The Covers Project

April 16, 2002 6:49 PM

The Covers Project is compiling a list of covers, in hopes of creating "chains" ie: Band covered Song by Artist who covered OtherSong by OtherArtist, etc. Also see prevous thread about Musical Sausage. Unfortunately, that link now redirects to the Grand Royal on-line store, for some reason.
posted by Su (28 comments total)

Cool link, Su! This is the exact thing that gets my trivia-lovin brain-pistons pumpin'. Needless to say I added to the chain.
posted by jonmc at 6:58 PM on April 16, 2002

Thank you Su!!! I've been threatening to make my own covers cd for quite a while. Now I have a resource (other than my grey matter).

Jon - what did you add?
posted by xena at 7:01 PM on April 16, 2002

Steve Earle covering the Stones' "Before They Make Me Run", I have hundreds of others buzzing thru my head and I will be adding them, it's just too much fun not to.
posted by jonmc at 7:09 PM on April 16, 2002

here's the last available cache of musical sausage at archive.org.
posted by machaus at 7:20 PM on April 16, 2002

This is such a great idea. I've seen the text ad here for Covers but never clicked on it. I have a ton to add.
posted by iconomy at 7:25 PM on April 16, 2002

Awesome site, thank you
posted by riffola at 7:41 PM on April 16, 2002

Oooh, my geek-brain is shooting sparks! Excellent site.
posted by dogwelder at 8:43 PM on April 16, 2002

My geekbrain was shooting sparks too. After I saw that The (good old) Grateful Dead covered their own tune, Ripple, which was apparantly originally by Sex Mob. I choked on my beer.
posted by gnz2001 at 9:01 PM on April 16, 2002

But...It didn't stop me from adding a fistfull of Dead covers (among the dozens they did) of my own. Notice that the longest chains all contain Dead covers.
posted by gnz2001 at 9:04 PM on April 16, 2002

Well, they do have a comments section if you think something's out of whack.

Also, I was pretty sure the original version of Torn was done by Ednaswap...
posted by dogwelder at 9:22 PM on April 16, 2002

you don't want to know how long i was there, adding new bands and updating. scary, i tells ya. but a good way to spend this insomnia time...
posted by pxe2000 at 9:58 PM on April 16, 2002

A wonderful link. I always wanted to do an all-cover-tune radio show called My Bedroom Covers (since I had about 3300 albums on shelves in my bedroom), but when I finally got on the radio, it turned out I was a talk show host! What a disappointment.

Anyway, my all-time favorite cover is the jazz bagpipe player Rufus Harley’s version of “Chim Chim Cheree.” Second place varies, but sometimes it’s Frank Sinatra singing “Bad Bad Leroy Brown.”
posted by LeLiLo at 10:05 PM on April 16, 2002

leilo-maybe when I acheive my lifelong dream of owning my own 24-hour free-form station I'll give you that show, but only if you promise to play the Austin Lounge Lizard's cover of Pink Floyd's "Brain Damage/Eclipse."
posted by jonmc at 10:38 PM on April 16, 2002

Hey, jonmc — thanks for the offer. If it's your station, I’ll play whatever you want, boss.

A more beautiful, not-so-odd cover favorite of mine is Over the Rainbow, recorded on August 1, 1960 by the 18-year-old Aretha Franklin, on her first day in the studio as a future pop star. (She’d made one gospel album earlier, at age 14.) I have it on a 1972 Columbia LP rerelease called The First 12 Sides, part of The John Hammond Collection.
posted by LeLiLo at 11:09 PM on April 16, 2002

jonmc: I definitely think Luther Wright & The Wrongs' country/bluegrass version of The Wall would warrant some airtime as well.
posted by disarray at 11:14 PM on April 16, 2002

disarray-you don't happen to live in Connecticut do you? The Local rock Station was playing Luther Wright this morning...

Another great cover Impatient Youth's hardcore punk version of "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition" which IIRC was the the theme music to a show WFMU back in the mid-'80s.
posted by jonmc at 11:20 PM on April 16, 2002

lelilo's mention of Over the Rainbow reminded me to add Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's cover to the database. Besides being a pretty amazing rendition, it seemed to spur some interest in Hawaiian music on the mainland a couple years ago. If anyone's looking for more in that vein, I highly recommend the Ka'au Crater Boys. They do a mix of laid-back covers and traditional songs.

jon: nope, I'm in Indiana. Quite the coincidence, though. I haven't heard anything of his locally, but I'm guessing he might be getting airplay because Rebuild The Wall is finally being released in the US this month.
posted by disarray at 12:04 AM on April 17, 2002

johnmc - along similar lines howbout the FU's great "Ballad of the Green Berets"?
posted by ssdecontrol at 12:07 AM on April 17, 2002

Great Link....I added a strange Gary Numan covering George Benson thing....
posted by mattr at 12:07 AM on April 17, 2002

Frank Sinatra's version of "It's Not Easy Bein Green" and my two covers of "Dancing With Myself" (one by Blink182 and one toe tappin techno track by the Boomtang Boys).

Insomnia assistant, indeed.
posted by verso at 1:01 AM on April 17, 2002

The longest cover chain on the site doesn't actually work -- there's a gap between Wilco and The Grateful Dead with nothing to connect them. Can I claim a prize?
posted by Cobbler at 1:57 AM on April 17, 2002

The "longest cover chain" went from 26 tunes to 37 tunes in less than a day. Nice!
posted by shinybeast at 2:56 AM on April 17, 2002

No wonder the site got so slow tonight. MeFi discovered it at about the same time I got around to looking at it (my husband told me about it earlier in the day). I must have added more than 50 covers tonight, and at least 10 bands. I also found some substantial factual and spelling errors, and submitted them to the site owner. ;-)

(Hey, you Louie Louie posters -- the Kingsmen's version was a COVER. Not the original. Grr.)
posted by litlnemo at 5:12 AM on April 17, 2002

I thought I'd throw Cowboy Angel Sings into the pot here.
posted by y2karl at 7:54 AM on April 17, 2002

I added the Coboy Junkies' covers of "Post" by Dinosaur Jr and "Powderfinger" by Neil Young.
posted by Kafkaesque at 9:10 AM on April 17, 2002

or, you know, Cowboy.
posted by Kafkaesque at 9:10 AM on April 17, 2002

As a Giant Sand enthusiast, I am shocked and stunned to see such blatant abuse of this fine project by the reprobate that entered "the song Giant Sand", "originally written by Giant Sand", "covered by Giant Sand".

*this comment represents the most times the band Giant Sand has been mentioned on Metafilter.

Giant Sand
posted by Kafkaesque at 9:24 AM on April 17, 2002

Also, I was pretty sure the original version of Torn was done by Ednaswap...

Yes, and the Ednaswap version is much better. Well, they actually have 2 versions, the first one is the best (on their eponymous album).

Oh the timewaster this site is going to be for me. I love useless music trivia!
posted by witchstone at 10:45 AM on April 17, 2002