And welcome back to 35,000 Watts, the podcast. My name is Michael Millard. I am the director of a feature film called 35,000 Watts, the story of college radio, and it is available right now for download at 35,000 watts.com. Makes a great gift, perhaps a stocking stuffer. I’m realizing this is gonna air in January, so it doesn’t matter.
But if you miss Christmas for some reason you want to print out a receipt and stick it in a stocking that’ll work great. 35,000 watts. Story of College Radio available for download right now. Today, however, we are talking about college radio music and specifically college radio bands that did, covers of other songs. I’m here with Scott Mobley and Keith Porterfield, my 2 resident music gurus and college radio alumni.
And we are gonna talk about a bunch of different bands and a bunch of different styles and, should be an interesting episode. So welcome to the show guys. I’m gonna actually kick it off for us today with this this was a cover that the reason I picked this one is not because it was necessarily one of my favorite covers or one of my favorite songs of all time or anything, but it came out right as I was kind of getting into college radio DJ to being a DJ on college radio. It was also one where it may be the first time that it was a song that I already knew really well, the original. I knew it.
I loved it. I could sing it by heart. And the first time I heard someone kinda do a cover of a song that I knew that well and completely rethink the entire song. So this is, the band Fronte and the cover of bizarre love triangle. They took what was, you know, an electro pop upbeat track.
And turned it into a kind of, you know, an acoustic folk song, which I thought was like a really bold choice. Every time I see you falling, I get down on my knees and pray. I’m waiting for that final moment. You say the words that I can’t say. I think now looking back, like that’s happened a lot.
You get a lot of these kind of really stripped down covers, female vocal. They like slow the tempo down or whatever. At that time, I can’t think of like another song, another another one like that off the top of my head that took like such an upbeat dance track and completely kind of flipped it on its head and turned it into something else. And if there were some out there, I really wasn’t aware of them. So it was kind of my introduction to, to again, having a song that I know and love kind of completely, you know, just changed.
And then they did a great job of it. I think it was, it was really popular. It actually came out on an EP in 1993 in Australia first, and then it was released in 1994 in the US. It was, like, track 6 on an EP that was really promoting another song called labor of love. And I, you know, I think it was getting picked up by college radio, and if I remember right, we at KTXT got it on, like, a promo CD, I think.
So I’m not sure if anybody actually, you know, picked it up off of the original release and kinda knew about it at that point, or if it was when it it may have been on like a CMJ promo CD. But once we did start playing it, I mean, we got major, major, major phone calls for this. I remember it being a power lunch staple, which was our request show. A pretty big track in in early 1994, if I remember right. It actually charted, fun fact, higher than the original.
So at least in terms of the billboard 100 chart in the US, it charted at 49. So almost made the top 40 in the US, whereas the original only ever made it to 98 on the billboard 100. I would say bizarre love triangle probably better known as like a dance track in the US and it and certainly did better as a dance track than than on the billboard charts, but still like a very popular song in the US. Also a very short song. They cut it down to like 2 minutes.
So it was like it’s like literally 2 minutes and one second track time. So a very just concise stripped down cover of, of a favorite and, definitely a memorable song from my first days at KTXT. Yeah. We definitely played a a lot at KTXT during my time as music director there. We gave it a good run through the top 35, and I do remember getting a lot of requests for it.
Great cover, and you’re right, or just a radically re altered version of the song. I like the fact that you mentioned the the 2 minute run time because I went and looked just for to satisfy my curiosity on, substance. Bizarre Love Triangle is 6 minutes and 45 seconds long. And then, of course, you get the 2 minute cover of it. That, I think, has everything to do with the fact that it goes directly into the vocals on the cover rather than having the long musical interludes.
So it’s funny to me that you take a a song that’s nearly 7 minutes long if you just take the vocals out and, you know, make it just the vocal track. It’s kind of, you know, boils down to just 2 minutes rather than the the, nearly 7 minute long version on substance. Even the version on brotherhood’s over 4 minutes long, so, very much a stripped down version of that song for sure. I think you you tapped into something interesting, and I I I like this cover too. And it but I I hadn’t really thought about what you said about you know, there’s this new thing now.
They call it, you know, the movie trailer music where you take an old pop song and you, you know, here’s Britney Spears maybe one more time played really slowly and and gothically and whatever. That’s a thing. Now that’s everywhere. But you’re right. At that time, that probably really wasn’t that much of a thing.
And this is one of those covers that’s radically different from its original, but still really good. I was gonna say I’d really like to hear a version of that where somebody would go in and put the beats back in and, like, Peter Hook’s killer bass line and put her vocals over the top of that, and that would be a song I’d be all down for. I bet that exists. It probably I bet that exists, and I bet we could find it. I’m I’m it’s funny that you as you say that, my brain is just like a little tiny light bulb was going off that someone actually did that even in 94, 95.
Someone did a dance remix of the Fronte version. I I bet that exists. I’ll have to do It almost has to. Right? I may be forced to do some research, but I It almost has to exist.
We have when I think about all the songs that we got remixes of that should have never been remixed, that that’s probably Yeah. That one’s out there. Alright. We’re gonna ping pong around, around the crew here. So, Scott, what you got for your first one?
Okay. So for my first one, I chose a cover from 1992. This is by the British band Carter the unstoppable sex machine. The song is Panic, which is a cover of The Smiths. Panic, The Smiths did in 87.
