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Cover Wars: Ain’t No Sunshine Edition

People like to discount Wikipedia for being a source of misinformation, but I’ll tell ‘ya, a quick read of the page for Ain’t No Sunshine nets you some pretty damn good factoids on this 1971 Bill Withers classic. 1) Produced by Booker T. 2) Donald “Duck” Dunn plays the bass 3) Withers was working at a factory making toilet seats when he wrote the song. Okay, #3 they claim to have a source for from Rolling Stone but the link is broken, but I *want* to believe them. I’m sure it’s true. Anyway, literally hundreds of people have covered Ain’t No Sunshine, a search of allmusic.com brings you 1,456 results. What we’ve got below is 10 renditions we think are worth a listen.

Cover Wars

The Contestants:

This same Buddy Guy album (Bring ‘Em In) appeared two weeks ago in the I Put A Spell On You Cover Wars. Carlos Santana joined Guy on that cover while Tracy Chapman joins him on this one. This cover features an early key change, multiple vocalists, horns – the whole nine yards.

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

READ ON for the audio and video of nine more Ain’t No Sunshine covers…

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Hidden Flick: Being Jeremy Davies

[Originally Published: May 11, 2010]

“I might choose not to risk my life for an uncertain cause. I might think that freedom won by death is not worth having. In fact…”

Yeah. I know. If you think I’m forgetting about writing about Heath Ledger, who stars in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus as a truly fucked-up passenger on board the Quadruple-Faced Traveling Circus, you just need to tune in to the next edition of Hidden Flick, which will cross the line between the living and the dead—focusing on his final surreal role on the large cinema screen. An extraordinarily gifted actor gone too soon…lost to the sands of time…faraday…far, far away.


Ahhh…but we’re here for a special purpose, aren’t we? This is season four where everything gets weird. Hidden underneath it all, the three-seasoned layers of cinematic strange bliss is that feeling that something else is going on here—that a pursuit of the next film to see, that one little thing that will be so very interesting to a handful of heady peeps, is somehow not the point. The Cosmic Trickster at Play? Not content to talk about just one obscure gem, we are introducing a new concept: the hidden actor in our game. This special edition of Hidden Flick will focus on the work of an actor who first began his career peaking on a 1992 Subaru commercial, segued into a promising career as a lesser actor in major and indie works, before going superfuckingnova as Daniel Faraday in television’s LOST. Yes, this week is all about our Hidden Actor, Jeremy Davies.

Hang on. The film reel is spun…just like punk, ‘cept it’s cinematic.

READ ON for more on this week’s Hidden Actor, Jeremy Davies

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Video: Frank Zappa – Inca Roads

Cancer sucks for any number of reasons, but we’re reminded of one of those reasons today as Frank Zappa should be alive and enjoying his 70th birthday. Instead, the one-of-a-kind

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Free Download: Xmas Present From Trey

We woke up to find a fantastic Christmas present from Trey Anastasio and Live Phish under our virtual tree this morning. If you head over to LivePhish.com, you can download

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Hidden Track’s Holiday Gift Guide

For the first time in our history, the Hidden Track staff has put together a list of ten items for the rabid music lover in your life. These are all items with the HT stamp of approval and if we don’t own ’em, we wish we did.  So let’s get down to business, ’cause frankly – if you haven’t started shopping yet you’re going to need all the help you can get…


HT Suggests: Logitech Squeezebox Radio


Why You’d Want It: This all-in-one music player allows you to listen to SiriusXM, Pandora, Rhapsody, a whole host of other services, thousands of internet radio stations and any music files you throw at it in any room of your house – no computer required. All you need is a wi-fi connection and you’re golden.

The Squeezebox is the same size as a clock radio and is about as easy to use as it gets once you get past the annoying initial installation. We had a chance to play around with a unit and we loved being able to switch from hearing about the hot stove on sports radio station WFAN to listening to Howard Stern interview Billy Joel on Sirius to streaming Miles Davis’ All Blues over Pandora in just a few short clicks of the click wheel. There’s a handy program guide that makes finding new stations a snap and the color display tells you everything you need to know about what you’re listening to including all the track information from Sirius/XM.

Terrestrial radio might be dying, but the Squeezebox shows that internet and satellite radio are where it’s at for a ridiculously wide variety of listening options.

Grab It At: Amazon.com for $149.99

READ ON for more of HT’s First Annual Holiday Gift Guide…

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Black Crowes End Tour, Start Hiatus

Last night in San Francisco, the Black Crowes wrapped up the Say Goodbye to the Bad Guys tour at The Fillmore by treating fans to five Rolling Stones covers to

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Hors d’Oeuvres: Celebs A Plenty @ Prince

Prince’s Welcome 2 America tour continued over the weekend with performances in the New York City area. For Saturday’s show at MSG, Prince welcomed old collaborator Sheila E to the

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B List: 10 Great Musicians We Lost in 2010

Today we continue our look back at the year that was with a list of 10 Great Musicians We Lost in 2010. We’ll feel the loss of these innovative artists for years to come and we wanted to pay our respects once more.


1. Captain Beefheart (1941 – 2010)

Playlist: Six-Part BBC Documentary


Don “Captain Beefheart” Van Vilet, rock legend and artist, died from complications from multiple sclerosis last Friday. Captain Beefheart was an experimental musician who never conformed to anyone’s standards except his own right up until the time he left the industry in 1982 to focus on creating visual art. High school classmate Frank Zappa saw Van Vilet’s brilliance early on and signed the Captain to his Straight Records. Zappa produced the seminal double-album Trout Mask Replica in 1969, which landed the number 58 slot on Rolling Stone’s 2003 list of the 500 Best Albums of All-Time.

READ ON for ten more talented musicians who we miss already…

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Pullin’ ‘Tubes: Vultures Moving In

We first fell in love with Nicole Atkins a few years back when the Neptune, NJ native joined the mighty My Morning Jacket on stage during their epic New Year’s

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