Laura Seabrook's Ramblings

...but this cheers me up: 

 and this is ridiculous!

This is a song from HEDWIG that always makes me cry. It seems that it's also an often covered tune:

I'm surprised that I missed this. There used to be a show called Money or the Gun hosted by Andrew Denton, long before he was giving people Enough Rope. Anyway, it was a running joke that each show he'd have a different band in doing a different version of Stairway to Heaven.

Anyway, after the show was over they brought out a video and CD that collected these. Carol gave me a copy of the video for my birthday back in 1993. You can see all 29 of these (including one by Rolf Harris, and even a spoken word version by Leonard Teale) on this playlist. But there's more!

Here's the song: backwards (sounds much the same, but look at this and at the secret nuclear message - which is really by Dimmu Borgir); X FACTOR 2-Matteo Becucci (nice voice); Ocarina for iPhone; Stanley Jordan (very liquid); London Philharmonic; Far Corporation; Dave Grohl (stuffing it up); Frank Zappa; Leningrad Cowboys; single iPhone version; Heart; Apocalyptica (expects to see a H.I.M. version soon); Never The Bride; The O'jays (it's a different song!); Gregorian Masters Of Chant; ...on Harp; Anime; Mario Paint and of course, the original.

There's more 9330 of them in fact, so this is truly an undead song.

Kevin  mentioned the Lady Sovereign appropriation of Close to Me called So Human, which used the tune, and throws out most of the words (some are still there)!

Kevin absolutely hates it as it offends his "Gothic Sensibilities". However there are stranger versions, like The Dismemberment Plan, acoustic ukulele (what is it with Cure songs and ukuleles?),  and Inflow. Then again, the above isn't really a cover version is it? It's my like a recycled media thing, so I'm adding a new tag).

Know of any other examples of recycled media?

Pop Muzik - the original (this was on ABC1 last weekend):

I'd just finished ready a recent issue of JMag which had a The Cure theme to it. They mentioned cover bands so I thought I'd check out youtube to see what there was there.

A search of "The Cure" +covers brings up a whole slew of entries ranging from amateur to well known bands (including Robert Smith doing a cover of a Lennon song). One of the most popular songs to cover is Just like Heaven which has no less than 417 results! Covers of A Forest comes in at 121 entries, In Between Days only has 53 entries, and Love Cats at 40.

There's a lot of varied cover stuff about, from AFI - Just Like Heaven by AFI, Scarlett Johansson - Boys Don't Cry, Tricky - Love Cats and Editors - Lullaby. There's some absolutely dreadful versions too, like this one, though I like it when the cover version includes Robert Smith!

Here's two favourites:

Lovesong on Ukulele

Just Like Heaven by Dinosaur Jr.

DIGG radio just had an acoustic version of this on, and it made me feel sweetly sad.

Gasp, check out all the versions of this on youtube!

This is the original and is from the Starfish album, as were Destination, Reptile, North, South, East And West, and Hotel Womb.

Other Church songs I love include Already Yesterday, Tantalized, Magician among the Spirits Part 1 & Part 2 (which is all one part on the album of the same name), Shadow Cabinet, and of course Metropolis (which I saw them perform way back in 2000 at the Metro in Sydney). Actually, I love most Church songs, and when I've missed them live in Newcastle, it's been a real Grind and a real Comedown and I just feel like Fading Away.

So which do you like best (and wrote them?!)?:

• Iron Man
• The Hulk
• Captain America
• The Sub-Mariner
• Mighty Thor
• Spider-Man
• Fantastic Four
  
• and what the fuck is this?

The Original

French & Saunders version