It was on their album Louder Than Bombs. Which is a compilation album of sort of all the singles and b sides that didn’t make it on another album. So Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine puts it out in 1992. This cover, I tend to lean to covers that do something sort of different or, you know, like we talked about with Fernte, something sort of, you know, radically changing the song. This is not that.
It’s basically Panic by the Smiths. But it’s amped up just a notch or 2, just a just a little bit. It, you know, it is rocking. This is a rocking song for the Smiths. You know, if you look at the Smiths and you say, what’s their most rocking song?
This would have to be in the top 10, I would think. So it was already a rocking song. It was already upbeat. It was already high energy. They kind of just put their little spin on it.
So if you’re not familiar with Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, they are part of that wave of British bands that came along in the early nineties. I would think inspired at least in part by EMF. They were sort of the first big band to have sort of have this sound. But you had Soup Dragons, Pop Elite Itself, Inspiral Carpets. You know, all of these bands had sort of poured out of England at this time.
Carter was one of them. And, this was on their second album. It’s a really, really good just sort of tribute cover. It’s a lot like the original, but it has just a little bit of that sound, that British early nineties, whatever you wanna call it. I don’t know if they ever put a name on that music, but it’s it’s sort of a precursor to rap rock a little bit, a lot of talked vocals.
It’s very electronic. It’s full of samples. So they took a song that already, you know, was rocking and fun and just gave it a little bit of their twist. It’s a lot of fun, and it’s a it’s a really, really good cover by what I think is a sort of underappreciated band. If you’ve never heard, Carter the Inseparable Sex Machine had 2 songs we played pretty regularly at KTXT.
The first one was the bigger hit of the 2. It was called The Only Living Boy in Newcross, and it’s a good one. Their second single, which didn’t hit quite as hard, is called Sheriff Fat Man. And if you’ve never heard it, it is an absolute banger. Put it on and enjoy.
It’s a fun one. So that is Panic by Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine. I love that genre of music. I it probably does have a name. I don’t I I can’t think of it off the top of my head.
I think, you know, you don’t you could also throw, like, Meat Beat Manifesto, I think, was in that crew. Renegade Soundwave was in that that That’s the topic Justin. And I also think that this cover is similar kind of because of what you were saying of being like, there it’s not a departure from the original. They kinda they kinda just amp the original up. It is very similar to Anthrax’s cover of London by the Smiths, where they which also one of the top ten possible that may possibly be the Smith’s most rocking song actually.
London is number 1, honestly. Yeah. London is an absolute banger. It’s Anthrax’s style overlaid on on that template, you know, and I think that’s the same thing that happens with this one. It’s it’s it’s Carter the unstoppable, you know, sex machine takes their style and just kinda layers it on top of the template that that the Smiths give them, and it and it works out really well.
It’s not, you know, are they inventing new genres of music and, you know, reconstructing this? No. They’re not. They’re taking a rocker, making another rocker out of it in their own style, and it and it totally works. I think my favorite thing, difference between this version of the song, the Carter’s version and the Smith’s version is kind of the weird juxtaposition of the vocals.
You got Morrissey’s super slick, you know, really professional vocals. Morrissey, one of the great vocalists, are kind of the alternative rock age. And then you’ve got the I don’t even know the singer’s name from Carter the unstoppable sex machine, but very much a different vocal style, kind of the the bratty, almost nasally, kind of shouted vocals. And I think it’s just kinda neat. The, you know, the music is similar, a little more rocking on the Carter version.
But the big difference between the two is the the treatment of the vocals. The, you know, the juxtaposition between the Carter vocals and Morrissey’s vocals is is really neat to me. I think this song works really well largely because of that. I really like the way the vocals come out in this song. So far, we’ve done a couple of covers where we had a KTXD band covering a KTXD band, bands that we already played there.
For this, I on the ones I picked, I specifically went for songs that there was just no way on God’s green earth that we were gonna play the original version of KTXT, just a completely different thing. And so for my first one, I picked a Simon and Garfunkel song. Now Simon and Garfunkel have a lot of great songs, largely acoustic, killer vocal harmonies between the 2 of them, but not a band that we were gonna really play at KTXT ever. But there was a cover of one of their songs by a KTXT band, that band being called the Lemonheads. So my first pick is missus Robinson by the Lemonheads.
Now missus Robinson was a big song for Simon and Garfunkel. It was on their, album called Bookends. That was the version that got big on the radio. It had previously been on the soundtrack to the movie, The Under or The Graduate, I should say. Not the Undergraduate, the actual Graduate.
So that was where it first got its, exposure. But the the version that got really big was on the album bookends, and it was actually won a Grammy as the record of the year in 1969. The Lemonheads version of it came out for the 25th anniversary video version of the graduate movie. It didn’t appear on any of the Lemonheads’ albums at first anyway. Subsequent pressings of It’s A Shame About Ray had it tacked on to the end because it ended up being one of the Lemonheads’ biggest songs, and so they wanted to get it on an album.
And so if you had the first pressing of It’s A Shame About Ray, you didn’t have that song. But if you bought anyone that came out after that, you actually got Mrs. Robinson tacked on to the end of that. The Lemonheads were a band that, was fairly big in the nineties, fronted by a guy named Evan Dando, one of those bands where he was really the only, member that was consistently in the group for the entire time. But this song kinda came out during the golden age of the Lemonheads, you know, between the albums Shame About Ray and Come on Feel the Lemonheads which came after it.
