One of the best things ever, and perhaps the cover that’s given me the most joy over the years: Iconic rapper Biz Markie’s cover of iconic pop “diva” Elton John’s ‘Benny and the Jets’, as it appeared on Beastie Boys‘ year 2000 anthology, ‘The Sounds of Science’:
Visit a place where Astralwerks brand indietronica intersects sexy, classic Motown-sound rhythm & blues by playing this little Hot Chip cover of the late-great Marvin Gaye’s ode to lovemaking.
Those familar with Calvin Harris’s dance’d up show of bravado on his single, ‘The Girls’, from his brilliant 2007 debut LP, ‘I Created Disco’, will surely love this cover by ‘toof favorites, indie-pop heroes, Dragonette. The cover gives equal time to the un-fairer sex. Here, now, is the Calvin Harris original and Dragonette’s gender-swapped cover.
Let’s close with something Daft Punk, because one can never have enough. This track by Nicky Vanshe of the ridiculously talented Australian rock/techno crossover act Van She and Dangerous Dan of Australian party monsters The Bang Gang isn’t labeled a “cover”, per se, but in effect, it’s just the same:
Frenchman rocker Philippe Uminski, covering his most famous techno countrymen Daft Punk. Plus, more of the same from French indie-electro group Hektor.
New Wave group The Network covered horror punk legends The Misfits track ‘Teenagers from Mars’ back in 2004. The Network, if you didn’t know, released one the finest records of 2003 (seriously), ‘Money Money 2020′, and is rumored (with great evidence) to be Green Day incognito. (Similar to the recent emergence of Foxboro Hot Tubs in late ‘07—also a likely Green Day “secret” side-project).
Covering Freddie Mercury of British supergroup Queen is no easy feat. NJ/NY rocker Jimmy Gnecco of Ours is one of the few to hold a candle to the original on ‘Bohemian Rhapsody. Ours are a favorite of mine (like Queen) and set to release their third LP this year, as well as supporting Marilyn Manson on his upcoming tour.
And I’ll leave you with this fun take on Britney Spears heyday hit ‘Toxic’. It comes from British electro-pop cool guys Metronomy. When I listen, I picture Brit doing a fancy little polka dance in some fashionable short-pants.
How y’all dig these “Under the Covers” posts? Who’s down to start a Slayer-style Radiohead cover band with me? We can call it “Slayerhead” and play at airport lounges (in hell). \m/ \m/
The Under The Covers column returns! We’ve slowly been collecting more cover songs that run the gamut from awesome to odd to awful. All varieties are worth hearing! Listen in awe or disdainful laughter.
30 Seconds to Mars covers Kanye West’s ‘Stronger’ live on BBC Radio 1. This falls into the laughable category even though frontman Jared Leto delivers the vocals so earnestly. They saved the Daft Punk vocals, so don’t expect any. I’d be rolling if they tried.
File this under fantastic, I first heard do this Pink Floyd cover at last month’s Vegoose festival and was very impressed. Not many groups can come close to a classic, but the The Shinsdo.
And in that same vein, this Zwan (Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins fame’s 2001-2003 project) cover of Metal gods Iron Maiden on ‘Mark of the Beast’. Probably one of my favorite covers comes at you from the Spun soundtrack.
Next up, Lightspeed Champion covering The Beatles immortal John Lennon. Lightspeed Champion is Devonte Hynes or just “Dev”, formerly of thrash-rap-punk group Test Icicles. Test Icicles remains one of my favorite things ever. I seriously moaned and writhed while morning the death of the Test Icicles last year. But the musicians live on! Dev maintains a blog at TheWorldForgot.com, there he puts up a great many home recordings—quite different from Test Icicles, but great in a whole new way:
Ladytron getting sexy R’n'B’d out covering Tweet’s slut-anthem ‘Oops (Oh My)’. Y’all remember this original? With the Timbaland beat and Missy Elliot doin’ backup vocals? This cover appeared as a b-side on their ‘Evil’ single:
Back in school classmates would always ask each other ‘if you could marry anyone in the world who would it be‘? Most used to immediately reply with ‘Lark Voorhies’ or an ecstatic ‘Tiffany Amber Theissen’. I always had my answer poised at the tip of my tongue, should anyone ever ask me, though they never did… But if they did I’d scream shamelessly ‘Beth Gibbons’ at the top of my lungs and dance around the classroom imagining our wedding day & my beautiful dress…. but I digress.
