DaveO

I was watching Allen Toussaint’s recording of Austin City Limits and before playing Get Out My Life Woman, Toussaint says,

“This song coming up is a song that I wrote for brother Lee Dorsey many years ago but it was really made popular by another great person, but it’s my most covered song of all songs I’ve written – I’m not sure why…..because ten minutes after I wrote it, I was quite confused.”

And I…I just don’t know what cover he is referring to. It’s been covered by so many major artists, as you’re about to see. I normally like to cap Cover Wars at ten renditions but somehow we ended up with 12 this time around, and that was excluding some legendary takes from the likes of Joe Williams and Jimi Hendrix.

The Contestants:

Artist: Ant Trip Ceremony
Album: 24 Hours
The Skinny: Chances are, if you aren’t familiar with a lot of random psychedelic bands from the 1960’s, you may not have heard of Ant Trip Ceremony, a band formed at Oberlin College with just this one album. In addition to the originals on their 1968 release are this cover and one of Hey Joe.

READ ON for more covers of Allen Toussaint’s Get Out My Life Woman…

Two weeks ago we announced on Twitter – and also right here on HT – that we were taking suggestions for future editions of Cover Wars. Last week, we took the lead from ChefRobD’s suggestion and examined five covers of The Crunge by Led Zeppelin. This week, we took the request of DrewPeiner and are looking at covers of Fame by David Bowie. Written by Bowie with a little help from John Lennon, it was released on the 1975 album Young Americans.

The Contestants:

Artist: Addison Groove Project
Album: 4-24-2004
The Skinny: Leading off this week’s edition is a cover of Fame from Addison Groove Project, a band that is unfortunately no longer on the road. This recording is from their first-ever trip to San Francisco back in 2004.

READ ON for more covers of David Bowie’s Fame…

Well you asked for it. Last week we announced on Twitter – and also right here on HT – that we were taking suggestions for this weeks Cover Wars and we are men and women of our words. We went with ChefRobD’s suggestion to take a look at covers of The Crunge by Led Zeppelin.

The Crunge was released in 1973 on Houses Of The Holy and combines odd-time signatures with a James Brown-esque funk riff, a pairing that as it turns out is a match made in heaven.

For those of you who sent in suggestions that were not selected, hang tight because we are already working on next week’s edition which also was a suggestion gathered from Twitter feedback.

The Contestants:

Artist: Bustle In Your Hedgerow
Live Show: 2009-01-17
The Skinny: Marco Benevento and Joe Russo of the Benevento/Russo Duo plus Dave Dreiwitz of Ween and Scott Metzger of Rana make up this instrumental Led Zeppelin tribute band. This performance of Crunge is lifted out of a three song medley from this 2009 show where Crunge was sandwiched between Trampled Under Foot and How Many More Times. I’ve left a little of the audio of both of the songs in for context, but to hear the entire segment you should click on over to the full show at the Live Music Archive.

READ ON for more covers of The Crunge from the likes of Gov’t Mule…

The web is growing increasingly mobile and it’s time Hidden Track caught up. On the heels of officially launching our official Twitter feed, we have now optimized our site for a superior reading experience for anyone viewing Hidden Track on a smartphone. A quick look at our traffic analytics shows us that in March of 2010, 4% of our traffic came from mobile devices. That number is up by a multiple of three as 12% of our traffic came from mobile devices in March of this year.

We are using a great plugin for Wordpress called WPtouch Pro. For bloggers out there using Wordpress, we highly recommend both the free version, WPtouch, and also think it is absolutely worth the $39 to buy the Pro version of this package that we found out-of-the-box very easy to configure.

Now that we’ve got a mobile interface up and running, we hope you are now more likely to check in on the latest Hidden Track stories on your mobile device while you’re commuting, at a bar, waiting for the band to go on at your next show or wherever you may be. There is no URL to bookmark, just navigate to Hidden Track or any article from your smartphone or tablet and the page will automatically render in a format suitable for your device.

And here is where we need your help. We can’t decide how to display the mobile version of our homepage. We laid out the two options and in true Hidden Track fashion we’re letting our readers decide which one to go with.

READ ON for the two options and to vote…

Well, we started with 32 covers, 29 of which had won a Cover Wars over the past year and three that gained entry into the tournament via our Play-In Game, and we are down to our Final Four in the third annual Cover Wars March Madness. Voting ends on Friday at midnight EDT, so take a look at the remaining contestants and be sure to make your vote count.

Matchup #1:

Ramble On (Led Zeppelin)

Phish debuted this cover at Alpine Valley in the Summer of 1998. As most Phish fans know, there has been one other performance ever and it was the following week at Vernon Downs where the band paired Ramble On with their own Slave To The Traffic Light to close the first set. There are some killer Ramble On Teases in the Slave jam. Source: 8-1-1998

[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/phramble.mp3]

UPDATE: The text in all the descriptions for Cover Wars March Madness are taken from the original editions which at times – are out of date. As one of our readers pointed out in the previous round – Phish has since performed one more partial performance of Ramble On, and yes – it was pretty terrible.

VS.

Perpetual Groove – Live and Let Die (Paul McCartney) – A Play-In Selection

Perpetual Groove performing Live and Let Die by Paul McCartney from 10-30-2010

[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/pgroovemadness.mp3]

READ ON to place your vote and to check out the other match…

As the NCAA Basketball Tournament reduces down to eight teams today, we are a couple hours ahead of the game with our Elite 8 Bracket. There were some close contests in the Sweet 16, like The Band narrowing out Umphrey’s McGee w/Jennifer Hartswick in a 51% to 49% contest. We have our updated bracket below and four match-ups for you to vote on.

Matchup #1

Ramble On (Led Zeppelin)

Phish debuted this cover at Alpine Valley in the Summer of 1998. As most Phish fans know, there has been one other performance ever and it was the following week at Vernon Downs where the band paired Ramble On with their own Slave To The Traffic Light to close the first set. There are some killer Ramble On Teases in the Slave jam. Source: 8-1-1998

[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/phramble.mp3]

UPDATE: The text in all the descriptions for Cover Wars March Madness are taken from the original editions which at times – are out of date. As one of our readers pointed out in the previous round – Phish has since performed one more partial performance of Ramble On, and yes – it was pretty terrible.

VS.

Jeff Buckley – Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen)

Jeff Buckley: Buckley’s hauntingly dramatic version from his 1994 debut Grace is the best known cover of Hallelujah. It’s one of the best known covers of any song ever. Many people who love the Buckley version have no idea Cohen was the originator – I know I’ve met more than a few.

[audio:https://glidemag.wpengine.com/hiddentrack/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/hallelujahbuckley.mp3]

Video from Chicago in 1995:

READ ON to vote on the remaining three matchups in the Elite 8…

We all know plenty of songs that reference another song by name, for example the famous line in Sweet Home Alabama, “I hope Neil Young will remember, a Southern Man