That was kinda their biggest period. We played this one at KTXT. We played it quite a bit actually. And, yeah, just one of my favorites. They take the song.
It’s not radically different, but it’s rocked up and sped up, and it just works really, really well. A great cover by the Lemonheads. I think, this is a a good example of a song that sort of even though it is a cover, even though they didn’t write it, it’s it captures the sound of the Lemonheads very well. Like, if you’ve never heard the Lemonheads and then you heard this, you have a pretty good idea of what the Lemonheads sound like. Like, the whole album, It’s a Shame About Ray, kind of has this vibe.
So I would point someone. You ever heard the Lemonheads before? I don’t usually point people to covers to check out a band, but this is one where you could do that, I think, and you get a pretty good representation of what the Lemonheads are up to. I had a friend of mine many years ago tell me that you never trust a band whose first big hit is a cover. There’s always exceptions to that rule.
I think this is one of them. Looking at you, alien farm. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man.
That’s the truth. They did nail Smooth Criminal, though. I gotta I’m not lying. Like, they nailed it, but that was But also, it’s a cover. The interview.
Where are you going? You know? That said, yeah. This was probably my introduction to the Lemonheads and quite possibly my introduction to this song, you know, kind of a double whammy and both of them, I I ended up really loving the lemon, the lemon heads and and going down that rabbit hole most likely because of this song. And also, yeah, going back and and starting to listen to Simon and Garfunkel.
And that’s gonna be a theme, I think, with a couple more of the songs that we’re gonna talk about where, like, Keith is talking about with his his mission to to pick songs that we weren’t playing on KTXT. This was an entry point for me and a lot of other people into fifties music, sixties music, seventies music that we hadn’t been exposed to yet. You know, you’re if you’re 18, 19, 20 years old, you’ve only had so much time to kind of absorb music. Right? Like there’s, there’s, you’re, you’re still getting started in your journey through, through music.
And so you have to find entry points into, into different genres and in different eras of music. And for for a lot of people that was that’s a cover, you know, that was done by a band that they already like or or that is maybe in the case of KTXC is already getting played on the the station they like, and now they’re gonna go back and all of a sudden they know who Simon and Garfunkel is now. So I think that’s a really cool aspect of this one and and some of the other ones we’ll talk about it is that it brought not only a really cool song into the world, but it brought people into into a whole new world of music where they maybe hadn’t explored those those original bands before. Just as a side note before we pass on, before we pass on for missus Robinson, we listen to that song. Really take the time to listen to what the drummer is doing in the last 45 seconds of that song.
It’s incredible. It’s, certainly nothing that Simon and Garfunkel thought of. It’s, it’s really, really good. Alright. Along the these same lines, actually, my second choice fits the description of of what I was just talking about where and I specifically chose it.
In fact, for that reason is that it introduced me to a song I didn’t know and started to introduce me to to artists that I that I wasn’t familiar with. So this one is, Smashing Pumpkins cover of Landslide, which came out in 1994. So this one was actually originally the b side to disarm, and I don’t think a whole lot of people picked up on it necessarily at that point. I think it was when it was later released on Pisces Iscariot, which was a compilations album that came out in 94 that that most of us discovered it. That’s when it it actually did end up charting in the US, particularly on the modern rock tracks.
It went all the way to number 3. That’s definitely when I discovered it. I think we were all smashing pumpkin fans in in 93, and there was no new music that came out in 94 in terms of a studio album, but this Pisces Iscariot came out. I don’t know about you guys, but I thought it was as good, if not, maybe even superior to to Gish or Siamese dream in some ways. It was certainly more varied, had a lot more variation, showed more of what Smashing Pumpkins was capable of.
And I would I would argue that Frayla and Bedazzled is their best song of that era, certainly in their in the top couple, I think. So not to mention it had WER and blew away and some other really, really great songs on it. But this one, we played a ton of it’s obviously a cover of a Stevie Nicks song, and I knew I mean, I knew a little bit about Fleetwood Mac. I think if you grew up in the US in the seventies, eighties, it would you’d be hard pressed not to at least have heard of a Fleetwood Mac song, but but I certainly didn’t know a lot about them. I didn’t know about her story.
I didn’t know about their story, and I didn’t know landslide. And I saw my reflection in snow covered hills till the landslide It’s a good solid. Again, it’s a cover that doesn’t stray that far from the original. You do have that dichotomy, like you were talking about Keith, with the voices. Obviously, Billy Corgan’s voice versus Stevie Nicks’ voice is a whole different kinda world, but the song itself is is pretty faithful to the original, and it’s a good entry point into that.
I think it kinda introduced people to a different side of Smashing Pumpkins that they would start to explore more on, like, Melancholy and and some of their later albums. Yeah. I think you’re definitely seeing, in that you know, that may be the first time we we heard that mellow version of Smashing Pumpkins. And this song is covered a lot. I don’t know if if you if you dug in if you went down the rabbit hole of covers of Landslide, there are a 1,000,000,000 of them.
But this is certainly one of the better ones, if not maybe the best one. I I like it because it sounds like the Smashing Pumpkins, you know, and that’s mostly because of Billy Corgan’s vocals vocals. Like, you can’t that guy can’t open his mouth without you know it’s him. But they also kind of it feels like a Smashing Pumpkins song even though it’s, you know, it’s obviously not a Smashing Pumpkins song. It doesn’t even really sort of lend itself to what their sound was prior to that.
