Music for my peeps

[darkluna]

I'm in a music-share-y mood today, so here are some cover versions I like.

They'll Need a Crane, The Wrens (orig. They Might Be Giants). A cool deconstruction of a song that sounds peppy in the original despite the rather depressing lyrics.

Timeless Melody, Pearl Jam (orig The Las). My debilitating crush on McCready is a thing of the past, but I still love the guitar in this.

Hallelujah, Jeff Buckley (orig. Leonard Cohen). Every time I see Shrek, I have so much hate for the version they use. If you over-enunciate, you completely change the mood and rob the song of its world-weariness. (And you pretty much bend the rhyme scheme over a barrel and have your wicked way with it.) This version is superior in every way.

Everybody Knows, Concrete Blonde (orig. also Leonard Cohen). Pump Up the Volume is one of those films that's probably indirectly responsible for a lot of my opinions and values. :-)

Cover Me, Thea Gilmore (orig. Springsteen). A nifty, spare version.

Down to the River to Pray, Alison Krauss (orig. a traditional Baptist hymn, as far as I can tell). A gem from the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. Now you guys know I'm about as far from a Baptist as anyone can be, but this is so beautiful, it gives me goosebumps.

Comin' Down in the Rain, Nanci Griffith (orig. Buddy Mondlock). Other Voices, Other Rooms is Griffith's brilliant all-covers album. I listen to it all the time. This and "From Clare to Here" (orig. Ralph McTell) are probably my favorite tracks.

Crazy, REM (orig. Pylon). Probably better-known than the original, which is a shame because Pylon was awesome (and they're super-nice folks too!).

I think it's freaking thundering, freakin' again. That's a storm every day since Monday. Apparently the south hates me as much as I hate it.

Comments

[ordinarywhirled.livejournal.com]

Am I falsely remembering that you wanted to bring the lead singer of Pylon to prom and the GPS powers that be were frowning upon it because he was 36? Why do I have this memory? Am I making things up? And if true, why couldn't you have just shown up with him and claimed he was 20? :-)

[darkluna.livejournal.com]

I doubt I would have consulted TPTB anyway. :-) I might have toyed with the idea of bringing the bass player, who was my particular friend (and I don't mean in the naughty way, just that he was the one I bonded with). But unless I've gone senile, I'm pretty sure I ended up taking my 15-year-old boyfriend-at-the-time.

[wakingdreaming.livejournal.com]

I have to say, for the record, that I LOVE the version of "Hallelujah" done by Rufus Wainwright for Shrek.

[darkluna.livejournal.com]

It's probably a matter of getting so used to one version that others start to sound wrong, because I remember that the first time I saw the movie, it actually didn't bother me at all. Then I listened to the Jeff Buckley one a lot, and the soundtrack one started to make me go ARGH.