(written: 8 February 2004)
Ladies and gentlemen. Tonight I write my last entry as a solo artist. For soon you can thank your lucky stars that Mr. Kam Locklear will be returning to his throne. I'm not entirely sure how frequent he'll be with his witty and sexually charged pieces of literary genius, hopefully VERY, but for now I'll take my leave until after he's made his debut. His redebut.
I'd better make it good. Or goodish. Goodies. Remember them? Me either.
Isn't it a beautiful thing to hear a favourite musician perform a cover song and totally own it? You think about how they probably started... probably performing bad covers in seedy bars for little pleasure or pay. Much like contestant on any one of the Idol's shows, "owning" a cover song doesn't necessary equal greatness. We've all heard the horror of a Whitney Houstonesque version of some previously beautiful acoustic ditty. You know it. Apparently it's called "trilling" and it's godawful. Mariah Carey made a career out of it. Coincidentally I used to be a big fan. I had walls covered in Mariah posters, Paula posters, Richard Marx posters, Johnny Diesel posters and most shamefully the casts of Baywatch and 90210.
ANYWAY it feels like a while since I listed. I have a hankering for some saucy list action.
Covers?! YES! Awesome covers!
This is all strictly off the top of my head. I don't have the patience to actually put any deep thought into this but I'll try my best to utilise the greatness of my giant brain. For good. Not evil. Of course the I Am Sam soundtrack is a favourite of mine so... bear with me.
To make it in my heart a cover has to not necessarily make me FORGET the original, but make me feel inner turmoil over which is better. If you can't outplay the original, then it's probably best if you don't even attempt it.
So I'll start off here with the song currently playing.
*Throw Your Arms Around Me
Originally written and performed by Mark Seymour and Hunters and Collectors this song struck a chord with a lot of people in the land down under. Hehe. Remember Home and Away when Shane and Angel claimed it as their song? Remember Dieter Brummer? God he was hot. She (Melissa George) went on to star in some cop show with John Stamos. And she was in Mulholland Drive. Hissss. When Shane died I think a little piece of us was buried with him...
But I digress. That song... it's been said before a million times, never really a huge hit but everyone everywhere knows it. And you can't NOT love it. You'd have to heart of stone to not be moved by it. Now I have two possible versions to go with here... Ed Vedder and Mark Seymour in Australia (which kinda takes away from the "cover"ness of it...) or Neil Finn and Ed playing it in Boston. So the honour of best cover version of Throw Your Arms Around Me goes to Mr. Finn and Mr. Vedder as they sang it together in Boston in November 1998.
Neil was on tour to promote Try Whistling This and was picking up famous vagrants along the way. Ed happened to be in town with his then-wife's band at the time so joined Neil on stage to perform 5 songs with him and his delicious son Liam. TYAAM was perfect. The connection of the song to Neil (Seymour's brother Nick was in Crowded House) and the passion of both singers delivery sent chills down my spine. Even when the drunken slapper in the crowd "whooed" as Ed sang about kissing you in 199 places the sheer brilliance of the men was not marred. No one can nail another persons song like Ed Vedder.
Unless...
*He Aint Heavy
*Hallelujah
*My Funny Valentine
*Across the Universe
...his name is Rufus Wainwright.
I'm not sure what it is about Rufus. Actually I do know. He's simply adorable. And he has the ability to flawlessly hit those notes that make you tingle all over. His voice is pretty unique but he doesn't really try to make the song into something solely his. From what I've heard he just does incredible tribute-type covers. He Aint Heavy gets played a lot in my car and there's one part that will be worn out soon due to rewinding... "And the load does. not. weigh. me. dooooown at aaallllll..." totally kills me every single time.
Um. I've been trying to write this now for about 45 minutes and it's just not working. So I'm going to cut this off now and pretend that I finished what I was saying. There are plenty more awesome covers of course but I think Rufus and Ed are my kings of covers. However, if Kam wants to maybe carry on my thought, or just discard it and move on to more important things then by all means.
So please... give him a warm round of applause. Please... no photos... and welcome back...
Mister! Rat! Pony!