On this episode, the Now Spinning crew discuss what makes a great cover song and how artists can make familiar music feel brand new. They compare original recordings with memorable covers by artists like Nina Simone, David Bowie, Michael Jackson, and Elvis Presley, showing how different versions can change the meaning of a song, as well as the disparity in which version tops the charts or becomes the standard.

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Website: LCC Vinyl Record Club

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Now Spinning, the official podcast of the Lansing Community College Vinyl Record Club. We meet twice a month to listen to vinyl and talk about music. Stay tuned to learn about how you can get in touch with us and attend our meetings.

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Now Spinning. With me today I have

Andy.

Leo.

And Jacob.

And I am Simon, as I was last time.

Today we're gonna be talking about a pretty broad topic, but I think we have some pretty good ideas for it. We're talking about our favorite or not our favorite, just cover songs we think are interesting. Good for fixing, good discussion.

And I think that we've got some good ones to start off with. Let's go ahead, Jacob. Let's see what we got.

So I'm gonna start with a band probably nobody's ever heard of because they aren't famous, which is a shame because they should be. Cabaret Boreal. I went and saw their live show at the Robin Theater here in Lansing on Thursday.

If you don't know about the Robin Theater, it's in Rio town. It's small little theater. They do shows. Their season just ended, but they're going to start up shows again in the fall. Check it out.

It's primarily accordion, tuba and like banjo guitar with a singer. So, like a very weird instrumentation. And they played a lot of covers.

I don't remember who it's actually written by, but it's like the Bertolt Brecht group.

Yeah.

And yeah, it was like the Doors version's cool. It's got fun, jangly sounds. They were. Did it in what I'm assuming is a much more classic style, how it probably would have sounded.

And I was like, this is like, this is it so. Right. It felt very cabaret. It felt very, like, seedy, but in like a fun, you know, kind of sexy way. And I was like, oh, this is. This is brilliant.

And. And I, I had never known.

I was.

I always thought that was like a Jim Morrison original.

Yeah.

And I. I feel like such a fool now, but, you know, and there's nothing wrong with not Knowing something. But, yeah, you can find some Cabaret boreal on, like, YouTube and stuff. You can probably find them doing a cover of this song. Go listen to it.

It's pretty cool. They also did a cover of a song that. That I do know the original of, and that's White Rabbit, Jefferson Airplane.

They did it in a very folky style, a bit less psychedelic style. They introduced it with, like, a Greek folk song that then flowed into. Was just such a cool way of doing it.

And it really highlights, like, part of the discussion we're going to have about covers of, like, do. Do you add something to the original? Do you just try and, like, make it the same? Or do you, like, try and try and change the genre?

Do you try and change the feel?

And this was one where, like, it was technically very similar to the original in tone and style and stuff, but they changed just enough that it was just so exciting to hear. It made the lyrics feel so much heavier. And, yeah, I really loved it. So, yeah, check out the Robin Theater. Check out Cabaret Boreal and.

Yeah, covers, dude. So, Leo, I know what he's about to bring up.

We gotta. I wanna say, honestly.

Yeah, okay.

We wanna save it. I wanna save it.

I don't. I've got something to talk about right now. So, a song.

When you said we decided on covers, the first thing my mind immediately jumped to is a song that's been covered by a lot of artists over time. But I wanted to highlight three specific versions of it, which. The song is Wild Is the Wind, which is a theme song.

It's a song from the 50s, from a movie. But I was made familiar with this song by the David Bowie album Station to Station.

But that song is a cover of Nina Simone song, which in itself is a cover of the original Johnny Mathis version. And that version, starting out, it's very, like, lush, orchestral, like it's a 50s pop song. It's what you expect there. It's like a ballad.

It's very good. He's a great singer. He's had a really good rendition of it. What really got my interest is, like, you listen to the.

How Nina Simone takes that same song and she interprets it, like, differently. Strips away all of, like, the frills, the orchestra, the, like, deep product, like, the crazy production.

It's just her, you know, a piano, drum, bass.

Sounds so dark. I had never heard this before. I wasn't even really familiar with the David Bowie version. I know a decent bit of Bowie.

We've talked about this before, where I kind of Got into Bowie a lot later. And, yeah, I'd never heard this Nina Simone version either, obviously. And I was just like, oh, baby. That is, like.

She's haunting, but in, like, the coolest way possible.