But it it definitely sounds like them, and it’s a good cover. It’s a it’s a nice, easygoing version of what was already a pretty nice easygoing song, but they did a nice version of sort of modernizing it a little bit. And I think the the other interesting part is that it it’s, you know, obviously, it’s a male vocal, which, in in a song that I think is sort of decidedly female, lyrically. But Corgan does a really nice job with it, and it does sort of fit his vocal style when you, you know, when you when you hear it. It does work.
So that’s a that’s a good choice. That’s an excellent cover. Fleetwood Mac’s gonna come up again here a little bit. I actually think it fits his vocal style really well. I think his voice works really well on that song, and you’re not very often gonna find that it’s a good idea to pitch your voice against Stevie Nicks’, but in this instance, that actually works out pretty well for Billy Corgan.
My memory of this song, I think that I added this into rotation. Of course, I wasn’t the music director until 94, so maybe my memory is off on that. But at the time, I did not realize that it was a cover, that it was, a Fleetwood Mac song. I just thought, wow, here’s this great acoustic song from Smashing Pumpkins. We need to be playing this.
We’ll put this on the air. And it was only afterwards that somebody told me, oh, yeah. Well, you know, that’s a Fleetwood Mac cover. Right? And I was like, oh, okay.
Well, maybe I need to go check that out. And of course, yeah, the Fleetwood Mac version is beautiful, but so is this one. It’s, yeah, a really good choice and a great cover song. Alright. So I didn’t know I was doing this, but I’m also gonna follow Keith’s, rule of play picking a song that we would have never ever ever played a KTSD.
My second pick is The Herty Gertie Man by the Butthole Surfers, which was originally done by Donovan in 1968. What is great about this song, I think, and and if you just a little backstory on the Butt Hole Surfers, they are a wildly experimental band. They basically get in the studio and tinker around with toys and noises and different things and come up with new sounds and all that kind of stuff. As with any experimental band, when that doesn’t work, it’s painfully unlistenable. But when it does, and this is one of those examples where it does, it is a fantastic treat for your ears.
Now this is a radically different version of the song from what Donovan did. It’s way more rocking. It’s way it’s faster. It’s longer. It has some of the most incredible guitar work that the buttle servers have ever done, but that’s not what you’re gonna notice if you listen to it.
Donovan, as a singer, had this sort of high pitched, whiny, heavily vibratoed vocal style. And the butthole surfers, when they covered Herdy Gertie Man, decided to, I think, almost make fun of that. What they did was Gibby Haines ran his voice through this machine that basically drops out every other beat. So the vocals sound like, and if you really listen, you can hear the vocals to the hurdy gurdy man. Every word is there.
When you first hear it, you don’t notice that. It sounds like gobbledygook. But my history with this song was this was the first thing I ever heard from the butthole surfers. It was on MTV’s A 100 and 20 minutes when it came out. It was released as a single in 90, and then put on the album PO’d, which came out in 91.
But it was one of the first it was the first thing I ever heard from them. And it was one of the first, like, moments I remember going, this is so weird and so bizarre and so, like, off the charts of what mainstream music sounds like, and yet I love it. Like, my ears are just bursting with joy at this. It’s really a neat cover, and it’s radically different from the original. It’s almost unrecognizable as the song The Herdy Gerdy Man, but it’s a lot of fun.
And then it’s, like I said earlier, the butthole surfers are not known for crafty musicianship, but the guitar work on this song is unbelievable. So that’s the hurdy gurdy man of the butthole surfers. I was unaware that this was a cover when I first heard it. It’s another one sort of like Landslide. I didn’t know this was not just a Butthole Surfers song.
So I only found out later that it was a cover. And then when we were doing I was doing my research for this, that was, when I went and actually listened to the Donovan song. I’d never actually listened to the Donovan song before and it is a terribly weird song made even terribly weirder by the the butthole surfers. So, it’s pretty cool. If you have actually haven’t listened to, either version of the song, check them both out.
Listen to Donovan first and then go listen to what the what the surfers did with it and it’s it is really cool, but you’re right. The the vocal is there. The song itself is there in the buttholes, surfers version. It’s it’s all there. It’s just reworked and weird and different.
And again, a weirder version of what actually is a weird song to begin with. It was kind it was delightful to find out that that song was pretty weird in its original version. Again, went through that same process of, oh, it’s a cover. Oh, I should probably go find it. And I do remember kinda looking it up back in the day and and finding a copy of it, a weird, original that was made weirder, but very listenable for, you know, for a Buttl Surfer song who I love and and, you know, I’m I’m not opposed to a song that’s loud and aggressive and obnoxious and all that kind of stuff, which many of their songs are.
This one’s not. This one’s so listenable and and pleasant, I think, to listen to even in its experimentalness. It’s kind of lush in a way it’s it’s it’s kind of soothing in a way like the fake vibrato thing actually makes it even almost more soothing in a way because it’s got like a pulse and a rhythm to it. It was one of my favorite just random discoveries. This is a song that I absolutely discovered at KTX T because it just probably popped up in my rotation one day.
