The League Of Extraordinary Tracks 5: COVER VERSIONS Poll

Into the second half of Season 1, and this week’s theme is COVER VERSIONS. Our learned participants have selected 12 tunes including covers of 3 previous Pollhalla entrants from the main polls, so this should be a close-fought one.

As usual there are only two rules!

Pick UP TO FOUR songs.

DO NOT PICK any track you already knew (in this version!).

Go here for the PLAYLISTS for this week. Good luck all competitors!

League Of Extraordinary Tracks S1E5: COVER VERSIONS!

Please pick up to FOUR of these tracks.

DO NOT PICK TRACKS YOU ALREADY KNEW!

Spotify and YouTube playlists in the playlist post.

The poll has expired!

The League Of Extraordinary Tracks 5: COVER VERSIONS Playlists

The League Of Extraordinary Tracks 5: COVER VERSIONS Results

Name*

Website

Name*

Website

30 Comments

Oldest

Newest Most Voted

Inline Feedbacks

View all comments

Tom

9 July 2023 18:08

Fresh eligibility hell! I have heard *a* reggae cover of “Wichita Lineman”, this is the most prominent, so it was probably this… but how do I know??

Back when we did Cover Versions in the original polls I ended up ruefully concluding that really great, transformative covers are few and far between* (whereas good relatively faithful covers are quite common). So through really no fault of the nominators’ this ends up being a very pleasant playlist – great to put on for 40-45 minutes, but low on wow-moments. It’s probably telling that 3 of my 4 votes ended up being for songs where I’ve never heard the originals!

*There IS a really great transformative cover here, IMO – Miles doing Cyndi – but I almost nominated it for Late Work so I couldn’t vote for it here. Hopefully it’ll be this week’s Pinkpantheress.

Last edited 1 year ago by Tom

mondosalvo

9 July 2023 20:37

The field was wide open for me this week with the exception of Miles. Love the “Gaucho” cover most, but a 12-way tie would be great to see.

actualee simpson

9 July 2023 21:43

Nothing I knew this week! But also wasn’t really sure what to vote for. I don’t know that I was looking for a transformative cover, but I couldn’t tell whether thinking primarily of the original while listening helped or hurt this week.

qosephine

10 July 2023 14:58

These are all splendid! The revelation for me is that apparently I liked ‘Seventeen Going Under’ by Sam Fender all along… definitely improved by him not bellowing all over it though!

koganbot

13 July 2023 21:43

Reply to qosephine

Had forgotten we’d polled it. Am developing a bad kneejerk habit of going, Who cares about young people and their problems? “‘Life’s just much too hard today,’ I hear every young one say.” But the words give Georgia Maq something to sound winsomely whiny and self-involved about, and I voted for this..

Tom

11 July 2023 11:15

Reply to qosephine

I remember thinking when the original was in the polls that it was technically a Good Song with evocative lyrics etc but done in a style I’m so allergic to after decades of Britrock that there was no way I could actually enjoy it. Camp Cope is enough of a shift to make it work.

vinnycrackers

10 July 2023 15:09

Like others, I was trying to decide “what makes a good cover here?”
I voted for Xiu Xiu and Dennis Brown because I felt like they melded their own style into the style of the song. (Wichita Lineman remains a horrifying downer of a song gotta dig out from that this glum Monday morning.)
I didn’t know the Bomba Estereo song but it was fun to listen to.
My 4th pick was Hot Breath. This feels like a biker bar scene in a movie, or something some cover band would play at Swallows in Zanesville, Ohio where I grew up. Which is my way of saying, it was bad and I absolutely loved it.
17 Going Under, on the other hand, was a good cover but neither artist is to my taste so it just missed.

actualee simpson

10 July 2023 15:24

Reply to vinnycrackers

Bomba Estereo was an interesting one — I liked it enough that I looked up the new-to-me original, and then liked *that* so much more that I narrowly went with something else for my 4th slot (Xiu Xiu, for the same reason as you).