No, she's incredible vocalist. Like, if you haven't listen to Nina Simone, stop what you're doing right now. Listen to it right now. She is very great. She had, like. It's a.

There's so much yearning in the song. You know what I mean? It's just someone who's just absolute. Just desire for somebody else. It's just crazy to listen to.

And she puts her whole heart into the song. She does any song. She does, obviously, most of her stuff.

Well, a lot of her most famous songs are all covers, but every single one, she always takes it and she reinterprets it in her own style and absolutely makes it her own. And that's very true for Wild Is the Wind. Absolutely haunting, devastating song.

The original's sad, but this one's just, like, blew me away when I heard it the first time. Just go working backwards from Bowie and.

Bowie's not really like that. No, well, yeah, I listened to that. I listened to that one after the. And I was like, what? Like. I mean, this is cool, but, like,.

And if you're familiar with that album, that was at a very low point in David Bowie's life. Incredible album. 10 Out of 10 album. But he was going through it at the time. He takes it and he kind of turns it into a funk song.

Almost a disco song at times. But it's just the way he sings it in the context of the. It's at the very end of the album. And Station to Station is like a.

It's really just him, like I said, a very dark point in his life, like, drug addiction, living off of peppers and milk, and, like, incredible paranoia in new, like, Los Angeles. And, like, you can definitely hear it in the music, like. And his voice in that song, like, he sounds like a. Like on the album, very robotic.

But, like, at the same time, even if he's, like. It sounds like, so, like, artificial. He still. I don't know. There's like.

It's haunting in a different way, exactly. Like, more like genuinely chilling. Yeah, it's like the Nina Simone is kind of, like, pretty haunting. Yeah, absolutely. More like.

Oh, and at the.

And at the time, Nina Simone, weirdly enough, especially considering the period David Bowie was in, Nina Simone and Bowie were like, buddy, buddy. Oh, they were like, really, really close.

That's what, that's why he did the song is because he was like a giant. Really appreciated Nina Simone, which. Any. Anybody who's like, big into musical. You got it. You got to appreciate Nina Simone.

I feel like that's like a requirement. But anyway, but Bowie, definitely huge fan, so he took it, he took it on himself to cover it. And I, I like his version.

It's like I said, different vibe than Nina Simone's, obviously. But, like, still, it's just chilling to hear it. You know what I mean?

It's like, I think it's one of those songs that like, anybody take, like anybody makes their interpretation of it. It's still got like that underlying, like, you know, like, sadness to it. Like just haunting feel to it. I quite like it. It's very good.

I feel like Nina Simone is. Nina Simone is one of those artists where when she covers the song, it isn't really your song anymore.

Like, she covered Isn't It a Pity for this live album called Emergency Ward. And at least I think it's on Emergency Ward, but she covered Isn't It a Pity?

And it's this, like, super long version of the song where she draws it out and lets the piano ring through the concert hall. And it's like it's a completely different song to George Harrison's original.

Like, she has this ability to just transform everything she touches and create it into an entirely new song with very little going on in terms of the arrangement.

And I think that's a huge part of what makes a cover great. Kind of like I was saying earlier where, like, when you add something to it and you make it new and you make it exciting. You know what I mean?

Like, we all love old songs and, like, we can hear somebody playing it and make it sound like the old song and that's cool too. But like, when you really change it and we, we, we get that like, human emotion from it.

We are like, oh, no, they're putting some of themselves into this and they're, they're, they're making this their style. Like, I think that's very cool, very good.

But yeah, Nina Simone, check her out. Wild as the Wind, great song.

But David Bowie, if you haven't heard, heard of him also, I think he's pretty, he's pretty nice. He's pretty cool.

It's kind of niche, I check.

Yeah, ye.

He was a cool musician. He was the nicest guy in his life.

He made the Laughing Gnome.

He had a weird, weird life.

There are many phases of Bowie.

Yes.

Yeah. I don't think I actually, like, have an actual picture of what he actually looks like. Oh, goodness.

He looks different in every picture of him anyway.

Yes.

Literally.

Yes, I know.

He's kind of got the Freddie Mercury problem of, like, every. Every year he changed his style.

At least Freddie Mercury has, like, two images of himself.

I think you gotta. I think you gotta do.

Look Up, Look Up David Bowie.

He did some different things.

Anyway.

David Bowie is way worse, though. He changed his all the time.

Anyway, anyway, so we got to talk about Hound Dog for a little bit.

Oh, boy.

