3 posts tagged “ramones”

It's always a tricky course to navigate when a performer sets out to cover a song written and performed (usually made famous) by another artist.

A good cover version requires that the artist performing it puts their own stamp on the work without getting the key elements all wrong... they must be careful not to destroy the soul of the original.

Somebody hearing the song without knowledge of the original version should not immediately suspect that this piece doesn't sound right for the current artist.

Here is something I've become aware of where the cover stands on its own and yet does right by the original:

Havana Affair by the Ramones, then covered by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Another solid effort was Nirvana's take on "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" by Leadbelly.

The music should still be good judged by itself... and not just a poor version of something that is only tolerable because it was previously famous... and only interesting in the way that freeway drivers rubberneck when passing collisions.

My beef is that modern, young country music seems to be infatuated with rock anthems... yet is consistently unable to pull off anything other than a tragic spoof... a compact car sandwiched between two eighteen-wheelers.

They get the words right, and the music is recognizable... but it seems that they have no comprehension of the meaning behind the song... why it was important enough that it got enough recognition for them to be aware of it and want to do their version of it in the first place.

My first personal experience with young, modern country getting it wrong was hearing Faith Hill's rendition of "Piece Of My Heart".  I had been indoctrinated into the Janis Joplin version.  I heard an interview with Faith Hill later where she claimed her producers had actually not allowed her to hear Pearl's classic before she naively recorded her version.

I felt as if some stranger had just defecated all over the Mona Lisa.

And yet, country artists are repeatedly drawn back to, not their roots (western cowboy, hillbilly, and Irish ballad) in the way that rock performers reach back to blues, but rather country reaches forward and across to rock.

It has always seemed off to me... maybe because it's not going back up it's family tree, but changing trees altogether.

The latest example I've become aware of is Carrie Underwood performing "Paradise City", "Sweet Child O' Mine", "November Rain" and "Patience" by Guns'n'Roses.

To keep with the changing trees metaphor... she totally George of the Jungle'd it.    "Look out for that...  tree!"

I do not care to imbed it here... but you can find it for yourself on Youtube... if you have the urge to rubberneck.

You twisted bastards.  You're going to look, aren't you?

Fine... here's one of her better desecrations:

No, not the whiskey.

A real live one.

It ran through the backyard, circled around, peeped in the back sliding glass door, startled the hell out of two boxers and one stay-at-home dad who was cooking tater-tots at the time, and then sped away to do whatever the hell it is that wild turkeys do.

Yes, that bumps the mosquitoes off the top of the list of largest wildlife I've seen in Tennessee so far.

Now, back to my taters and tots.

Gabba, gabba, hey!  as the Ramones would say.

So, I started this post five times,

and made no progress with the earlier attempts.

I've got a good feeling about this one, in that Jedi good feeling about this one way.

My youngest, almost five months, is the bane of my blogging attempts.

Of well, any of my hobbies actually.

Even my nutritional intake.

To grab a bite of lunch, usually around 3PM requires placing her somewhere secure that is mostly out of earshot for the 5 minutes it takes to nuke and consume a prepared soup, nachos, or a frozen leanpocket-type pastry.

I can still hear her anyway.

Gives me heartburn.

The poor, poor person that falls for that one eventually is going to have more on their hands than their heart bargains for.

Her one or two daily naps are blessed relief.

These, in the main, she does not coordinate with her older sister's napping schedule.

Her soiled diddies however, she does synchronize.

I've got to get the older one potty-trained to decrease that particular workload.

She has the control.  In fact she waits me out while I have her placed on the appropriate seat...
until I give in and dethrone her, then she releases while I'm putting her diaper back on.

My hands have learned to work quick in these vulnerable positions.

Cuing from her sister, the youngest one has become adept at taking cheap shots as well.

I've been pee'd on three times and poo'd on twice in the last month.

Sure, some call it a living, but I'm not in the German scheisse-film actors guild, so I can't receive payment.

See, the strategy of the youngest is to use a different matter-state of projectile than her older sister.

You block it straight up the middle, it blitzes from the edges.

I've made adjustments to change her diddies from the shotgun position now.

In other miscreant parenting news, when I find my 2.5 year old doing something mildly inappropriate, I attempt to find a creative way for her to expand her skill set, by doing whatever she's doing even more inappropriately.

Two recent examples:

The rocking cow (yes, she has a cow, not a horse, you conformists).
She sometimes uses it as a platform to lauch a jump off of instead of sitting on it and well, rocking.
Instead of scolding her and telling her to sit in the saddle and rock like the manufacturer expects her to, I show her that if she moves the cow closer to the arm of the couch, she can run up to the cow, bounce off of its saddle, tuck into a roll on the arm of the couch and do a flip onto the seat cushions.

Crayons.
She sometimes grabs a hairbrush that my wife has left on the kitchen table and pushes the crayons through the hole in the shaft of the grip that is exactly the circumference of a crayon.
Instead of telling her to leave her mother's hairbrush alone and to color with the crayons on paper, I show her how to load a crayon partway through the hole in the brush, position a box across the table, then smartly slap the crayon through the hole, firing it at the box, scoring a point for each crayon that strikes its target.
We review the colors of each crayon immediately before the missile is sent down range.

"We're a happy family, we're a happy family, we're a happy family, meet mom and daddy..."  - Ramones