FROM UNDER THE COVERS (Parts 51, 52 & 53)

There have of course been way more than just over 50 cover versions featured over the years at TVV, but this is the series where every now and again I'll shove up some unusual examples of the genre in a quasi-random fashion.

mp3 : Black Box Recorder - Uptown Top Ranking

Yup, it is a cover of the #1 single by Althea & Donna back in February 1978. A really strange version.....one that takes what was a perfect pop/reggae single and turns it something quite disturbing and haunting. Not sure how many of you will actually like it, but there's something quite erotic in the schoolmarmish vocal delivery by Sarah Nixey - 'see me in my halter back, see me give you heart attack, give me little bass, let me wind up my waist...'

mp3 : Martin Gore - Loverman

Yup, it's the fella out of the band that I had to withdraw some songs from the other month thanks to a dmca notice. But given that this particular song was given away on a free CD by a well-know UK music magazine in late 2008 (with a circulation way in excess of what I could ever hope to get at TVV), I must be on reasonably secure ground. A really strange version...one that takes something that was quite disturbing and haunting and turns into something quite poppy and disposable. Not sure how many of you will actually like it....I mean where Nick Cave sounded menacing and a danger to society, this could almost pass as a version you'd hear on Pop Idol or X-Factor.

mp3 : Cake - I Will Survive

The best cover versions are by those bands and singers that take something incredibly well-known and turn into something that something that sounds like one of their own originals. If you like the sort of stuff churned-out over the years by Californian alt-rock act Cake, then you'll adore this. If you consider the disco-classic to be sacred, you'll hate it. For the record, I adore the original, but I want to be counted in as a loverman of the cover.

Happy Listening (and let the brickbats be thrown via the comments section).