If you're not aware, Elvis Presley is not the original person to do that.

No, he was not.

The original artist who actually made it big, was a black artist by the name of Big Mama Thornton. And I believe she topped off the black charts. Yeah, they were the difference there for a while.

They literally recorded them differently.

Yes. And then Elvis basically got wind of it. Take it up to the white charts, and that's the one that's now the most famous.

And so, I mean, the artist, not the artist's fault, who history remembers and who history forgets. It also, the artist does not control what song becomes famous. But at the end of the day, Mama Thornton did not really profit off of her own song.

Yeah.

And I did some cursory research when you said that you're going to be talking about this today. It wasn't even just Elvis who did it, because, I mean, she didn't. She didn't actually write the song either.

She was approached by two songwriters who wanted her to sing the song.

Lieber and Stoller.

Yep.

Very big songwriting partnership.

They.

They were like, hey, you would fit this song perfectly. You should sing it. And then she, like, transformed it vocally. She, like, made it her own thing.

And she tried to get songwriting credits because of, like, how transformative and important her performance is on the song. Sort of like a similar example is the song Great Gig in the Sky.

The vocalist on that song, I can't quite remember her name, but, like, her voice is the composition in Great Gig in the Sky. Like, you remember the slide guitar, but it's the voice that's the song.

And Big Mama Thornton was kind of screwed out of the songwriting credits for that song. Granted, it was a big hit. Like, I don't think Big Mama Thornton was unknown at the time.

I mean, she was, like, really big on the RB charts, but, you know, it was covered by various other White artists. And then Elvis actually covered a. Elvis covered a white version of her song. So it.

It was an Elvis ified white version of the song that then topped the charts.

That's.

Yeah, a lot of those, like, R B songs back in the day, that was what they, like, had to do to get them onto, like, the radio is like, you take the original and have, like, a friendly white person sing it and it would blow up on those charts.

But which is so funny. Like, we. We get this image of history of, like, there was this panic of, like, Elvis and rock music and, like, his suggestive dancing and whatever.

And like. No, he was still pretty mainstream.

Like, people still accepted him way before they would accept a black artist, which is just, like, brutal, you know. Oh, man, racism is. Sucks.

Yeah.

But that's. It's fascinating that, like, it takes somebody like Elvis who was still disliked but still managed to, like, push it into the mainstream.

Definitely. And, like, I think that's also another thing to notice about, like, note about covers is, like, it's interesting to see it.

Like I said, like, how it takes on a life. Like, it just gets taken. I won't say, like, it takes on a life of its own.

Like, sometimes it's like, taken away and then, like, you know, remade by someone else. It's just. There's, like, a lot of. There's a lot of nuance to it. You know what I mean? And that's the big stuff.

I do think Elvis. And I don't want to defend Elvis because it's Elvis, you know, I don't. I don't want to. I don't want to, like, straight up defend him.

But, like, compared to a lot of his contemporaries, he was always willing to give credit, like, to the black artists that he took inspiration from. He was always, like, shouting out his inspirations and, like, where he got the songs from and everything. Far more than his contemporaries.

And even still, it's like, I don't know, they're not making any money.

Yeah.

It's like publicity helps, but, like, they do need. You can't pay for their house and what.

You can't pay someone an exposure. That's not a. That's not really a thing.

And even if, like, you know, the songwriting credits not being given to them isn't, you know, necessarily Elvis's fault. No, it's just. It's an unfortunate. It's like, it's. I'm so, so glad that we are past the era. Maybe not fully past.

Yeah.

I think artist rights is still a pretty front of the industry issue that, like, nobody's really figured out that kind of stuff in, like, a super clean way. But that's like, money is just the. The ultimate, like, dehumanizer, you know what I mean?

It's.

It's a brutal thing. And that's just part of what we got to do if we're going to. If we're going to support artists in. In that way, you know, we gotta.

We gotta kind of figure it out and do our best.

Absolutely.

Then taking it back even further, we gotta. Gotta talk about Irving Berlin. You may not know his name, but you definitely know his songs.

He's responsible for White Christmas, dancing Cheek to Cheek, like, tons of stuff, isn't he?

He's like God bless America or one of those.

Yeah. It also helps that all of his songs were in big movies. He was. He was like. He was all over Hollywood.

All his famous songs come from movies and musicals. But, like, many of the most famous lyric songs are his. There's also George Gershwin, who you may know from Rhapsody in Blue, friend of the show.