I wouldn’t have probably discovered it any other way other than that. And it was, yeah, delight. I loved it. It became one of those that I would occasionally make actually my DJ pick because I I would dig it out and play it just because it was so different from from almost anything else. But also, again, very accessible in a very listenable enjoyable song.
So, yeah. Excellent choice. For my next one, again, another song that we would not ever have played at KTXT, but we did play this cover version of it. Next one is a Marvin Gaye song. This is a version of sexual healing done by Soul Asylum.
Now this was off Marvin Gaye’s last studio album Midnight Love came out in 1982. And it was a huge song. This song got all the way to number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, also won the Grammy for the best male R and B vocal, for that year. So it was a big song. So, you know, taking a swing at this one takes a little bit of courage, I guess you might say.
But man, Soul Asylum did a fantastic job of it. A really strangely good job. And this is not on any of their albums. It was on a 1993 charity compilation. It was an AIDS charity compilation called No Alternative.
The only other place this song ever appeared was on a best of compilation for Soul Asylum, But it was not this song was not pushed as being a single or anything off that compilation. We played it a lot at KTXT and it turned out a lot of other stations did too because it actually reached number 10 on the US Modern Rock charts. So it wasn’t just us at KTXT that were playing the song, and we got a lot of airplay at a lot of different, modern rock in college radio stations. Again, it’s actually a pretty true cover. It’s not radically different.
The main difference is it is it’s rocked up a little bit as you might expect, and then again, the vocals, you know, you’re talking about one of the smoothest, silkiest voices in all of creation and Marvin Gaye versus Dave Perner, who does not have a smooth and silky voice. So, that’s really where the main difference here lies in other than the fact that it’s rocked up a little bit. But this one has always been one of my favorites. Again, I think it’s kind of a bold swing, to take a shot at a Marvin Gaye song if you’re a rock band like Soul Asylum. And so this one’s fun.
I will say though, if you are planning an evening with your best girl or guy and, are looking for, you know, some romantic music to put on, go with the Marvin Gaye version. That’s probably your first instinct anyway. But that’s definitely what you wanna do. Do not go with the solacellular version in that instance. But otherwise, yes, absolutely.
Listen to the solacellular version. It’s fantastic. I agree that this is a good cover. It’s not it’s not radically different, but it’s different enough. And it certainly sounds like Soul Asylum.
I don’t have a whole lot more to add to that. It’s a good one. Yeah. Give it a listen. I will just give a real quick shout out to Soul Asylum, who I think might be the most underrated band of that era.
They they kinda got lumped in with all the grunge bands. They really weren’t that, and they just kinda faded, after their I think it was their 2nd album, that they just sort of disappeared. They’re a really good band, and I don’t think they got the dude they really deserve. This is a fantastic cover. It’s a good choice.
Yeah. We might have to do an episode about Soul Asylum because they were actually one of my favorite bands coming into KTXT. I had just started discovering alternative music, and black gold had had come out and I had seen it, I think maybe even on a 120 minutes or something and had so going into KTXT and having very little, knowledge of of the deep cuts and, you know, so many bands that I was gonna discover over the next couple of years. I actually did know solo silence, so I kinda had latched onto them and played a lot of them early on. They have, I think, 3 or 4 pretty solid albums that are well worth it, and you can see their musicianship in this cover.
I mean, they they do a very credible cover of sexual healing, and that is a like you said, Keith, that’s a bold swing to take. Like, you could really mess this song up in numerous ways, even even unintentionally and even maybe in a way where, like, you don’t realize it, but you put it out and people are just like, oh, God, what were they thinking? Like, I don’t think that’s the case with this. I think everybody was probably pretty skeptical when they saw the track listing on the CD and then you you listen to it and you’re like, damn. Yeah.
This this totally works. So I think it’s a testament to to their musicianship and and also just yeah. They’re taking the risk and putting it out there and having it really actually work for them. Yeah. This song came out between Grape Dancers Union and, Let Your Dim Light Shine.
And those were the 2 really big albums, at least for us at KTXT and in their career in general. Grape Dancers Union obviously had Runaway Train on it which was, you know, monster hit for them. And then we put stuff off of, Let Your Dim Light Shine as well. But, yeah, this song came out right kinda in the heart of the of the part of their career when they were really having their biggest success. Yeah.
Gravidancers Union was massive. It’s one of those situations where having a big hit is gonna hurt you with your original audience and and the cool kids and all that, I think is probably what happened to them. Don’t speak about misery though. That’s a great song. Misery is fantastic.
Yeah. There’s there’s great songs on all those albums, and if if anybody out there wants to go on a a little bit of a soul asylum deep dive, go find spinning off of the and the horse that you wrote in on, I think is the name of the album. That track is absolutely fantastic and a nice a nice little look at, like, early earlier Soul Asylum before Crave Dancers Union. Alright. So for my last cover, this one, I, I did really wanna choose a favorite song, a favorite cover, a song that I think represents all that is good and wholly about a great cover song.
And so for my 3rd choice, pet shop boys always on my mind from 1987 in my mind, one of the best covers of all time. And, and the reason is, is because it’s transformative, but yet, like it still evokes the same emotion as the original. It is just an absolute banger of a dance track. I mean, as as good as it comes in terms of eighties dance music, it’s well produced, well sung, just everything about it I think is is perfect. They took a song like like landslide, like you said, Scott, this song has been covered 3 over 300 recorded versions of the song.
