Weird cover versions album I found .

Post Reply New Topic

Outside of the Berkeley YMCA , in a " giving away lame/de-accessioned old stuff " spot , yesterday I found a 8-album audiocassette ( I still want to write just " cassette " , ya know ! !! !! !! !! !! ) box , with 7 of said albums still there , titled something like " INTERNATIONAL HITS " ! It was a set of " easy listening " cover versions of (mostly) 60s and 70s radio/poprock songs , put out by the United Kingdom division of READER'S DIGEST !
( I'm sure that this package wouldn't have been put out in the U.S....)
It was " easy listening " REMAKES of these songs , not " the original hits ! '' a la Time-Life/K-Tel ! , just to state that clearly ! Various EZ outfits like the Roland Shaw Orchestra , and the Mike Samme Singers , ( Nobody had one whole of the LPs to themselves , they were mixed among the albums ...) doing late-20th century pop radio fare...The whole thing was copyrighted 1980 , and versions of " Night Fever " and " Heart Of Glass " were the first two songs !

not strictly a cover version [the term originally meant white versions of black hits] but i liked ringo starr's cover of buck owen's hit "act naturally."
johnny cash's version [a term i like better] of "rusty cage." brazil '66's version of "fool on the hill." the stone's version of bobby womack's "it's all over now." the turtle's version of "it ain't me, babe." p-p&m's version of john denver's "leaving on a jet plane." patsy cline's version of willie nelson's "crazy." jerry reed's version of dick feller's "lord mr. ford." deep purple's version of neil diamond's "kentucky woman."
the funniest one was "the portsmith sinfonia plays the classics" in which a very drunk-sounding orchestra butchers classical warhorses such as "also sprach zarathustra" and several others.

too many others to list here.

...Pardon my pedantery (Sp??)/pissass-ness , AB , but I think the term " cover " was originally a racially neutral music business term referring to competitive/(an) etra version(s) of a song , it was the emotions/finger-pointing over , especially , the 50s Pat Boone/Diamonds , et al , white remakes of black hits that I guess led to the term being exclusively applied to it .
I think a couple of the examples you cited , too , especially country music-oriented ones , at least at the time , were rather more " professional songwriter " examples , not quite " covers " in the later-days understanding of it .
REALLY ! Have I alienated you enough now ? Correcting you and all that , even if I'm an Aspie and supposed to do things like dryly correct people , " little professor syndrome " and all that ...

we all have our moments.
have a nice day

Nothing can top the Countdown Singers in the bad cover department. It sounds like they were in their basement when they were singing the songs.

ok, i have a copy of the album produced by the father of the three female artist who play guitar, bass and drums on said album. rolling stone magazine said this was the 'worst album ever created'. who can name that album/band?

and.....yes.....it is REALLY bad.

Was this an album of cover version of other artists' songs?
Or was it all original stuff, or what?

I give up.

What band is it?

...I beieve it's the Shaggs ?
I have never quite gotten around:-) to getting any of their albums...

yes, it is most certainly 'the shaggs'. at the time it was created, they were 3 teen-age girls who could not play instruments ( the drummer was unintentionally hilarious), were not very attractive ( opposite of escala ) and wrote songs you might expect from 7 year olds.

not cover songs. not app. to topic........i just wanted to write about the shaggs......and not get slammed by the moderators for trashing someone. i remember the line from the dustin hoffman movie where he is tortured by a dentist "is it safe". feel safe writing about the shaggs. safe. i hope.

...What , were you looking to trash me instead ?
Please pardon my paranoia/PTSD if I'm wrong , but considering how I've been treated here lately...

why would i want to trash you? i only go after those who think animal abuse/torture is ok. sorry to hear others have been giving you a hard time. same thing happened to me and when i retaliated, i was warned and had post deleted.

i'm sure the next time i respond to someone who makes fun of what happened to me, i'll be banned. well, that will be okay. i'll survive.

i apologize if i said anything in your forum that seemed offensive. that was certainly not my intent.

...OK , thank you , maybe more later .

http://tinyurl.com/3yqn5ob

iron butterfly done in tuvan thoat-singing!

i lack the vocabulary to describe the sublime strangeness of this performance! it was beautifully weird to the max!