He is also, like Irving Berlin, a architect of the jazz era. He wrote I got Rhythm. He wrote I got Listener American in Paris.

Rhapsody in Blue. That's the big one. That's the one I immediately think of when I hear Gershwin. It's Rhapsody in Blue.

Sonny, what is it?

Summertime Saw me Sawney.

One of those.

The song Summertime that got right the whole thing off.

Made famous by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. Yeah, tons of stuff. I also just discovered that Herbie Hancock covered Rhapsodyne Blue.

I have not listened to it yet, but knowing Herbie Hancock, that would be.

Really good to listen to. It'll be probably a little weird.

Probably a little weird, but that's kind.

Of what you expect with Herbie.

Speaking of Gershwin. Bringing it back to Nina from earlier, she. One of her biggest early songs was from Gershwin's. I believe he's the one who made Porgy and Bess.

Right? Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. One of her biggest early songs was I love you, Porgy. And that is just like. It was a staple of hers for years and years. Another reason. Combine.

Combine the new discoveries. Go check out both of them. Pretty please.

Leah, you were wanting some.

Oh, boy, here we go.

Oh, goody. So I, you know, got the. Got the. Got the boss call. I was told, you know, we're gonna be talking about covers today.

I asked, do they have to be good necessarily?

Uh, oh.

Cause I, you know, I just like. I haven't been listening to any.

There we go.

I haven't been listening to a lot of older music. So, like the COVID I'm not well versed in the COVID game right now. I'm just. It's not in my wheelhouse right now.

So I couldn't think of anything except for Michael Jackson's cover of Come Together from his film Question Mark Moonwalker.

Oh, boy.

And we're gonna have an interesting chit chat about this.

Okay.

Cause I just want to compare this version to a version you brought to my attention. Version by the band Aerosmith, who friends of the show may or may not know. I want to hear your thoughts.

Aerosmith's no friends of mine. That's me. That's not fair. But I wouldn't consider.

We gotta be polite, you know, we got.

You're right. You're right.

Say sorry to Arrows.

Hugely influential. They've got good songs. I like Sweet Emotion. I hate their cover of Come Together.

It's not good. It is not good.

I. It's pretty bad.

The thing is, like, it's difficult to.

It's difficult to talk about these because while Aerosmith's cover, like, musically is so much worse, there's something about the history of Michael Jackson. Covering that song is just the meanest, most bitter. Like, it's just rude.

It's not three sentence run.

It'll be more than three sentences.

I need more than three sentences.

So basically, when Michael Jackson was like, first growing up, like, first, like actually growing up and getting into the music industry around the time of off the Wall, and him and Paul McCartney of Beatles fame were buddy Buddy, who maybe.

We should mention are the original artists behind Come Together. I don't know if we've actually seen it.

Yeah, no, they may come together.

I don't know if you guys have heard it. It's one of the. It's one of the biggest rock songs.

Of all time on that album with some dudes walking across the street.

Anyway, it's the opening. It's a statement for the band. You know, they were buddy buddy in like late 70s, early 80s.

Michael Jack has a duet, the dog.

On Girl Is Mine.

Yeah, Girl is Mine. He covered girlfriend. I think that's a Pulse.

That's a Pulse song.

Yeah.

So they were like, you know, they were buddy buddy. And Michael Jackson was like, how do I get my money up? And so Paul McCartney was like, you know, you just gotta get into music publishing.

That's what I did. And that's what helped me get my money up. That's what helped me out in the biz. And so Michael Jackson was like, okay, I'm gonna buy your catalog.

Hehe.

Yeah.

Paul McCartney was like, funny one, Michael. It was not a joke. He spent millions and millions and millions of dollars buying hundreds of Beatles songs underneath Paul's nose.

The whole catalog.

Yeah.

So Paul gave him financial advice and Michael in return was like, I'm actually gonna take all your money is all mine now. And it's.

It's pretty ruthless. It's a ruthless thing to do to your.

And then covers come together immediately and.

And immediately after that, once he gets famous off of. Once he gets like, well, ultra famous off of Thriller.

And then Bad, he's like, I'm gonna cover this song and I'm gonna make all the money on it and it's gonna be a slap in the face to you. Paul McCartney who tried to help me out and tried to help me get my money up. And when you listen to it, there's just like this smarminess to it.

And like, it's just like. It's like, dude, you suck.

