I have always been ambivalent about cover songs. I love the Grateful Dead, and the Dead played hundreds of covers, everything from Robert Johnson to Bob Dylan to Traffic. To a person, however, the Dead were excellent musicians, and their covers were expertly crafted, well done, and rooted in a deep love, not just of the songs themselves, but of music as an art form. Another band I like, Dream Theater, released an EP, Different Seasons, that contained live clips from a all-cover show they did at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London in 1995. The cuts range from the obvious (a medley of Led Zepelin songs) to the not-so-obvious (Elton John's "Funeral for a friend/Love lies Bleeding"). A subsequent live video includes covers of Metallica, Yes, and Marillion.
What follows are three examples of some of the worst, most awful covers I can imagine (I tried to find a fourth, but was lucky enough to dodge that particular bullet). First up is the song that actually ended my already-on-the-rocks relationship with commercial radio. When I heard this song for the first time, I shook my head in disbelief, and except for a brief interlude with the only commercial alternative radio station then on in Washington, DC (WHFS), I have not listened to commercial radio since. The whole hair band thing would soon die, was probably already dead, but just too stupid to realize it, but there was enough life left in this horrid beast to produce House Of Lords doing a cover of "Can't Find My Way Home":
Next up is one that used to get a whole lot of groans when I was in college. If Jim Bush-Resko pays a visit, I wonder if he remembers the time Phil "Dr. Metal" Favre actually played this one, got sick of it, and faded the original perfectly during the instrumental break in the middle. I do, because it was among the best radio performances I have ever heard. For some reason, should one read the comments on YouTube, some people actually like this one. April Wine destroying King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man":
We have moved from the awful, to the abysmal, and now we present - the absurd. I may have telegraphed this a couple weeks ago, but I can't resist, because it is just . . . so . . . cryingly . . . vomitously . . . awful. Don Ho's cover of Peter Gabriel's "Shock the Monkey":
The fourth one I tried to find but was saved from having to present to the world was Gene Simmons' cover of "Over the Rainbow". That occurred to me at work last night; lucky for the world I couldn't find it.
Hint for Saturday: What band from the 1970's was among the first to combine heavy metal and progressive elements, had two album covers by Roger Dean, and still tours on the nostalgia circuit. If you answered Deep Purple, by the way, you are wrong wrong wrong.