Dan Bright-Amaya

11 July 2023 12:55

Reply to actualee simpson

Hey that’s cheating! I nominated the Bombas reluctantly (was saving them for 2015) but the deciding factor was that no one would know the original either.

actualee simpson

11 July 2023 14:53

Reply to Dan Bright-Amaya

I was really just looking for a reason to listen to my heart and vote for Xiu Xiu. Consider everything this week to be a tie for fifth place — wouldn’t call it a strong week exactly but a really consistent one! (Heck I may have technically even heard “Ceremony” at some point and just don’t remember it, talk about cheating!)

ismathers

11 July 2023 02:33

I admit I come in with a bias towards covers of “I Talk to the Wind” and “Gaucho” (neither of which I’d heard, same as every song but my own nom), and sure enough I voted for both. Neither were transformative the way Tom mentions, but both succeeded in other ways I often enjoy covers. Gavanski does the King Crimson in such a way that, yeah she doesn’t change it that much and she picked a less “King Crimson” King Crimson song, but still this is the kind of thing where I can easily imagine someone who doesn’t know the source being shocked that it’s a cover. It sounds totally integrated. Whereas Isaksson and Tornqvist take something that is very highly polished and dependent (or feels like it is) on stellar performance and production and implicitly argue for its worth separate from all that. Also voted for Dennis Brown making “Wichita Lineman” more bouncy but no less sad, and Wanderlea’s fun Seeds cover.
My nomination is Xiu Xiu remixing Xiu Xiu covering New Order. “Ceremony” is one of my favourite songs of all time (I may have some of the single art tattooed on me somewhere!) and I kind of collect covers and versions of it; there are a lot of good ones out there. Xiu Xiu first covered it (and did a great job) on their early Chapel of the Chimes EP; for the “remixed” part of 2007’s Remixed & Covered compilation they went to town on their own version of it. The result is one of my favourite “Ceremony” covers, pretty close to their original cover but, you know… scuffed up and noisier. I love that it has a similar level of emotional intensity to the original, for me, but in a totally different timbre.

Tom

11 July 2023 11:22

Reply to ismathers

Also voted for “I Talk” and “Gaucho”. I didn’t know the original KC (I have definitely HEARD it but I don’t know it) and was shocked by how much the cover sounds like the exact bit of Pink Floyd I like best – it could be on “Relics”!
“Gaucho” sent me straight back to the original to check how different it is and I was surprised and unsurprised by how well it worked. Surprised because as you say losing the ultra-slick production* should feel like a big deal. Unsurprised because it’s got one of the best late Steely Dan choruses and losing the backing vocals turns out to be a great move.
*(My favourite Gaucho-the-LP memory is of working in the second hand bookshop when the Notting Hill Carnival was happening a street away, and near the end of the day a guy, perhaps no stranger to the fine Columbian, walking past, hearing the music and coming off the street into the shop to pontificate for several minutes about the bass sound on “Babylon Sisters”)

Derrick Harder

13 July 2023 04:10

Reply to Tom

They did a whole album of Steely Dan covers and it’s so wonderful. This version of “Gaucho” proves the Keith Jarrett lift wasn’t the key to the song after all. But the joy of the album is that they play it totally straight. So much of what people do and discuss with Steely Dan is distanced and ironic and I understand why but the songs underneath the jokes are so solid.

ismathers

12 July 2023 22:36

Reply to Tom

so parodically on the nose (err, so to speak) that you wouldn’t believe it in a movie

Derrick Harder

13 July 2023 04:05

“Wichita Lineman” is fantastic! Remind me that my first pick for this week was “Weather Report” by The Tennors but I only heard that in the pop polls so not a good nomination here.. voted for Miles too.

j_e_l

13 July 2023 11:37

Okay, I struggled to connect with covers of songs I didn’t know in the first place (quite a few of them) – so harshly, I couldn’t really relate/rate them as cover versions.