So it was it was written in 1972, not by Willie Nelson, by the way, by, 3 guys named Wayne Carson, Johnny Christopher, and Mark James, all of whom I assume are fantabulously rich just because of that one fact, unless they they made a mistake and signed signed the rights away. It was recorded 3 times just that year alone. So the original recording of this is actually by an artist named Gwen McCray who was a black female artist who recorded almost like an r and b version of it. So she’s got a lot of the R and B inflection in her voice. She’s a fantastic singer.
Couple months later, it was re recorded by Brenda Lee. Who’s a kind of a early country artist that, I think probably best known for a Christmas song, but that that version charted. And then of course, in 1972, it was recorded by Elvis Presley. And continued to be covered quite a bit. There was a country version that charted by John Wesley Ryals, and I think he’d be my assumption was, oh, well, this is probably the version that kinda got it on Willie Nelson’s radar and Willie Nelson probably covered that version of it.
You know, sometimes you have like a cover version that ends up being like a definitive version in that genre, and then that gets covered. That really wasn’t the case. I’d say Willie Nelson actually kinda goes back maybe to the earlier versions. We the the country version by John Wesley Ryals is is overproduced. Whereas Willie Nelson has the most success with this song up to that point in 1982 because I think he strips it down to kind of its essence.
Like his recording of it is very stripped down. It’s very casual, very moving the way he rec he he records it, and it went gangbusters. It was a number 1 on the country charts, number 5 on the billboard charts, won 2 Grammy Awards, and one country music song of the year 2 years in a row. Same song 2 years in a row takes the that’s how good it was. And I think was probably considered, like, the definitive version of that song, and I doubt many people were, at that point, kinda jumping to to cover it because Willie Nelson did kinda put his final stamp on it.
You were always on my mind. You were always on my mind. But in 87, so this is 10 years after Elvis Presley’s death, there was a show on ITV in the UK where a bunch of different artists just did like a live performance of a cover song. So this wasn’t initially intended to be anything other than a one off by the Pet Shop boys. They were invited to be on the show.
They chose always on my mind and did this version and people went nuts for it. Apparently, ITV was like flooded and people wanted to know where they could get it. And of course, Pet Shop Boys were more than happy to oblige. So they went into the studio and recorded a similar version and and put it out in the world. And it also went gangbusters, particularly in the UK, but also in the US.
Number 4 on the billboard chart in the US, number 1 in the UK for a long time, and it actually was a Christmas number 1 in the UK, which is a big deal, in the UK for your song to be number 1 at Christmas. So it’s kind of like song of the year type stuff. So again, I I don’t know even know what to say about it. It is a perfect dance track. It is a perfect cover song because it it’s of a piece with the original even though it’s completely different, which is a really hard trick to pull off, and it has also just always been one of my not just one of my favorite cover songs, not just one of my favorite dance songs, but one of my favorite songs of all time.
So it had to make the list. When we started this talking about cover songs or whatever, I said in one of my emails, I believe that I was gonna forget one and it was really gonna upset me that I forgot it. This is that song. I cannot believe I didn’t think of this when I was thinking of great covers. This is probably my all time favorite cover song.
It is a perfect version of what is already a beautiful song, but at its core, this is a Pet Shop Boys song. I would even, you know, musically, what it’s doing is not part of the original song. It’s it’s they’ve made something completely new to rerecord this song, and it is as you said, it is perfect. This is a perfect dance song. It is a perfect version of a beautiful song, and it is one of the best covers of all time.
I’m mad at myself for forgetting it, but congratulations that you did. And this is, this is a a wonderful, wonderful choice. Good job. This will always be a Willie Nelson song in my mind. I had to go look it up because I knew that he hadn’t done it originally.
I was surprised to find out it had been done as many times before he got a hold of it, as it had been done. But yeah, for for me, this was a Willie Nelson song and the Willie version of it is so beautiful, you know, just with basically just the acoustic guitar and his singing and his emotive singing on it. I think that the Pet Shop Boys version, while radically different and certainly, you know, Neil Tennant is a much different vocalist than Willie Nelson was, he also really poured himself into this song. And I think his vocal version of it, his performance on it is just as soulful and just as gut wrenching. It just is done is is that in a completely different way.
I remember when I first heard the song, I actually bought this, went out and bought it on a 7 inch single, you know, a vinyl record 7 inch single way back in the day, and and had it, playing on my little, turntable at home when I was a kid. So, yeah. Great choice, beautiful song, and really well done by these guys. I think you you tapped into something interesting there in that, you know, this is in its essence, it’s a sad song, you know. And what the Pet Shop Boys did with it musically is not sad at all.
It’s very upbeat and bright and fun. But what Tenet does with the vocals keeps it in that sort of somber range somewhere. Like, it’s it’s it’s a sad song that you can you can totally dance to, and that’s it’s a hard thing to pull off. You know? And and just the stones it took to cover an Elvis splash Willie Nelson song is it’s bold.
And to to hit it out of the park the way they did is a really impressive achievement. One of the best covers of all time in my humble opinion. Scott, what do you have for your last one? Okay. So for my last one, we’re gonna go back to Fleetwood Mac.
This is a cover of Gold Dust Woman done by Hole in 96, originally done by Fleetwood Mac in 77. It is on the album Rumors, and it’s one of the sort of forgotten songs from that album, which, I mean, to be fair, an album that good cover to cover, it’s there’s gonna be a couple of songs maybe you forget on there. Gold Dust Woman is one of them, and I think it’s because it really wasn’t produced very well originally. It’s kind of mellow and slow and plodding. It doesn’t really it doesn’t really grab you.
