DaveO

After a few past Cover Wars appearances, the Ryan Montbleau Band can now claim a victory after scoring the majority of votes from last week’s edition when we looked at ten covers of John Lennon’s Jealous Guy. I wouldn’t be a responsible writer if I didn’t point out that Donny Hathaway also deserves much credit as Montbleau’s cover is part Lennon part Hathaway.

This week we’re taking a look at seven covers of Pink Floyd’s Young Lust off of their 1979 epic The Wall. In the ongoing story of The Wall, this tune depicts a part of every rock star’s career that just doesn’t get enough songs written about it. I am talking about banging groupies in hotel rooms.

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Has it really only been a week? There were no real surprises last Tuesday, and by this I mean that Pearl Jam has emerged victorious from last week’s edition where we looked at eight covers of Rockin’ In The Free World.

The general election may be over, but Cover Wars goes on. This week we will be featuring one of my favorite John Lennon solo songs: Jealous Guy. There are many covers of this tune out there, so this week’s contestants are by no means the only artists to have covered the song, but rather a sampling. Lennon originally wrote the melody to Jealous Guy on a trip to India in 1968 when the song was called Child Of Nature. The song would get new lyrics three years later when it was released on Lennon’s second studio album Imagine. You can read more about that here.

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No big surprise, after we looked at six covers of And It Stoned Me last week – the Jerry Garcia band version was the clear winner. Jerry’s soulful late-JGB style vocals are pretty damn hard to compete with.

For Election Day, I figured we’d throw together some covers of Neil Young’s Rockin’ In The Free World. Much like Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The USA, the song’s seemingly patriotic chorus is contrasted with negative imagery and politically themed verses.

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READ ON after the jump for a collection of contestants that are included via YouTube videos and not on the IMEEM playlist…

My apologies for not getting a Cover Wars up last week. I was fighting off what I affectionately refer to as the “Tour Flu” after logging a four-day-weekend full of live music from the likes of Trey Anastasio and Umphrey’s McGee. The extra time provided an opportunity for Widespread Panic and The Punch Brothers to duke it out for the title of best cover of Ophelia. Chris Thile and the Punch Brothers ultimately walked away victorious.

This week, we look at six renditions of the first track on Van Morrison’s 1970 release Moondance: And It Stoned Me. The song, while adopted as a stoner anthem, seems to have more to do with what’s in the gallon jar mentioned in last verse than it does to smoking anything. In the artist’s own words, taken from a biography [via wikipedia]:

I suppose I was about twelve years old. We used to go to a place called Ballystockart to fish. We stopped in the village on the way up to this place and I went to this little stone house, and there was an old man there with dark weather-beaten skin, and we asked him if he had any water. He gave us some water which he said he’d got from the stream. We drank some and everything seemed to stop for me. Time stood still. For five minutes everything was really quiet and I was in this ‘other dimension’. That’s what the song is about.

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The geeking out piece – this was fun. For me this was a great couple of days in Hidden Track history because it displayed a bit of the community that we’ve got going on right here inside the blog. We have thousands of people viewing the site everyday but often times well thought-out posts go by without a comment posted.

This wasn’t one of them, readers were eager to supplement the piece with information. For example, I had no idea The Radiators had logged such a rigorous consistent touring schedule over the years, but reader “chicofishhead” was nice enough to paste in the data for us. UM’s archivist McL chimed in and asked for an additional graph that displayed all bands on the same line chart – and he got it.

As a follow-up, here’s the raw numbers on what is on the books for 2008. The Disco Biscuits will close out the year with 56 shows assuming Barber stays out of the air ducts at the Nokia Theater this December. moe. (the inspiration for the piece in the first place) ends the year with 78 shows after sneaking in one extra appearance at Farm Aid after moe.down. While it could be argued Phish played one show in 2008, I think the real question is: With three shows already in the books in 2009, will Phish play more or less shows in ’09 than they did in ’03 (which was 44). UM shows no signs of stopping, logging 113 shows this year. With their next studio album set for an early 2009 release, I’d say it’s likely they will either meet or exceed this number next year.

READ ON for the original Geeking Out, We’ve Got Seven Line Graphs post…

U-Melt ran away with last week’s edition when we looked at eight covers of The Boy In The Bubble. U-Melt proves that clever setlist construction goes a long way, as the performance that was selected was in the middle of MMW’s Bubblehouse (Boy in the Bubblehouse?). Congrats to U-Melt on their first CW trophy, well it’s an imaginary trophy, put it on the mantle.

Moving on to this week, we will be taking a look at a tune Robbie Robertson wrote for The Band that was originally released on the their 1975 release Nothern Lights – Southern Cross.

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READ ON for the tale of the tape on this week’s competitors…

The Bridge once again had a strong showing and walked away as the sole victors of last week’s edition when we looked at eight covers of Them Changes. The Bridge should be thankful for their energetic fans on their message board that helped drive up the number as the week went on to push past 2nd place PBS. The Bridge hits the road again on October 14.

Moving on to this week, we’re going to take a look at the first track on Paul Simon’s legendary 1986 release Graceland. We’ve got a wide variety of performances this week: Solo acoustic, bluegrass, bands that have covered the whole album, studio renditions by punk-rock legends, the works!

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READ ON after the jump to cast your vote for the best version…

I’m not big on writing reviews of concerts or albums. I’m more of a compile information compare/contrast kind of guy, that’s why I like writing Cover Wars every week. But

I’m going to go ahead and declare a tie from our edition two weeks ago with The Bridge and Mr. Blotto refusing to quit as the votes go higher and higher – so we’ll call them both winners from when we looked at covers of Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys. Last week’s however has a clear winner, no big surprise here as Jerry Garcia & David Grisman received the majority of votes when we examined covers of Sitting In Limbo.

This week, we look at the title track off of a Buddy Miles album from 1970: Them Changes. While not as well known as the version on Band Of Gypsies, the studio cut features a funky groove with a horn section whereas the live Hendrix cut is more of your straight power-trio rocker. What’s great about this week’s Cover Wars is that we’ve got some bands with horns that play the lines from the studio recording and some guitar bands that are a little closer to the version most people know. Lots of good guitar work this week.

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READ ON to cast a vote for your favorite Them Changes cover…