I liked Caterina, Xiu Xiu, Dennis Brown, and Rita Lee. They got my votes!

wmterhaar

13 July 2023 19:25

Bomba Estereo and Keziah Jones are the stand outs for me. In both cases, I do not know the original, but as an occasional Felu Kuti listener, it does seem likes Jones does really makes the song his own.
My other two votes went to Wanderlea and Caterina Caselli who cover two all-time favorites, but stay close to the original. I rate Caselli a bit higher, because she adds Italianness, while Wanderlea’s version lacks a bit of the snotty sneer of The Seeds’s original, although the song is still great.
My own nomination Hot Breath also stays relatively close, but ‘One Hit (to the Body)’ is more of a Rolling Stones deep cut (I discovered it through the cover) and Hot Breath removed the 80s yuppie elements from the track and added that awesome bass solo, which makes me like it more than the original.
And then of course, after my vote I find out the one track I couldn’t finish listening, currently is in the lead…

ajjr82

13 July 2023 20:13

I find myself having weirdly little to say about a lot of these songs, honestly. I wasn’t in love with the Xiu Xiu, but that’s a band I have trouble connecting with no matter how much I appreciate them.

I’d heard of the Miles cover of “Time After Time” before without ever hearing it, I like it quite a bit!

koganbot

13 July 2023 22:49

Am absolutely and overwhelmingly in love with Hot Breath’s “One Hit.” Stones’ was a good swift punch, quick shot, but never entered my shortlist* of Stones’ tracks after 1971 that matter to me. Hot Breath may change that. Jamie is on-the-money: bar band from here, from there, from down the street, though I wouldn’t say “bad,” I’d say dogged and literal, guitar screech, body blow, body blow, body blow, push head through wall, bass, bass, bass, vacuum-cleaner solo. Seems appropriate that they’re from Sweden, though I was searching for “Hot Breath I’m Not Like Everybody Else” and couldn’t find anything.

wmterhaar

14 July 2023 11:52

Reply to koganbot

There’s an entire subgenre called Swederock of Swedish bands that have that sort of that 70s bar rock. It all started with The Hellacopters and Norwegians from Gluecifer and Turbonegro, but west of the border they like metal more, so it became a Swedish thing. Currently The Hellacopters and Graveyard are the best known of these bands, but Hot Breath are my current favourites with the very Thin Lizzy-inspired Dead Lord and Märvel. There’s a bit of Swederock in Ghost too.

koganbot

13 July 2023 22:51

Reply to koganbot

*”Just what does that list consist of?” I hear you ask. [Listens. Doesn’t actually hear anyone. In next room, girl cat knocks book off shelf. He takes this as assent.] Well, here are a few: “It Won’t Take Long,” “Where The Boys Go,” “Turd On The Run,” “Dance (pt. 1),” “Going To A Go-Go,” “She’s So Cold” (‘cos you can go “I blow snot for her, I blow snot for her, I blow snot for her, and she’s so cold”), “Stop Breakin’ Down,” “Miss You,” “Harlem Shuffle,” “Shattered.”

wmterhaar

14 July 2023 11:44

Reply to koganbot

Personally I’m partial to ‘Love Is Strong’.

actualee simpson

14 July 2023 02:39

Personal contradiction this week — I voted for Dana Gavanski for the exact same reason I decided not to vote for Isaksson & Tornqvist: for the way the cover gently warms the composition underneath like softening butter out of the fridge. But why? Maybe I’m more prickly about how well Steely Dan “travels”? No — that’s true of Steely Dan generally, but I don’t have strong feelings about “Gaucho” as a song. Is one cover prettier or more well done than the other? Not really. Do I have stronger feelings about the King Crimson song? I do not.

And anyway, if you follow the metaphor, it would mean you needed the butter cold for Dan but needed it soft for King Crimson, but that would make Dan pastry and Crimson cookies, which feels totally wrong, bakingwise. (Steely Dan are macarons made with somewhat cloying, unusual jams, while King Crimson fall into some uncanny valley between muffin and cupcake, like zucchini bread with thick vanilla frosting. Neither recipe even calls for butter!)

