DaveO

Well they’ve done it again, Phish has walked away victorious for the second time in Cover Wars. Phish has actually claimed a mandate in both its first (Boogie On) and more recent (Good Times Bad Times) victories. In honor of this, I’ve selected one of the larger Phish compositions as the focus of this week’s edition.

Also, some quick housekeeping, we’re calling the Cover Wars from 2 weeks ago (Space Oddity) for The Breakfast.

First off, the raw basics: Trey wrote You Enjoy Myself in Europe in 1986…you know what…if you’re reading this blog and you’re not familiar with the history of YEM, just ring your call button, and Tommy Scotty will come back there and hit you on the head with a tack hammer because you are a retard.

The dorky shit: YEM is the most played Phish song…by a lot. 472 times. 39% of all Phish shows featured it. Read on for this week’s contestants…

Last week’s edition is still currently too close to call. If you haven’t voted, you gotta help us declare a winner. I wish I could congratulate last weeks winner, that’s what I like to do at the beginning, but I can’t – it’s just too close!

One of the things I love about writing this column, besides the chicks, is the cool things you learn along the way of researching an edition. For example, I was not aware that the guitar solo was recorded with a Telecaster going through a Leslie Speaker. You can learn all sorts of cool shit from this song’s wikipedia page. I’m not going to copy and paste all of them but it’s got some good stuff: Recording techniques, quotes from band members about it, etc.

Though there are is no shortage of cover versions, I’m going to do a few less than the past few weeks. Here’s my six favorite versions of Good Times, Bad Times:

If Imeem is only giving you 30 second clips of the songs, you must register or login to Imeem to hear the full tracks – it’s easy and free.

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

We thought we’d celebrate the ninth anniversary of the Disco Biscuits monumental tour closer in Pittsburgh with some music. Before you check out the recording, DaveO provides some background on

The voting is still taking place (Actually, come to think of it, polls are still open for all of them) and turnout remains to be on the rise with Volume 5 of Cover Wars. Early on in the week it looked like Scarecrow Collection was going to pull it off, but Mr. Blotto is running away with it and Hidden Track can now project that Mr. Blotto will carry the 50 Ways edition of Cover Wars. Talks of a ‘Dream Ticket’ with both Mr. Blotto and SCC are being dismissed by both candidates.

Let us move onwards and upwards into this week’s edition where we’ll examine covers of David Bowie’s Space Oddity. You know this song, it’s called ‘Ground Control to Major Tom’, you can find it playing at happening college party sing-along’s with The Who’s ‘Teenage Wasteland’ and ‘Dirty Woman’ by Pink Floyd. This is a song that appears to be inspired both by the Apollo 11 moon landing and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Bowie first recorded this song in 1969. Did you know that Rick Wakeman of Yes plays Mellotron/Keyboards on the original? I didn’t. I guess you learn something new everyday.

Assembly of Dust: Reid Genauer’s group used the tune as the countdown to ring in the year 2007. This is a good call when the song’s already got a countdown from 10 in it. Well played.

Read on for the full report on nine other versions of Space Oddity…

Lifted from an October 2007 interview with our very own Ace:

AC: Let me switch gears again…I thought the Gathering of the Vibes solo set you played in 2002, if I may cloak my objectivity here for a minute, was one of the most fucking perfect acoustic sets of music I’ve ever heard. Do you have these yens to do get out and do some more solo shows?

RG: Yeah, I like it. And that is a show that I’m proud of — it was a defining moment. Kind of like an “I’m here to stay” kind of thing. That might be why it was what it was; there was a lot riding on it. Yes, I like it, and I’d like to do more of it, whether it’s incorporating it into the AoD set or solo shows or whatever. In fact, it’s something I discussed recently, and I would like to do more of it.

In the comments section, myself and Paul Robinson (Owner of The Stone Church) chime in to comment on the interview and express their hopes to see a Reid Solo tour in the future.

04/10/08: Tin Angel, Philadelphia PA
04/11/08: Iron Horse, Northampton MA
04/24/08: Higher Ground, South Burlington VT
04/25/08: Sullivan Hall, New York City NY
05/01/08: The Stone Church, Newmarket NH
05/02/08: Harpers Ferry, Allston MA

These dates mark Reid’s first ever “official” solo tour. Click here for a ZIP file of 320kb MP3s of the SBD from Reid’s Solo Set from Gathering Of The Vibes 2002.

