My vacation officially started today! I mean, sure, I had Saturday, Sunday, and Monday off but I had to go into work today for about an hour to clean up the last little bit of last week’s trauma and get prepared to take off the next four days! WOO!!!
So, of course, I come home and immediately get sick. When I think about songs about being sick, all that immediately comes to mind is Comfortably Numb which, like, is FREAKIN AWESOME but isn’t really Wednesdayish in its own right (and, besides, I already posted a cover of Kate Bush covering it… maybe I could post The Sisters of Mercy covering it? Nah).
And *THAT* puts me in mind of all sorts of cover songs and, yes, The Sisters of Mercy.
A million years ago, The Rolling stones came out with a song called “Gimme Shelter” that, if you ask me, is the greatest Rock and Roll song of all time. Above Stairway, above Freebird, above Funeral for a Friend. Gimme Shelter IS THAT SONG.
Check it out here. Feel the riots that are pregnant in those opening chords.
Well, a song that good, has got to be covered, right? Thank goodness, Saint Andrew decided to grace us with his take on it:
For a while there, I thought that the Sisters cover of that song was better than the Stones’ version. I certainly argued as much… but, one day, I encountered a cover of the song done by Merry Clayton. The Stones and the Sisters sing about the song and you can feel the hope and violence in their versions but it seems to me that their version of the song has… well, there’s a right side of the gun and there’s a wrong side of the gun. Their version of the song definitely has them on the right side of the gun.
Merry Clayton sings the song from the wrong side of the gun. And it completely changes the song. Check it out:
So… what are you listening to?
I have a question about that last cover of “Gimmie Shelter”: When did Rage Against the Machine get a female lead singer? 🙂 (That’s based more on the accompanying video than the cover itself, which was outstanding.)
Rage more brought this sort of thing back after a couple decades of not having to think about this sort of thing.
(As a brief aside, I know that it shouldn’t but the thought of Zack de la Rocha and Tom Morello being told “you guys are my favorite band along with Limp Biskit!” always makes me smile.)
That might be enough to make any artist hang up the mic forever.
You know you else did a decent cover of Gimme Shelter? Tom Jones.
That’s right. I said Tom Jones.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWK1F1b5uRg
My goodness, I have never heard that one.
Tom Jones doesn’t seem… I dunno… “dangerous” enough.
I’m sure that’s on me.
That was amazing. Just don’t make me watch Tom dance again, eh?
Rocky Mountain High on the way home from my crappy day job.
Before I stopped here, I was singing a twangy country cover of “Such Great Heights” by the Postal Service but it got much too silly.
Now Gimme Shelter covers.
I have just spent 5 minutes looking for a particular old Coors Light commercial…
It’s a busy bar with everyone not really interacting much, one guy starts whistling “Rocky Mountain High” and, by the end of the commercial, everyone in the bar is singing it.
You’d think that that would be somewhere on the ‘net…
Whatever happened to Hamm’s?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP8JgQxXO8U
Cartoon animals playing baseball used to sell beer.
The 70’s had no right to be that awesome.
Any decade that spawned disco can’t be awesome.
Disco is NOT dead! Disco is LIFE!
— Tony P.
All “disco” means is “music that is fun to dance to”.
We all wished that we were Cheryl Song at one point in our lives. I assume that the people who hate disco are the people who have stopped wishing that.
Look at that beard. He wears it without a sense of irony.
Also curse you Jaybird, I just spent 30 minutes looking for the same commercial. Kinda makes me think it’s like the fabled Thunderbird photo that everyone’s seen but nobody can find.
“We all wished that we were Cheryl Song at one point in our lives. I assume that the people who hate disco are the people who have stopped wishing that.” Since I had to google Cheryl Song I truly believe that not everybody wanted to be her. I did want to learn how to dance but, since I am very cheap, to save money I married a dance teacher. Also, I don’t hate disco, I merely hold it in disdain and think of it as a silly little fad. . . much like pet rocks, except it cost more. I do agree that “Gimme Shelter” is a great rock song that, unlike Disco, can be called Art.