And then I’m so I’m not surprised to find out that it wasn’t that big of a hit for them. People obviously knew rumors and know the song. So 96 comes along, and it’s time to record the soundtrack for the 2nd crew city of angels. Side note, when you guys did your, soundtrack album episode, I was listening to it. And the whole time I was sitting there going, man, if they don’t mention Gold Dust Woman, I’m gonna be really upset.
Then I realized that Gold Dust Woman is not on The Crow soundtrack. It is on The Crow 2 soundtrack. With City of Angels, they did modern alternative bands doing cover songs. The the songs on the City of Angels 2 soundtrack are way more obscure. They are cover songs, but they’re it’s stuff, you know, you you’d have to dig to find out who originally did these songs.
There are two exceptions. Gold Dust Woman is one of them. The other one is, this is where you’ll find Rob Zombie’s cover of I’m Your Boogeyman, which is also a pretty good cover. Anyway, they took a song that was very mellow, almost sad. And and like I said on the version on Rumors, kinda plotting.
When they do it live, it’s a little livelier. And they and Hole gives it the grunge treatment. It’s loud and distorted, and I think in almost every way, a better version of this song. I rarely say that about covers. I usually say, you know, love the original, and this is this one’s better, but it’s still you know, I can’t make a big case for the original Gold Dust Woman.
I would almost say if you wanna hear that song, listen to this version. It’s a whole lot better. And they also took what this will be a shock to no one, but, the song is about a woman in an abusive relationship that’s getting addicted to drugs. So it’s a song from Rumors by Fleetwood Mac. But, Hole makes it almost a sort of anthem of anger and, you know, pride and I’m in this bad situation, but I’m gonna take it back.
You know, that sort of thing. If you really look at the lyrics, it’s about cocaine. But the the Hole version doesn’t sound like that. It sounds like this sort of, this sort of power anthem, which I think works a whole lot better for this song. So that’s Gold Dust Woman, and I hold 96.
Yeah. You beat me to the punch on on that. I was going to say, and I will say, this is the first one that I think I feel comfortable saying the cover is better than the original. That’s always a a dicey proposition, and you always have to give props to the original songwriter regardless because, you know, the essence and the template is in place for for Courtney Love to kinda take it up a notch. But, yeah, where the where the original is a little difficult to listen to and not necessarily one you would maybe return to over and over again, and and I think you described it, plotting is is probably a really good way to to get that across.
It just doesn’t go anywhere, the original. Yeah. It doesn’t drive I know. If you listen to both versions, when you hear the whole version, when that when when she finishes every vocal line, that guitar goes, you know, that’s not there in the original. It’s it’s just kind of this strummy guitar, and it’s I don’t know.
It just doesn’t it never gets where you think it should go. I’m actually, once again, gonna play devil’s advocate here. I really like the Fleetwood mag version of this of this song. I do think that this, the whole version is a lot more rocked up, and I think the emphasis on it is more on the music, on the song itself. Whereas with the Fleetwood Mac version, you know, it is, slower, more acoustic, and I think the emphasis there is more on Stevie Nicks’ vocal performance.
And so I think that’s, you know, the Fleetwood Mac version is is less a a rocker that you wanna jump around to and more kind of a showcase for her vocals, whereas, Hole definitely took it and and rocked it up and sped it up and made it a a much faster, more powerful song in that in that way. I like both versions. I really do like the whole version on it, but, allow me to be the one of us that will come to the defense of the Fleetwood Mac version. And by the way, if you haven’t ever listened to Rumors, it deserves its reputation. Such a great album.
So we’ve now mentioned 2 Fleetwood Mac songs on this episode for covers, you know. So obviously, they’re influential. So, yeah, go out and listen to Rumors if you haven’t done it and listen to the original version of the song and and see what you think about the 2 of them. I think what it is is that, you know, this is this is Fleetwood Mac. You have Lindsey Buckingham producing this stuff, and he’s known for these big, lush, elaborate, you know, Beach Boys esque production things that, for some reason, when they’re putting rumors together, he doesn’t do on Gold Dust Woman.
It just kind of sticks out. And I I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the song. I mean, Stevie Nicks writes a wonderful song, and so her singing over an acoustic guitar is just fine. I I just feel like with this one, Hole kind of found its soul a little bit somehow and and gave it the energy that it it kinda needed in the original version. But I I I don’t wanna say anything terrible about it.
I just find it, especially on an album, like you said, as good as Rumors is, it’s definitely toward the bottom of the songs on that album as far as quality goes, I for me. Sometimes the song too just it just fits the the performer for whatever reason, and and this is a great match of song and and performance from Courtney Love. It just it it really works. She she does change the the feel of the song. It it feels more defiant.
It feels more of a, like, anthemic. I think, like you said, it it feels more like an anthem than the original, and it works. And especially kinda coming on the heels of, Live Through This and and some of the stuff that that Hole had been doing, it it fits perfectly in that canon with with what they were doing in the nineties. And there’s another good example too of a song that, again, I knew a little bit of Fleetwood Mac and probably knew 2 or the 3 of the songs off Rumors by like, if I would knew I would know the song if I heard it, but I might not all know that they all came from the same album or whatever. But I had not I was not really familiar with Gold Dust Woman at all until I heard this and and encouraged me to kinda go back and and listen to rumors.
