I like that this turned into a subthread about Karl Denson, The Greyboy Allstars, etc… such good times.
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I must be missing something because I have no love for this version at all.
I love the swagger and shout of the original.
Just my tuppence.
Each to their own, of course… it’s where they take the song, and the inherent critique of mass media spectacle in rock music that I like.
Here is there cover of Queen’s One Vision…
I swear, they read that interview with David Bowie in the 70s where he was talking about how “Hitler staged a nation” and decided to run with it for their entire career.
I’ll watch the vid again.
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Don’t feel like you need to! If you don’t like it, you don’t.
I do think that it’s easier to appreciate what they’re doing if you understand their history a bit? They started out in Yugoslavia in 1980, and were actually banned from using their name for a while in Slovenia, since it’s the German for the Slovene capital Ljubljana… it was meant to conflation of the Communist government with the Nazis to some degree.
They also performed in Belgrade in the few months before the wars started. One of them came out and gave a speech with combined German and Serbo-Croatian, and employed lines from some of the recent speeches that Milosevic had been giving with some lines from the appeasement speech by Chamberlain. Maybe some stuff from Hitler, too? The clip used to be online, but it’s not anymore.
There is the clip from the Occupied Europe NATO tour in 1995, which was in Sarajevo maybe a month or so after the ceasefire (and I think prior to the signing of the Dayton Accords). You might remember that Sarajevo underwent one of the longest sieges in modern history.
The passport thing is one of my favorite things ever.
Apparently, Al-Jazeera Balkans did a half hour show about the band…
Most people know them from their covers like this one. They also did some Beatles and Queen… they covered another Slovenian band, Siddhartha, B Mashina… here is the original:
And the cover…
Epic!
They also pretty recently did an entire album of reinterpretations of national anthems, Volk.
Anyways… sorry. That’s probably more than you wanted to hear about some random industrial band from Slovenia…
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this is actually the version that i know best, too – it’s just so good.
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Not at all. You just made it far more interesting.
I generally like covers. But the first time I heard this through it seemed to me like they’d taken the spark out of it.
Having said that, I like Johnny Cash’s version of Hurt - not that that particular song was a toe-tapper in itself. And I do like some melancholy covers of other songs. Struggling to bring one to mind at the mo, but I know they’re there.
So, many thanks for the info overload (not taking the piss). I will give them another listen.
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I love Leonard Cohen, but I think everyone agrees that John Cale’s version of Hallelujah is THE version…
Both Rufus Wainwright and the Late Jeff Buckley did good versions, too.
Tori Amos covering Joe Jackson’s heart wrenching Real Men…
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Ah, that Tori video was excellent. I always liked her sound, and I am also a fan of Joe Jackson’s Jumpin’ Jive (showing my age). But I’d never seen that vid before.
For me, Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah is the gold standard, but maybe only because that’s the first version I heard.
Other faves: Placebo’s Running Up that Hill, Disturbed’s Sound Of Silence and, probably my no.1 - Bangles Hazy Shade Of Winter.
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It’s good, but honestly, Cale’s my fave for sure.
I’m not a big fan of the Placebo cover, just cause I don’t know if you can top the perfection that is Kate Bush… Although this cover by Maxwell comes close… it’s swoon worthy for sure.
Speaking of Kate, here she is covering a Roy Harper song with Peter Gabriel…
Also swoon worthy!
And you might as well just go out and buy the whole damn This Mortal Coil box set…
This is an Emmy Lou Harris song…
I can take or leave Disturbed’s cover… but Bangles did a fucking bang up job of Hazy Shade of Winter…
OH! Coil’s cover of Soft Cell’s cover of Tainted Love originally by Gloria Jones…
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Was Merry Clayton singing on that song? Fuckit who cares any excuse to link her singing. She was a huge performer who sang backing vocals on lots of records including Rolling Stones. This being a Biggie.
I do remember watching the Godard thing as a kid, like early teens, on channel 4. In my mind it was called 1 plus 1 and I had no idea what was going on at all. I do like his films sometimes by the way. As I think I mentioned seeing Alphaville with friends and we were laughing and no one else was because, I think, they thought it was serious.
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This was fantastic to see the song come together. Brian Jones was super low in the mix but he was waaaaaay more lucid than I expected.
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That’s Chris on the bass! Haven’t seen him in years.
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Yup. One Plus One was the original title for Godard’s cut.
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I did some work in a mews behind Parsons Green (incidentally next to a foundry which produced Henry Moore’s small sculptures). One day Mick and Keef walked past on their way to their accountant who had a house at the end of the mews.
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funny you should mention henry moore he had such a huge following…
and so when I saw a rodine in the most obscure part of paris in the eighties behind the sacre-coeur in paris is was as if I should play a part… funny I should not have taken a picture
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kate bush allegedly had a posh house near me place… at some point
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Favourite covers, eh?
Joe Cocker’s Woodstock performance of “With a little help from my friends” is right up there for me as versions that are probably better than the originals:
I’m also very fond of Ministry’s cover of “Roadhouse Blues”, which is pretty straightforward as far as covers go, but just incredibly fast and aggressive:
And I think I’ve said this here before, but The Scissor Sisters’ version of “Comfortably Numb” is just fab:
In the reverse, one thing that ticks me off is that racist piece of shit Clapton getting much of the credit for “Cocaine”, when J. J. Cale’s original is so much better (at least, to my ear):
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Cheers MindySan, you have given me many great hours of Youtubery.
I am a massive fan of Kate Bush, at least, up until the last album.
On that, I loved King of the Mountain, even enjoyed Pi, and could listen to that over again. But then “washing machine”. Perhaps I’m not smoking the right stuff.
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When our band was able to play out, Sympathy and Knocking were always crowd-pleasing highlights or so I thought. Of course It may be that I’m playing congas and singing lead on both that I assume they just go wild for me. Yeah, like that happens. Both fun to do, though
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