Reid on for four amazing clips of Genauer performing solo and an interview…

Well the Tea Leaf Green fans have done it…and that is awesome because ballot-stuffing is encouraged here at Hidden Track. Turns out Trevor really is the best one to sing “I Am An Old Woman”…Seriously though, nice turnout! DGold, the person who had TLG on his radio show in the first place to play this song, said he listened to all eight versions and ended up casting his vote for Susan Tedeschi – you sir are why we do this.

Onwards to Volume 5, this week we’ll be listening to interesting renditions of Paul Simon’s 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover. Paul Simon is very guarded when song meanings are attempted to be extracted from him, and this single from his album Still Crazy After All These Years is no exception.

Read on to get DaveO’s tale of the tape on this week’s song and competitors…

Yesterday moe. announced that they will be taking a break after the 9th annual moe.down this August. Here is what they posted on their website:

This summer, moe. will embark on one of its biggest summer tours to date. The band intends to spend most of June and July on the road. The tour will begin at Summer Camp and wind down in early August. moe. will finish out the summer at moe.down 9 in Turin, NY.After moe.down, moe. will not be playing any more shows for some time. The band is taking a break with the intent of returning again in 2009. Summer tour dates will be announced as they are confirmed.

And then a member of the moe. organization then did some clarifying:

People, please relax. They just need some time off. We realize that you guys enjoy your time off from work going to see moe., but they deserve some time off work as well.

Please do not read into anything or compare moe. to other bands. A few months of no shows does not mean the band is breaking up. last fall they did maybe 5 shows in the same time frame and everyone survived, you will survive again even without those 5 shows!!

they are going to go out with a bang, playing as many shows in as many places as they can squeeze in, then go home to not think about work for a bit. When they are rested, have the new roof up, painted the den, changed a few diapers, gotten a massage, paid some bills, taught a kid how to ride a bike etc. they will return to rock out!!

melissa
moe. marketing chick

So she asked not to compare moe. to other bands…Sorry Melissa, we are going to do EXACTLY that. Read on for some hard core stat geekin’…

The votes are in and we can say the mandate from last week’s Cover Wars belongs to…….Grateful Dead.

This week’s edition features a song so fantastic that dudes in many bands have no problem whatsoever citing the opening lyrics, “I am an old woman named after my mother”. Three-chord songs really are a thing of beauty. Wikipedia tells me that, Songwriter Harlan Howard once said “All you need to write a country song is three chords and the Truth.”

That’s all that original performerJohn Prine has here, and it is most certainly was an instant classic. Let’s take a look at a few renditions after the jump.

Believe it or not, Cover Wars was not supposed to be a Tuesday feature. The first one was supposed to go up on a Monday but due to some technical difficulties, we pushed it to Tuesday. Which is great because it allows me to make jokes about the Presidential election. Voter turnout was up last week, though we do not share the exact numbers and only percentages, I’ll say that there was a 24% increase last week, and Phish was the clear winner of the 2nd edition.

Originally written by Buddy Holly and Norman Petty, the song Not Fade Away (and Rock & Roll) owes a lot to what drummers call the Bo Diddley Beat. It’s obviously been covered a lot, we’ve got 10 versions here, and I omitted plenty of others. Read on for Dave’s song descriptions, and to place your vote…

With 92% of the precincts reporting, Hidden Track can now project that Umphrey’s McGee will carry the first volume of Cover Wars with 64% of the vote. String Cheese Incident and Trey Anastasio finished officially tied each with 18% of the vote. Now let’s move on to the next battle.

This week features six artists competing for the best cover of Stevie Wonder’s Boogie On Reggae Woman. This song comes to us off the 1974 record Fulfillingness’ First Finale. Here’s a look at the contenders:

Addison Groove Project: As you may recall, this now retired (but is any band ever really retired?) funk-fusion outfit from Boston has previously been mentioned on Hidden Track, by me, and about this song. AGP got a mention in my Top Ten Big Red sit-ins.

Legion Of Mary: LoM was Jerry Garcia’s side-band from 1974 to 1975 and featured Garcia, Merl Saunders (Keyboards, Vocals), John Kahn (bass), Martin Fierro (Saxophone, Flute) and Ron Tutt (Drums). This track comes to you from a ’74 show in Berkeley, Merl takes vocal duties, but Garcia’s guitar work starting around the 6 minute mark is definitely worth hearing. Read on for more Boogie On…