Jump Intos

LCD Soundsystem finally released the live album for their final Madison Square Garden concert. Their cover of Harry Nilsson's »Jump into the Fire«—previous available only as a live BBC recording on the »Daft Punk Is Playing at My House« single—wasn't their last song on stage. But »JitF« isn't the last song on Nilsson Schmilsson either—it just feels that way. Cover as climax.

Let's Dances

The cover as reduction to a formula.

Into Yous

Always a strange experience when you realize that I song you've known for years is a cover—especially when it's transformed to this degree.

Robinsons

The other big Lemonheads cover.

Lukas

Boston week continues...

Out Theres

In Boston for the next few weeks... I'll try to get some good SftD content from the 90s college scene up here in the next posts. Here are two "hits" with the same name.

Watchtowers

Hadn't heard this XTC cover of "All Along the Watchtower" before.

A couple of interesting things here:

1. By my own definition of "versions" and "covers"—i.e. versions are copies of musical material, covers are copies of musical performances—this is clearly a cover of Dylan's song. It's a cover with low fidelity to its source, but still a cover. Despite genre differences, Dylan's performance matters more here than the song. The reuse of the harmonica is a particularly nice touch.
2. What is great here is how little XTC takes from Hendrix's version, by all accounts, the definite version of the song. Perhaps, a certain enthusiasm for noise, but not much else.