Song Covers

A common trend in music is to do covers of other artists songs. I've always had mixed feelings about this. A lot of the time it's just a way to perform when you don't have enough creative material of your own, in this case I don't see much creativity coming from it and don't like it. With very popular songs covers don't get the same appeal because the original was so well done that doing a cover seems pointless. There are exceptions to this that I have though. Certain artists I gained respect for because of songs they chose to cover. In most cases though the one's that I've liked have shown either a creative reworking of the song that is successful, or pays homage to it with out trying to overpower the talent that created it in the first place. In any case, it is fun to research the connections and the reasons for the cover. Here are some of my examples.

Cake-Gloria Gaynor's "I will Survive"
They don't change any of the words but change the rhythm to make the song their own. Hearing this song was when I first discovered Cake, I had heard "Short Skirt, Long Jacket" but hadn't made the connection that it was Cake. Hearing their take on this pop song got me curious about the rest of their music and now they're one of my top played bands.

White Rabbits-Bob Dylan's "Maggie's Farm"
This summer I went to see the White Rabbits in concert with a friend. I had never heard of them, let alone heard their music. After sitting through their short set I still wasn't convinced if I liked them or not. They're an indie/alt rock band with a similar sound to the Decemberists. They had some creative songs, two drummers which was really cool, but the vocals were too whiny. As they start one of their last songs it suddenly occurs to me that they're playing "Maggie's Farm." Now this is a completely different genere, "Maggie's Farm" being a much older, folky, Dylan song. They had completely re-done the sound of the song and made it completely their own while still having the lyrics of the Dylan song. Dylan purists may object, seeing as the sound is so different, but I have a huge amount of respect for them after that concert.

Gnarls Barkley-Violent Femmes' "Gimme the Car"
I'm not going to lie, I love his song "Crazy." When it came on the radio 2 summers ago I'd listen to it every chance I could get, singing along in my car of course. So when we heard nothing from him after that I was a little disappointed that this one patriotic pop song was all that made it to the mainstream and wondered what the rest of his music was like. I was able to stumble across a few of his songs when trading music with a friend but never got around to listening to them. At this point I'd brushed him off as an unknown artist who happened to have a popular pop song. I had my ipod on shuffle the other day and "Gimme the Car" came on, except it wasn't the Femmes. I was shocked to see it was Gnarls Barkley! I never would have expected him to cover a Femme's song, especially one as low and dirty as this one that sings about a teenage son asking his dad to give him the car so he can take a girl on a date as he describes what's going to happen. I must say, even if Gnarls Barkley is a one-hit-wonder, I have new found respect for him for covering such a random, unknown song.

Aretha Franklin-The Band's "The Weight"
These are two artists I greatly respect for their music, longevity, and impact on the music industry. It just really speaks to the crossover in styles, and the respect that these artists can have for each other when covers like this occur. I also just so happen to really love this song and Aretha does an amazing job covering it.

Patti Smith-Numerous Artists
Patti Smith is an incredible poet who has been doing her art for decades. She has spoken out on countless issues through her words and music. I saw her in concert this summer and she fully embodies the hippie spirit that she has been a part of since the '60s. Her latest album, "12" is 12 different covers. I had very mixed feelings when this came out, mainly because of my mixed feelings towards covers. Listening to the CD and reading her liner notes (which are fabulous by the way) I could appreciate why she chose the songs she did and how she changed, or didn't change them, but I still wasn't sold. Being a song writer of her caliber it is easier to allow her to do an album of only covers because she has "proven" herself already. It took seeing her in concert though to fully appreciate the covers she did. She performed most, but not all, of them and seeing the different instruments and the feelings she had while she was performing brought them to life. Given the opportunity I would see her in concert again in a heartbeat.

The Fluno Center

For the Event Planning program I am in one of the basic classes I'm taking is Fundamentals of Meeting Management. This is one of my online classes where our only contact with other students and our teacher is thorough email and our discussion board. This Monday we had a tour arranged at the Fluno Center which is a conference center run in conjunction with the UW. This class has been really frustrating because we get a lot of details, checklists, time lines, information like that, but very little on the abstract idea of what kinds of events are planned, how to decide what elements to include, etc. The topic we've been covering recently is RFP's (Request for Proposals, everything in this class has some sort of abbreviation or acronym) and Site Inspections. By having this tour we were finally able to apply some of what we had learned and read in our textbook (which is incredibly poorly written by the way) to what we would be dealing with in the real world. Our final project, which we've been working on all semester, is to put together all the elements of planning an event with out actually planning it. For the event I'm planning (...maybe I'll explain it in a later post, it'll take too long here) which is an expo would not work in this conference center at all. So on the practicality of this tour it wasn't all that helpful at all. I still feel like the idea of planning events is slowly coming together for all of us. Our program is small enough and laid out so that we are with a lot of the same students in all of our classes so we can compare what we've learned and our ideas for our events. Now all I need to do it get my paper work processed so I can sign up for Spring classes...

Recovering Chairs

I was lucky and moved in at the beginning of the moving madness in Madison and was able to take full advantage of "Hippie Christmas". One of the things I picked up was a low set rocking chair, the fabric was pretty nasty but it was fairly comfortable and only needed a couple screws to hold a split together. This is where I'm happy I sew :) I bought some nice brocade fabric and ribbon trim to recover it. It took me awhile to get around to it but this week I finally worked on it. After pulling out the old tacks and trim weeks ago I had let it sit waiting for me to finish. I now have the new fabric stapled on and just need to cover the staples with the ribbon. I saved all the original tacks so I'll use those to hold the ribbon in place too. This is a picture of it flipped upside down while I'm stapling the fabric on. I'll post again with a picture of the finished chair.

My other chair recovering project was four dinning room chairs. I some how managed to find for chairs and a table at Goodwill for $25. The table isn't much to speak of but, aside from the fabric, the chairs were in really good shape and are surprisingly comfortable. I bought brocade for these the same time I bought fabric for my rocking chair but actually did these right away. These were a lot easier because all I had to do was unscrew the cushion and staple the fabric around a relatively square seat. It's amazing what the fabric does for my kitchen. Now all I need is something on the walls...