Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions Part Two

Last Sunday's cover versions mix worked well enough for me to undertake a second. I started with Jah Divison and went from there, a succession of dub and reggae covers, wasn't happy with it and scrapped it and started again, setting off again with Jah Division but heading in a noisier, more guitar laden direction, all a bit more shambolic. Then it slows down and blisses out before kicking up a storm again for the finish. 

After I posted last Sunday's mix Steve from Andres y Xavi messaged me to say he had a series of cover version mixes called Under The Covers, up at Mixcloud. The latest, his ninth, covers a lot of ground from Lady Blackbird to The Droyds with Isaac Hayes, Bobby Womack and Jose Feliciano among the people sandwiched in between. Plenty to enjoy. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Cover Versions Part Two

• Jah Division: Dub Will Tear Us Apart
• The Fall: Mr Pharmacist
• The Jesus And Mary Chain: Surfin' USA
• Sonic Youth: I Know There's An Answer
• Sonic Youth: Computer Age
• Hardway Bros: 1979 GLOK Remix
• Andy Bell: Our Last Night Together
• The Liminanas: Ou Va La Chance
• The Vendetta Suite: Who Do You Love?
• Fontaines DC: 'Cello Song

Jah Division is a Russian reggae band, formed in Moscow in 1990. This is what it says in Wikipedia. It also say that the founder of Jah Division, Gera Morales, was the son of Leopold Morales, an associate of Che Guevara's. Elsewhere (Bandcamp) it says Jah Divison are from Brooklyn and their 2004 12" of four covers of Joy Division songs is their sole release. According to Bandcamp Jah Divison features members of Onieda and Home, began as a joke and the four tracks were recorded in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge. Take your pick. None of which stops Dub Will Tear Us Apart from being a genius cover version whoever recorded it. 

The Fall's Mr Pharmacist is a cover of a song by Los Angeles 60s psyche garage band The Other Half, a 1986 Fall single from the Brix period and produced by John Leckie. The original was on an early 80s Nuggets compilation. Mr Pharmacist was also on The Fall's Bend Sinister album, an opinion splitting album derided by Mark E. Smith and John Leckie.

Surfin' USA was a Darklands outtake, all feeedback, rough and rowdy drums, breaking glass, East Kilbride sneers and TV preachers. The Reid brothers knew how to cover a song. The original was a 1963 Beach Boys single...

... and I Know There's An Answer was a 1966 Beach Boys album song (from Pet Sounds). Sonic Youth's cover comes from 1989, recorded for a Brian Wilson tribute album released in 1990 and sung by Lee Renaldo- no one else could sing it according to Lee who says J. Mascis helped out in the studio too. Appropriately squally and rather wonderful. 

Sonic Youth also recorded a Neil Young cover in the same time frame for a Neil Young tribute album, The Bridge (a superb album). They chose a song from Neil's most misunderstood album, Trans. Like the Mary Chain, Sonic Youth instinctively know what makes a good cover version. Computer Age is a gem in the SY back catalogue. 

Sean Johnston's Outre Mer label is an outlet for Hardway Bros recordings. In January 2024 he released an EP called My Friends which included a cover of Smashing Pumpkins 1979 (a song which is itself pretty much a New Order tribute). A remix EP saw GLOK tackle 1979, and has a massively overloaded guitar sound that makes you check your speakers are OK. 

Andy Bell's covers EP Untitled Film Stills contains four covers- Our Last Together is an after hours beauty, impressionistic, woozy and moving. Well, it moves me. 

The Liminanas featured in last week's mix and they're back today with a song from this year's album Faded. Ou Va La Chance is a cover of a Francois Hardy song, closing the album in fine style.

The Vendetta Suite are from Belfast and their 2021 album The Kempe Stone Portal is packed with electronic, acid house, Balearic and cosmische sounds plus this slowed down, electronics and feedback rumble version of Bo Diddley's classic (also covered by The Mary Chain back in the 80s). The Vendetta Suite's Gary Irwin goes all the way back to David Holmes and Iain McCready's nights at Belfast's Art College in 1990 and has worked with Holmes on and off ever since. 

