5 STUNNING COVER VERSIONS FOR FRIDAY

I heard a particular cover version for the first time the other day that just totally blew me away. It was a song orinally performed by Bruce Springsteen who is someone I don't have all that much time for - I know I should give some of his stuff a chance, but really he was just too much to handle when I was getting into my post-punk/new-wave stuff. Oh and I also reckon that by even listing one of his songs I run the risk of a dmca notice, so it will simply be labelled cryptically. The song however is from a movie a few years ago that won some Oscars, and this incredible cover is by Butcher Boy. John's voice is stunning but so is the arrangement.

And instead of the usual five great LP tracks that normally appear here on a Friday, I thought as a one-off I'd find five stunning covers, all with a Scottish connection, from the collection:-

mp3 : Associates - Gloomy Sunday
mp3 : Butcher Boy - a cover that cant be named
mp3 : Paul Quinn & Edwyn Collins - Pale Blue Eyes (12" version)
mp3 : Teenage Fanclub - another cover that cannot be named
mp3 : This Mortal Coil - Song To The Siren

Billy and Alan's take on a song long associated with suicide is all the more poignant given what happened years later. One thing I didn't know until recently is that its composer had also committed suicide. This is his obit from the New York Times in January 1968:-

"Budapest, January 13. Rezsoe Seres, whose dirge-like song hit, "Gloomy Sunday" was blamed for touching off a wave of suicides during the nineteen-thirties, has ended his own life as a suicide it was learned today. Authorities disclosed today that Mr. Seres jumped from a window of his small apartment here last Sunday, shortly after his 69th birthday.

The decade of the nineteen-thirties was marked by severe economic depression and the political upheaval that was to lead to World War II. The melancholy song written by Mr. Seres, with words by his friend, Ladislas Javor, a poet, declares at its climax, "My heart and I have decided to end it all." It was blamed for a sharp increase in suicides, and Hungarian officials finally prohibited it. In America, where Paul Robeson introduced an English version, some radio stations and nightclubs forbade its performance.

Mr.Seres complained that the success of "Gloomy Sunday" actually increased his unhappiness, because he knew he would never be able to write a second hit."

The version by Associates, like most of the others in today's list, has been transformed into something that sounds like an original and not as if it dated from 1933. I've featured a live performance from 1980 rather than the studio version.....you get a great perspective of the power of Billy's voice.

I don't think I need to say to much about Paul & Edwyn's take on the Velvet Underground number except it does capture the mighty Quinn at his best and shows that more than one EC was a guitar genuius. Tragic again that illness has struck both of these great men down in recent years - Paul will never again sing in public while it will be a miracle if Edwyn is ever able to pick up his guitar and play.

Scared to dance to Madonna cos you're a hip indie-kid? Well, be scared no more.....you can throw the same moves to this as you can to the likes of Everything Flows or Starsign (on which this cover was a b-side)

And finally, the best thing ever recorded by The Cocteau Twins. This is part of the soundtrack to my student life.....and as a bit of music, is as every bit as special to be as anything by The Smiths or the New Order of the early 80s. Did you know that Song To The Siren spent 101 weeks in the Indie Charts from 1983-1985?? Well you do now.......