Cover Wars: Frankenstein Edition

Addison Groove Project: This version is coming to you from AGP’s penultimate gig in 2007. At this point, Rob Marscher was playing all the basslines with his left hand on the keyboards due to the passing of their bass player John Hall. You can check out the whole show on The Archive

The Breakfast: Well technically they were still called Psychedelic Breakfast during the show that I picked…A more or less straight ahead and very tight rendition. Check out the whole show on The Archive

Bonerama: I’m always psyched when we get some unique arrangements during Cover Wars and Bonerama delivers one here. Not only is there a great arrangement for the composition (Four Trombones, Sousaphone, Guitar and Drums) but there’s a big nasty jam in the middle. There’s some real interesting stuff going on inside here with the effects that the Sousaphone player throws on. You can check out the whole show on The Archive

Marcus Miller: Almost certainly coincidentally, Marcus Miller and Phish have a similar taste in cover songs. Both artists also appeared on an early edition of Cover Wars when we looked at Boogie On Reggae Woman. Boogie On and Frankenstein are also both on 2005 studio release Silver Rain. Anyway, real smooth and funky rendition with some cool vamp grooves for the horn players to blow over.

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Phish: And we’ve got these guys. Phish played Frankenstein 76 times in between 1989 and 2004. Most of them were pretty similar, often closing sets or in the encore slot. Unique versions include a few renditions with the Giant Country Horns and that bizarre Frankenstein > Kung > Frankenstein at the 20th anniversary show in Boston – that was weird. But the one I chose today comes from Boise ’99. While it’s not the best version (perhaps the band was spent dropping the nastiest AC/DC Bag ever earlier in the set), it’s got two fun little quirks about it. First, the Pink Floyd vocal tease from Fishman. And second, check the beginning of this video to see how Trey lets Page know what song is coming next.

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That’s all I got for this week, as always, here’s some video of the original. The Edgar Winter Group dropping a 10-minute version!

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