It’s the Friday before Memorial day weekend, so there’s no way in hell you’re doing any work today. But don’t worry, we’ve got some great artists covering for you.
“War Pigs” The Flaming Lips w/ Cat Power
Everything about this video is awesome. First you’ve got the Flaming Lips, and then you add Cat Power and a killer Sabbath song, then on top of that, Wayne busts out the fake blood? Thank you. Thank you very much.
But I guess it may be a little harsh to go straight from “Waitin’ for a Superman” to “War Pigs” with blood on your face for the guys in the front row on mushrooms.
Here’s Sabbath doing the original back in ’70. And here’s more with the Flaming Lips on Current.com.
“Dead Flowers” Shelby Lynne
There are only a handful of people in the world that can do justice to a Keith Richards-written song. (Obviously, Mick’s one of them). There’s just an irreplaceable grittiness to Keith’s songs that only years of heroin and cigarettes layered on top of natural genius can produce, but somehow Shelby manages to pull it off without the H.
The only thing better than a good clip of Shelby is a good clip of Shelby playing with Lucinda. If all Southern women were like these two, I never would have moved to California.
“End of the Century” Ben Gibbard and Colin Meloy
God bless Ben Gibbard. God bless Colin Meloy. God bless Blur. And God bless the person with a decent camera with a mediocre microphone that recorded this.
Here’s Blur doing it live. (And here are some great photos of Colin and the Decemberists taken by our own Alex Simmons.)
“The River” Josh Ritter
@itsallovernow sent us this one on twitter. (You can send us your favorite covers @current_music) She said, “my current favorite cover is Josh Ritter covering Springsteen’s “The River.” See also the adorableness.” I agree– it’s a great song and a great cover. However, the two-day old Larry Bird mustache is kind of blocking the “adorableness” for me. Just personal taste, I suppose.
Josh did this cover for the “Hangin’ Out on E Street” project which features Bruce covers from other artists like Tegan and Sara, the Avett Brothers, Pete Yorn, Ted Leo, Against Me, and a bunch of other people. You can see them all here.
“Country Roads” Toots and the Maytals
You know you’ve written a good song when it gets covered in a bunch of different genres. If you had never heard of John Denver, you’d swear this was a Toots original, but this song has been covered by everybody and their mother’s garage band. Israel Kamakawiwo’ole made it Hawaiian. Me First and the Gimme Gimmes kill it as a punk song. And I lost my shit and fell out my chair when I heard the house oompa band bust it out at the Hoffbrau house in Munich. (Yes, I was drunk).
See more Cover for Me on Friday posts here.
