genius... spending high school in a coffee shop there are so many more I could add to that list even though those are more open mic covers than recording artists but still painful... (i.e. ""brown eyed girl")
I respectfully disagree. I completely understand the genesis of the idea and sentiment (having done and heard my fair share of bad covers), but paying tribute and imitating are an important part of growing. And growing is always painful for everyone else. It's not like Phish's cover songs are genius... Maybe music can be fun? Maybe not everyone has to be legendary?
Sadly, Paste Magazine is continuing to place itself firmly in the critics-out-of-touch-with-reality genre of music magazines. Dripping the blood from a beast they no longer nurture. It's a shame, because they used to be part of the solution.
well, okay, to play devil's advocate here, i think the point of the article and the point (at least when *i* whine about covers being overdone) is that i'm simply just sick of hearing everyone do the same song. if, in fact, part of the point of doing a cover is to grow and imitate, is it unreasonable to wish that not everyone was imitating the exact same song? i mean, it's one thing if you're looking at the 20s, where everyone played the same traditional blues songs and did their own little thing with them to learn guitar, because everyone was listening to music by literally going to a place and listening to music; you didn't have a chance to hear five bands a week that in turn knew all the songs by all the other bands in the country...nowadays, when anybody with a webcam or a blog can post themselves doing a cover of a song and we've all heard every song by every artist on iTunes (as a collective culture, i mean), i just feel like the possibility for overexposure to 100 versions of one song is much more prevalent. sure, people like to play certain songs that we all grew up on and it's fun to play them while learning or whatever, but as m.ward said in an interview i read this morning, one secret to a good cover performance or recording is being aware of which cover songs are legitimately playable for an audience and which ones "are meant to be played in the basement". i think when you're talking about performing a cover song for an audience, you have to take into consideration that you're not *just* playing that song to learn or imitate, but also to entertain...that's where my problem with a million people all playing leonard cohen's "hallelujah" on any given night in coffee shops comes in.
also, i've never really seen paste as being the type of magazine to offer hard-hitting, incisive, critical cultural commentary when it comes to music. they've always been in my news feed next to stereogum and pitchfork and other music mags that care more about how they say something than what they're saying. not that i'm lauding that approach, but i think there's a place for it, and at least paste seems to be self-conscious about the fact that it's a magazine for indie rock hipsters, which is more than i can say for other such mags.
genius... spending high school in a coffee shop there are so many more I could add to that list even though those are more open mic covers than recording artists but still painful... (i.e. ""brown eyed girl")
ReplyDeleteI respectfully disagree. I completely understand the genesis of the idea and sentiment (having done and heard my fair share of bad covers), but paying tribute and imitating are an important part of growing. And growing is always painful for everyone else. It's not like Phish's cover songs are genius... Maybe music can be fun? Maybe not everyone has to be legendary?
ReplyDeleteSadly, Paste Magazine is continuing to place itself firmly in the critics-out-of-touch-with-reality genre of music magazines. Dripping the blood from a beast they no longer nurture. It's a shame, because they used to be part of the solution.
well, okay, to play devil's advocate here, i think the point of the article and the point (at least when *i* whine about covers being overdone) is that i'm simply just sick of hearing everyone do the same song. if, in fact, part of the point of doing a cover is to grow and imitate, is it unreasonable to wish that not everyone was imitating the exact same song? i mean, it's one thing if you're looking at the 20s, where everyone played the same traditional blues songs and did their own little thing with them to learn guitar, because everyone was listening to music by literally going to a place and listening to music; you didn't have a chance to hear five bands a week that in turn knew all the songs by all the other bands in the country...nowadays, when anybody with a webcam or a blog can post themselves doing a cover of a song and we've all heard every song by every artist on iTunes (as a collective culture, i mean), i just feel like the possibility for overexposure to 100 versions of one song is much more prevalent. sure, people like to play certain songs that we all grew up on and it's fun to play them while learning or whatever, but as m.ward said in an interview i read this morning, one secret to a good cover performance or recording is being aware of which cover songs are legitimately playable for an audience and which ones "are meant to be played in the basement". i think when you're talking about performing a cover song for an audience, you have to take into consideration that you're not *just* playing that song to learn or imitate, but also to entertain...that's where my problem with a million people all playing leonard cohen's "hallelujah" on any given night in coffee shops comes in.
ReplyDeletealso, i've never really seen paste as being the type of magazine to offer hard-hitting, incisive, critical cultural commentary when it comes to music. they've always been in my news feed next to stereogum and pitchfork and other music mags that care more about how they say something than what they're saying. not that i'm lauding that approach, but i think there's a place for it, and at least paste seems to be self-conscious about the fact that it's a magazine for indie rock hipsters, which is more than i can say for other such mags.
ReplyDelete