Between the years 1994 and 2000 Beth, Geoff Barrow & Adrian Utley, collectively forming Portishead were the air that I breathed. Portishead posters, shirts, CD’s and vinyl were my food. I had it all, duplicates of the CD’s one to open and enjoy and the other to store in the ‘vault’. I collected as many import singles as my little paycheck would allow.
Since their extremely long ‘hiatus’ I’ve longed for something, anything closely resembling Portishead &/or the ‘Bristol Sound’ that they and Massive Attack helped create in the late nineties. Beth’s project with Paul Webb a.k.a. Rustin Man and Adrian’s experiments with Mount Vernon Arts Lab were like water in a drought but the since then the gods have not been kind.
Enter Malakai. This is the closest thing to Portishead since Portishead! A Bristol band discovered by one of Portishead’s founding members, Geoff Barrow. They’ve released a super limited 12″ on Geoff’s Invada label called ‘Fading World’ which is big beat-esque & horn heavy, hinting back to earlier times.
A Malakai EP is slated for release this August on Island. Call it Trip hop, call it ‘Bristol Sound’, whatever you decide to refer to it as you will undoubtedly label it as long over due. Add Malakai on myspace now so you can say you were on the team since way back.
I Simian Mobile Disco, but I am forever in love with the late Simian. Now broken up, U.K.’s Simian is the primary focus here (yet, all bases are covered).
Songs and albums which you remember when and where you first heard them are important. This part will be like De La Soul’s Stakes is High intro where everybody talks about where they were the first time they heard BDP’s Criminal Minded. Well, I was a little kid when that one happened, but I sure remember the first time I heard Simian’s ‘Chemistry is What We Are’.
The year was 2001, I was shopping in Union/Stüssy in Los Angeles and the clerk had it resounding through the space on the P.A. and I was floored at how good it was. With a query, I learned it was ‘Chemistry is What We Are’, Simian’s first LP on Source/Astralwerks. I don’t feel like I’m pushing it when I say that I think that this album is the Pet Sounds of Electronic Music.
Here are a few selections from ‘Chemistry is What We Are’:
I can’t claim early adopter status on this group, as they had released an EP in 2000 titled, ‘Watch it Glow’ that included a few tunes which made it onto the LP and are shared above. However here’s another that didn’t, a dark and experimental track that was later re-worked into ‘One Dimension’ for the LP:
Simian released a second LP record in 2002 titled, ‘We Are Your Friends’. I didn’t find it as instantly infections as their prior record (like many other early simian fans), but it did include a enough gems for it to still be considered a great record—namely their first single and video (or more accurately, videos, as there were two alternative videos), ‘LA Breeze’. You can find both videos on Simian’s official site. This song gained much exposure, due to an advert for French automaker Peugot and spawned several great remixes, including mixes by Ladytron and even (OMG) Brian Eno. For more info on how the Eno colab. came to be, see this Vice interview with Simian Mobile Disco who also remixed the track as their first commercial project.
‘LA Breeze’ seemed to be the standout track on the album, and their second single, ‘Never Be Alone’ never eclipsed it. ‘Never Be Alone’ got a multi-format release and a video (see it on YouTube), but it didn’t gain the exposure that ‘LA Breeze’ did—at least not initially. Enter Justice, who’s remix of ‘Never Be Alone’ has been the (extended) now sound of Electronic Dance Music for 4 years now. Compare:
The Justice Vs Simian story is usually a bit fuzzy, so I’ll try and set it straight once and for all: Source Records and French college radio station Radio Campus Orléans held a contest in late 2002/early 2003 where their listeners and online readership were asked to remix Simian’s ‘Never Be Alone’ (probably sparked by the popularity of ‘LA Breeze’ in Peugot commercials). Graphic Designers turned producers, Justice, decided to take a crack at the contest and their remix was born. At that time, their popularity was nil, because their only prior credentials were playing drums and bass in a Weezer-like Indie Rock band called (also)starring and two production credits on a small French compilation album titled, ‘Hits Up to You’, released by Musclorecords. All things must start small! So Justice wasn’t commissioned to do the Simian remix, they did on their own and on a whim. We all know how the story ultimately ends, with Justice conquering all, but here’s an interesting fact, the winner of the contest for which the remix was created is, drumroll please, not Justice! Justice “lost the battle, but won the war” with a little help from Mogul/DJ/Daft Punk’s manager Busy P, who got ahold of Justice’s remix and imprinted it on his brand-new Ed Banger Records label (release ED002. The song reached new heights when remixes of the remix were served up and re-releases were imprinted on International Deejay Gigolo Records in 2004, (with a title change to, ‘We Are Your Friends’) and the song reached full boil when it was released in 2006 yet again on major label 10 Records (part of Virgin Records UK). Not to mention the video for the ‘We Are Your Friends’ took home the 2006 ‘Best Video’ award at the MTV Europe Music Awards, and acceptance of the award by video director and Ed Banger artist, So Me (with Justice not present) turned into a viral video on the ‘net, because of Kanye West infamously throwing a temper tantrum over not winning the award (watch it). All this just added up to incredible amounts of press for Justice, as the other half, Simian, was broken up by that point and off the radar.