It all just underscores that these reasons are pretty weak, which makes it a classic Boney Joan assessment.

koganbot

14 July 2023 14:10

Reply to actualee simpson

Remember WBRU playing the shit out of “Court Of The Crimson King” but I don’t remember “Talk To The Wind.” I was outgrowing Simon & Garfunkel, so I’d probably have found “Wind” too kitschy and at most barely adequate to a 15-year-old’s alienation (which honestly isn’t much different from an 18-year-old’s alienation (“Heroin,” “Sister Ray”), but the 18-year-old’s is better written); the Lake/McDonald vocals are precious and the words still make me want to laugh in the song’s face (but the song cannot hear my laughter).

koganbot

14 July 2023 14:15

Reply to koganbot

So why did I vote for Dana Gavanski? Well, nothing profound here: When I hear music for the second or twentieth or two-hundredth time I’m not necessarily hearing it the same way – may hear more, or maybe it’s so familiar that I’m barely conscious of listening at all, but nonetheless I’m still experiencing the sound. Whereas with words, beyond my initially taking them in (if even that) or later specially attending to them, I can effectively not experience them at all. So here what I’m experiencing is the warm flow of the voice on the passably pretty melody; and though I can notice the vapid boo-hoo maudlin shit of the lyrics and retain them as part of my psychological sense of the song, I can do so without reexperiencing them while hearing the song. [The process is not identical from song to song. Think the goodness of the lyrics to “Visions Of Johanna” and “Say Goodbye,” for example, have made their melodies permanently better for me, even if I’m no longer directly experiencing the words; and conversely, most good melodies can survive bad words.]

actualee simpson

14 July 2023 02:48

Reply to actualee simpson

It’s hard for me to work up the energy to find the stronger reasons — which I trust are in there — because I *like* both songs, but the act of having to make a choice has clarified (no pun intended) a clear difference for me between the two.

Last edited 1 year ago by actualee simpson

koganbot

14 July 2023 20:22

I probably rate Jagger at his peak as the greatest lyricist ever, and yet I don’t think I can tell you much about what the words are to “One Hit (To The Body)” or what the song is about. Should mosey over to the lyric sheet when I’m done typing.

But I did pay enough attention to have issues with the lyrics to my third and fourth choices (“I Talk To The Wind” and “Seventeen Going Under”). And now we’re at my second choice, and boy have I made hay with my ambivalence towards that one’s lyrics. You can read me being ambivalent about them here (“A punk votes for a punk“), and being ambivalent about my ambivalence here, and you can hear me being ambivalent here (type Ctrl-f and search “Real Psychedelic Song”).

koganbot

14 July 2023 20:54

Reply to koganbot

Anyway, me as a young’un trying to grasp concepts like sexism and double standard: “Yes, ‘Pushin’ Too Hard’ for example!” Wanderléa finesses the issue not only by singing in Portuguese but by being a woman. And (if Google Translate is reading correctly, and I’m reading it correctly), she not only saves us from Sky Saxon’s double standard but also the double obtuseness of, on the one hand, “All I want is to just be free,” and, on the other, “Better stop all your foolin’ around.” But leaving out the wanting to be free while you gotta toe the line makes this less interesting emotionally, if more coherent (though I’m not understanding the words well enough to know if she’s done with him or if she doesn’t know if she’s done with him – but perhaps it’s a more common love lost/love discarded ambivalence?)

Meanwhile, that rhythm: as far as I know it’s unique to the song, it pushes, she keeps it. She may not attain Sky’s sneer but she’s strong and she sounds less like a chipmunk than he does.

Last edited 1 year ago by koganbot

actualee simpson

15 July 2023 18:23

Reply to koganbot

I nommed Wanderléa: found a recent “prestige” track of hers from this year and dug through her back catalog. The album has a bunch of covers, and I was tempted to nom “River Deep Mountain High,” a song whose original I don’t really like mostly for production reasons, stripped down and given a shot in the arm — but I doubted others would see it that way.

“Vou Lhe Contar” stood out because it surprisingly goes harder than the original when I listen to them back to back (Seeds still *seem* harder in memory), both musically and vocally. Lots of the χ sound (I’m told by Wikipedia this is the “voiceless uvular fricative”) like her pointing a finger in someone’s chest, sounds like she’s pushin’ too hard/ being pushed too hard even without knowing how the words translate into Portuguese.