Fontaines DC's cover of 'Cello Song has featured in at least three previous Sunday mixes- a Nick Drake one, a Fontaines one and an end of 2023 mix. I make no apologies for its re- appearance here. They take Nick Drake's 1969 song, a beautiful poetic song and retune it, turning it into a modern rock 'n' roll thrill with Grian Chatten finding new meaning in Nick's words. Both versions, original and cover, struck me quite profoundly in the time since Isaac' died, these lines in particular...

'For the dreams that came to you when so young
They told of a life where spring is sprung

So forget this cruel world where I belong
I'll just sit and wait and sing my song

But while the Earth sinks to its grave
You sail to the sky on the crest of a wave'

And that's where we're ending today. 

Shakedown

There's a school of thought that Smashing Pumpkins were a difficult band to like/ love (although they obviously had their fans, they were massive in the mid 90s) but that they had one solid gold song- and that song is great because it sounds like New Order, chiming guitars, motorik drumming, foreground melodic bassline and coming of age lyrics. 

1979

1979 came out in 1995 and sounds like Ceremony but if New Order had recorded it in 1987 rather than the wreckage of Joy Division in 1980. In an unexpected turn of events,  when New Order returned in 2001 with the album Get Ready, Billy Corgan turned up on vocals with Bernard on the song Turn My Way and played guitar with them as they toured that summer. In an interview from the time Stephen Morris was asked how it was going with Corgan on board. 'He's alright I suppose', Stephen replied to the journalist, which told its own story to this reader. 

In another unexpected turn of events Hardway Bros released two EPs on Monday, both out on Sean Johnston's Outre- Mer label, the first a four track EP titled My Friends and the second an EP of remixes. The My Friends EP covers the range of styles and has something for everyone: an eight minute Vietnam epic called Saigon, voices from Apocalypse Now!, congas from Sympathy For The Devil, synths from a Belgian New Beat basement; a fifteen minute wigged electronic trip called Hello My Friends; a hi hat and kick drum banger Functions For Machines; and a cover of 1979 with Duncan Gray on guitar and Sarah Rebecca on vocals, a smoothed out, gliding cover of Smashing Pumpkins with synths, guitars (courtesy of Duncan Gray) and pulsing drums. You can buy/ hear the My Friends EP here. 

The remixes EP sees a regular visitor to these pages, Andy Bell wearing his GLOK hat, bring his cosmische influences to 1979. There are two remixes, bookending the EP, the first a four minute reworking, the chords and synths filtered and chopped up. At the other end of the EP comes the second GLOK remix, the GLOK Remix Reprise, gentle, blissed out, guitar led remix, a little like Ride's Vapour Trail slowed down and played acoustically, with Sarah Rebecca's vocal shimmering on top, a very different reading of the song to Billy's mid- 90s rites of passage version. The first treat of 2024. 

In between Andy's pair of remixes are remixes by Warehouse Preservation Society, Djale and Tech Support which span chuggy dub, cosmic electronica and squiggly house. Get it here. 

Shakedown 1979

I was doing some ironing an hour or two ago while listening to BBC 6 through the TV (I know what you're thinking; take it from me, the fun never stops round here). Karl Hyde of Underworld was playing a diverse and eclectic mix of songs that inspire him, one of which was 1979 by The Smashing Pumpkins. Now, I never liked The Smashing Pumpkins- grunge by numbers with bad hair, and Billy Corgan always seemed like such a dick. How, incidentally, did he end up playing with New Order? But 1979 was one very cool song, ace drum intro, great guitars, wistful vocal. Love it. I've got their Greatest Hits, bought in 2001 (2001? Jeez!), pre-internet days for me when I used to buy cds for the odd song. I bought it solely for 1979 but hoping there'd be something else on it as good.

There wasn't.

1979