In late 2006, Time Out magazine asked Gaspard Augé (half of Justice, with Xavier de Rosnay) about their ‘accidental’ dance music celebrity and he had this to say:
I think it’s really by chance. […] Neither of us was into electronic music at the beginning; we just had the opportunity to do this remix of ‘Never Be Alone,’ and then it was played a lot, so we had to follow it up.”
It’s nice when artists can try on different hats. Popular opinion told Justice that ‘Dance Music extraordinaries’ looked so incredibly fashionable on them. We like Justice just fine how they turned out! Of course, this post comes in good time to correspond with the release of their debut LP, †, which was just released in their native France and is available for pre-order in the US through Amazon (in both limited edition digi-pack and regular editions).
But wait, back to the contest! if Justice’s remix didn’t win the Source Records /Radio Campus Orléans sponsored contest, then who did? That accolade goes to low-key French Electronic Pop artist Toma. From the these semi-finalist candidates of aspiring producers: #, Farmacid, Folamour Sound System, Frey, Justice, Minious, DJ Roubignole, Tomaclub, Tony Wiek, and Zebra on the Rock, the powers that be chose the ‘Never Be Alone (Tomaclub Remix)’ to be the very best. However, all of these songs were pressed on a 2000-copy promo vinyl called ‘Simian - We Contest!’ (one of these is undoubtedly in Busy P’s crate and the rest is history). Give the winning remix a listen—it’s no club banger, but it’s still a hella good remix:
Simian broke up in 2005 and former members Jas Shaw and James Ford went official with their Simian Mobile Disco outfit (of which former Simian members Simon Lord, Alex MacNaghten did not participate). Do we absolutely love SMD, YES! But it’s very different from Simian. From their humble beginnings of the ‘LA Breeze’ remix, and Simian’s promo only ‘Mobile Disco’ mix CD (which you can stream here). SMD have joined the ranks of hottest dance music producers and keep very busy as jet-setting superstar DJs. Not to mention killer original songs, with a debut album, ‘Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release’ which will be released as soon as June 19th. And, just like Justice, available for pre-order through Amazon in both limited edition and regular editions.
Now watch the video for ‘Hustler’ on YouTube and try to tell me that being gay is wrong! Those girls feigning to be lesbians makes hetero males (like myself) a lot more understanding. SMD is love.
Also highly recommended is SMD’s recent mix album, ‘Suck My Deck’, which has been getting megatons of rotation at my house: Get it from Amazon.
Ahem, noticeably absent from Simian Mobile Disco is the Simian’s most important voice, Simon Lord! The former Simian frontman took a different direction and is heading the group Garden (of which you can stream their whole debut album, ‘Round & Round’ from Garden’s official site (great!), and buy it from Boomkat). Although not a part the Mobile Disco, every clubber in the world knows Simon Lord’s voice because of the little ditty he sang called ‘Never be Alone’ that Justice make palatable to dance-crazy party people all over the world. Simon Lord turned the club into drunk karaoke night, but I don’t hate him for it, I love him all the more. His recent project that retains the brooding folk element of Simian but still sounds new and different. ‘Round & Round’ didn’t receive anywhere near enough press, so I’m putting up several tracks for the hard sell:
Lastly, Simon Lord has another yet undisclosed secret project with the quietest Simian-alumni, Alex MacNaghten. The project is mentioned on Simian’s official web site, but no tracks or solid information have surfaced yet.
While Simian is dead, long live their fan created MySpace tribute profile and official website, and discography on Discogs. Oh, there’s some great live material over here too. You can still buy Simian albums through Amazon, but their full catalog is harder to come by, as per usual, eBay and Gemm are first places worth checking.
Brooklyn based Indie/folk/pop trio Au Revoir Simone have a new album coming out in March on Moshi Moshi Records. Two songs from ‘The Bird Of Music’ are available to stream on their myspace page, ‘Sad Song’ & ‘Fallen Snow’.
Fallen Snow is the latest edition to The Teenagers growing remix catalog. You can stream the remix on the Teenagers Myspace page or download it here!
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