It's got the other more style.

I just listened to recording of it. It's so edgy.

The whole Bad and the Bad era is just so.

It's very over the top. It's very over the top.

It's. It's like. It's so gauche and like over the top and gaudy because he's like, look at me. It's the. I'm Michael Jackson.

I'm the biggest star in the world. It's like, I guess, yeah, you are. But like, do you think this annoying about it?

But to pull it back to the covers discussion, it is like we were talking about earlier. I was saying earlier too, he put himself into that song and that's where I think it comes across as stronger than the Aerosmith one.

And that like the Aerosmith one sounds so similar to the Beatles one.

Yeah.

Except with Steven Tyler singing oh. And you're just like, oh, why did you even bother? Like, the guitar solo's not as good, but the bass just sounds the same.

And you're just like, I don't know. And that. It's. That's like I. I had never heard the Michael Jackson version before somehow. And I was like, yeah, this isn't great.

I'm never gonna listen to this again. Probably. But I at least went like, he's putting some of his own thing into it. There's still like the groove.

But it's not just him doing a rip for rip, you know, I bit off the original, I guess, but I.

Mean, I Think for me is I just. I hate covers have come together. I hate them because no one can do it right.

The original versions, perfect. It's like the greatest groove. The best song ever. I. Here, let me. Let me sneak this in here. Even the intro to this podcast. No, no, no.

The intro to this podcast. If you didn't know, I wrote the intro to this podcast. I recorded it in my basement. It's bad, but we accept it, we enjoy it, we like it.

There's a bass slide near the end of, like, the bass riff that is, like, directly inspired by Come Together. That's like, how important Come Together is to me and like, to this podcast. Like, I don't. We all love the Beatles.

We've talked about the Beatles loads in the podcast.

Pretty cool.

And that's like. It's such a cool song. It's such a cool riff. The. The guitar parts that only come up in parts are very cool.

The, like, way the vocals are done are so cool. And it's one of those things where, like we were saying earlier, you got to put your own thing into the song and make it new and whatever.

And that's like, if you're gonna do a cover of the song, you gotta make it new and your own thing. Cause the original's so perfect. Like, you're not gonna improve on that without really trying hard.

The thing that makes the original work, though, and this is like, you know, you're like, musically inclined. The arrangements are never right. And I mean it. Like, everybody plays it as loud and cantankerously as possible. It's a, like.

It starts off quiet and explodes.

And that's like, the point of the song is it's this like, kind of like, you know, kind of anxious intro with like, the tom fills and everything's very sparse. And then it explodes with George Harrison.

Shout out Ringo.

Shout out Ringo. Like, that's one of like, definitely, like, period. And it's all about the slow burn until it explodes.

And every single cover of that song that they come in guns blazing and they just. It kills the vibe. It kills the song. It.

There's no crescendo. There's.

There's nothing.

There's no dynamics in any of the covers because they just want to make it a straight up rocker. The Beatles, like, I know they're the most famous rock band.

I don't know, they have a lot of, like, they have a lot more subtlety with their dynamics than most other rock bands that preceded them.

Do it Shock. The Beatles had some skill as songwriters.

I know. I know. Hot take.

This is the first I've heard of it.

But, like, did just it. Would it kill Aerosmith to just be a little quieter?

What do you think you're talking to right now?

And Michael as well. Well, kill him to just tone it.

Down a little bit in the bad. In the bad era.

I don't even want the bad era. Makes me so upset. Like, it's like.

Could be dangerous, though.

I prefer dangerous. That's a. I prefer dangerous because at least he's trying something new.

He really is.

He's trying something like it has. Remember the time.

Bad.

Thank you.

Check out the Michael Jackson cover of Come Together and tell us if you think it's bad or not.

Or you couldn't.

Or you couldn't. And take. Yeah, take Leo's word for it. Or don't. I don't know. Anyway, we're gonna.

We're gonna come back, we're gonna do another covers episode.

Oh, trust me.

But if you do want to hear any cover songs or original songs or covers of covers, all of that kind of stuff will get played at our meetings, which you can check out by checking out the link along with the show on our website. That'll have all of our past playlists, past podcasts, meeting themes, meeting dates, any information you'd ever need to know about the show.

You'll all find it there. Anything you know about the podcast, anything about the club itself, anything. Check it out. Thank you all for tuning in. We hope to see you next time.

Bye. Bye.

Love you so much.

Bye.

Bye.