many times I just automatically thought of the Beach Boys. Jeff Barrie, Ellie Greenwich and Phil Spector (the prolific record producer who was convicted of shooting his wife to death) wrote Da Do Run Run for the Crystals. The sexist and racist exploitation involved in the formation of some of those singing groups takes the fun out of a lot of that old music. I digress. It doesn’t have to take the fun out of it but I appreciate learning that history.
 
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Mendalla said:
I am listening to The Dollyrots this evening. Good band with a fairly long history (20 years or so). It's actually a married couple who've known each other since Grade 8 plus a drummer. Wife plays bass and sings, husband plays guitar and does backing vocals.
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They sound exactly like they’ve been playing in their garage since grade 8 lol! But they’re doing a good job of if. I like it. They’ve got a fun thing going on.
(*Was just reading a bit about them. They’ve had a solid career in the pop-punk music scene. They’ve done well.)
 
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Man, I almost stuck this in the metal thread. There's even growling in it. "Flowers" by Miley Cyrus is, like many of her songs, a very good song. Here Youtube singers Kayla King and Audra Miller team up to take it in a hard, even heavy, direction.


Interestingly, this is on the channel of Audra's band First to Eleven, but the backup band appears to be Kayla's with Audra as the only connection to F211.
 
And the full F211 doing an important public service: Making Nickelback listenable. And country line dancing to hard rock? Really? Makes for a fun video, though. And kind of fits since Nickelback are from Alberta.

 
What happens when a great singer covers a great song written by a great songwriter for a great band? Following in the footsteps of that band's own great singers?

Magic.

Marcela Bovio covering Nightwish's "Sleeping Sun" is a bit of a dream come true. And she does it as a vocal cover, meaning she sings over the original Nightwish instrumental track. For a few minutes, in other words, we get to hear what it might sound like if Marcela Bovio joined Nightwish (not likely to ever happen, but makes an interesting alternate universe for us metalheads).

 
Metallica on violin and cello? Mostly acoustic to boot? I'm in. The performers are violinist Mia Asano and cellist Tina Guo. Interestingly, while both play electric versions of their instruments, they mostly stick to traditional acoustic instruments here, save for the guitar solo where they pull out the amps.


And Mia has just got a big career boost, touring Europe this fall as a featured soloist with metal string group Two Steps From Hell. The tour opens at one of the high holy places of metal, the Wacken Open Air festival.
 
I haven't posted any Foxes & Fossils in a while. The band finally managed to get everyone together in one place for some reunion shows and they have been releasing videos from them over the summer. Here they are in fine form with a cover of "The Weight" by The Band. The video is dedicated to the song's writer, the late Robbie Robertson, and reminds us of of what a loss to music his passing is.

 
And their other release from tonight is, interestingly, another great Canadian songwriter. "Harvest Moon" is by Neil Young.

 
So the weekly cover from First to Eleven is a Canadian classic, "Life is a Highway" by Tom Cochrane. Except they credit American country artist Rascal Flatts, who covered it for the soundtrack of the movie Cars (and given the band's ages, that's probably where they heard it originally). Regardless, the kids nailed it, with Matt's guitar echoing Cochrane's version quite nicely, in fact.

 
I have been a fan of Jon & Vangelis, the collaboration of English rock singer Jon Anderson and the late Greek synth wiz Vangelis, since they were still putting out albums. It was kind of my gateway drug to prog rock since, while J & V is not really prog, both artists came from that world. Jon was, of course, the lead singer of Yes for many years, the band that is practically the dictionary definition of prog rock.

And for a long time, I have known of the rather curious fact that disco queen Donna Summer covered "State of Independence", which originally appeared on J&V's album The Friends of Mr. Cairo. And somehow, I only just got around to listening to her version. It is, to my surprise, quite good and faithful to the original.

 
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