We got one left and it is yours, Keith. For my last one, once again, a song that we would not normally have played at KTXT. I’m going to pick, an artist that we probably all know, and that is Tom Jones, of all people, is, going to make a, an appearance here on the 35,000 Watt podcast. I should probably not admit it on a a podcast where we’re largely talking about, you know, alternative music and and, you know, cool kid music. But man, I love Tom Jones.
The songs like What’s Up Puss Kat and, you know, She’s a Lady. I just just 19 seventies Las Vegas, like, that’s the the mindset that I get put in anytime I hear Tom Jones. He put out 34, to date has put out 34 studio albums. The song I chose for this was on his very first one and it’s called It’s Not Unusual. It was, off the album Along Came Jones, came out in 1960 5.
The cover version of this was done by a band that we played at KTX called Belly. Belly was a band that had Tonya Donnelly as its main driving force. Tonya Donnelly was in Throwing Muses with Kristen Hirsch, for their first 3 or 4 albums, and then also played on the first Breeders album with Kim Deal before really, deciding that she wanted to concentrate on her band, Belly. They put out 2 albums in the nineties. This song, the cover of It’s Not Unusual was not on either of those albums.
And and if you know Belly, you probably know them strictly because of a song called Feed the Tree, which was off their first album and was absolutely huge. We played it at KTX t. It got a lot of play on MTV, went to number 1 on the modern rock tracks chart. So that’s where Belly really, you know, kinda got their fame is from that particular song. This song, the cover of It’s Not Unusual, didn’t do particularly well.
It it didn’t tear up the charts or anything like that. We did play it at k t x t. I picked it mainly just because it’s a personal favorite of mine. I really like the way that they, did yet another pretty straightforward cover, but all of the, the horn hits that are in the original Tom Jones version are done by the lead electric guitar in there. I think Tonya Donnelly’s vocals work really well for the lyric on it.
It’s just a a really cool cover version of a song that I’m actually a big fan of in the, original version from Tom Jones. So, yeah, that’s my last one. The last song that we would just not ever have played at KTXT. But we did when Belly covered it. That’s, It’s Not Unusual by Belly.
I’ve known you for 31 years, and I don’t think I knew that you were a Tom Jones fan. So I’m I’m glad that that now is out in the open. That’s that’s a revelation that that may be the revelation of the podcast. Yeah. That may be the the one.
This was the first and the only one on on all of our lists that I I don’t really remember. I mean, I I I barely remember playing this, but it wasn’t as familiar as as all the other ones, but yeah, I love I love belly. I love feed the tree. That was a song, but also takes me back to the KTX T days immediately. And then it’s kind of interesting that they didn’t go further, I guess, like you said, they were both kind of involved with other bands that ended up maybe being more of the focus, but belly was a solid, a solid band.
And this is just it’s a fun song. It’s a fun cover. It’s a, you know, maybe a little bit more of a throwaway than some of the other ones, but but not really. I mean, it’s it’s they obviously had a blast doing it. It see seems like they had fun doing it, you know, going back and listening to it.
So, yeah. Unexpected choice from you, but but a good a good curve ball to end ended on, I think. Yeah. I’m I’m also pleasantly surprised to find out about your love for Tom Jones. That’s a that’s a new one for me too.
Oh, yeah. And this like like Michael, I had to go back and listen to this one. I I knew it existed. I think I I always kinda had it in my head that it was out there, but I hadn’t heard it in a really long time. And, this is a great cover.
It’s it’s really a fun version of that. And like and like you said, Keith, the sort of substitution of, you know, taking out the horns and and just rocking out with the guitars a little bit is a really nice touch, but doesn’t change the song a whole lot. It still sounds like it’s not unusual, but it has a that sort of, you know, nineties pop power pop feel to it that’s it’s a lot of fun. This is a good one, and I one that was definitely off my radar, so good choice. Yeah.
This song has been covered dozens of times, a lot like, You Were Always on My Mind. It got covered a bunch just in the sixties alone, but then kinda tapered off, you know, moving forward. But, yeah, I don’t know what possessed Billy to wanna take a a shot at a a Tom Jones song, but, man, it just works. And so, yeah, this one, like I said, not a huge on the charts or anything like that, but very much a personal favorite of mine for sure. I don’t know about you guys, but doing the research, I started digging up more and more covers that that I wanted to talk about.
So I think we may have to do another covers episode. I’d love to know what our what our listeners remember. We’ve we’ve been getting some great suggestions when we do these music episodes of so we had some really great alien abduction album lists that were that were posted from our last episode. So let us know what your favorite covers are from from alternative bands or bands that you heard on college radio. You know, particularly even going back to like the seventies eighties, we we tend to focus a lot on the nineties.
I’m always curious what what maybe, you know, what cover songs you heard in the early eighties that that you played on college radio. So let us know in the comments, on the website or in social media. And don’t forget there’s a movie, 35,000 Watts, the story of college radio. It is available for download right now at 35,000 watts.com. Thanks for tuning in.
We had a good time doing it, and for Keith Porterfield and Scott Mobley, my name is Michael Millard. Thanks for listening to us chat about cover songs, and join us next time on 35,000 Watts, the podcast.