General Music Discussion Thread

[lazyplague]

All of us know music, right?
Rap, rock and roll, dubstep, heavy metal, etc.

Music has been with us for a long long looooong time now. Throughout history music has been helping us advance, curing boredom, inspiring people.

Music is even able to please people with it's many shapes and forms!

Today you should tell us if you have a favorite genre of music, favorite band, if you play an instrument, or play in a band or orchestra,
Maybe you sing?

Music can be displayed in many shapes and forms, as long as there is something that makes sound you can make a beat, or a steady rhythm, maybe you could sing, hum, or whistle while you're bored!

I for one can like any kind of music. If I like it, I like it.

My favorite band at the moment happens to be (This one is obvious) The Doors.

Spoiler : The Doors :

Example of a song here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVnKXE1l ... ure=relmfu

Post about what kind of Music you like, and discuss said music

[Lind]

Figure this is probably a good place to post an article I just wrote: my 11 favourite cover versions. Note that this excludes songs where I think the original is better, or nearly as good as the original, and also restricts each band/artist to one track each. This means there will be a few otherwise questionable omissions from the list that you would usually see on any list of great covers.

Spoiler : 11 :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0C0Yke9tww
Minutemen - Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love (Van Halen)

This loses a few places for missing out the chorus entirely, but there is something nonetheless amazing about how D. Boon & co stripped this down to it's barest elements and totally reconstructed it into a blistering, concise slice of country-punk, sounding like a completely different song, and yet totally recognizable nonetheless.

Spoiler : 10 :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6FZwVvS8_8
The Clash - Police & Thieves (Junior Murvin)

The original version of Police & Thieves wasn't bad by any stretch of the imagination, barring some rather dodgy vocals. Compared to this, though, a much tighter, slightly more up-tempo, and all-around catchier version of the same song, it's kind of surprising how a few small changes totally perfected it.

Spoiler : 9 :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB8WHA3WWz0
Van Halen - You Really Got Me (The Kinks)

Similarly to the above song, this didn't change that much, but at the same time, totally perfected it. All it really took was a better group of musicians, a little more free rein for Eddie Van Halen (this is always a good idea), and perhaps the most important change, David Lee Roth's cheekier, more unpredictable vocal style. Basically, Van Halen improved it simply by being Van Halen.

Spoiler : 8 :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gs2o5T7oN8
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Higher Ground (Stevie Wonder)

This is one of those covers that benefits hugely from a change of genre. Nothing wrong with the original, of course, but the Chilis not only made this song rock without losing anything that was good about the original, but also managed to arguably be heavier than they ever have been before.

Spoiler : 7 :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2dEc7HaX88
Big Black - He's A W***e (Cheap Trick)

A lot of really bad covers happen because a band takes a cheaply-produced and minimalistic song, plays it clean, and overproduces the f*** out of it, missing the point completely in the process. This is the exact opposite. Here, Big Black take an overproduced and toothless glam-rock song, and turn it into a loose, scratchy, and overall, much more fun garage rock song.

Spoiler : 6 :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbIAB7STv1c
Rage Against The Machine - Renegades of Funk (Afrika Bambaataa)

Yeah, I'm just gonna be blunt... this is the only song on this whole list where I flat-out dislike the original. It was an awkward, grooveless, all-over-the-place mess of hip-hop and electronica. What Rage saw in it is a mystery to me, but I'm really glad they did. This cover is similar to The Minutemen's take on "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" in that it clearly resembles the original, but was obviously written from scratch. And this is Rage at perhaps their most focused and anthemic point, ever.

Spoiler : 5 :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFd7hrUKjqQ
Faith No More - Easy (Lionel Richie)

And this is similar to Van Halen's "You Really Got Me", in that it is improved simply by Faith No More being Faith No More, and having fun with it. Easy's a cheesy song, and FNM are all too aware of this, adding daft little additions like "This one's for the ladies in da house!". And of course, Mike Patton being a fantastic singer gives this an instant edge over the original.

Spoiler : 4 :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fregObNcHC8
Nirvana - The Man Who Sold The World (David Bowie)

This is one of those songs written by a great songwriter, who simply wasn't the right person to sing it. David Bowie was always as much a show as an actual performance... always style over substance, no matter how great the substance was. Kurt Cobain was probably the exact opposite. He completely bared all, and was ridiculously personal in his lyrics. While David Bowie was writing from the view of a character, Kurt Cobain basically WAS that character. It's only logical that Nirvana's version would be better.

This isn't even just a matter of the vocals, either (even if they are the biggest difference). The arrangement is a big improvement too.

Spoiler : 4 :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ainyK6fXku0
William Shatner ft. Joe Jackson - Common people (Pulp)

The masterstroke behind this cover is taking the lyrics, and singing them in a completely different tone. The original was full of airy sarcasm... whereas this is absolutely venomous. It puts a completely different spin on the story the song is telling, and in the process, makes it hit a million times harder than the original ever did.

Spoiler : 2 :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp4UI_FxGLE
Johnny Cash - Hurt (Nine Inch Nails)

This is a pretty similar example to The Man Who Sold The World. Trent Reznor's a great songwriter (shut up, BlackJack), but so much of it is posturing (of course, Reznor being a very melodramatic person, it's entirely possible he believes every word, but still). Cash sings it with the weight of a lifetime behind him.

And, again, like The Man Who Sold The World, the actual music behind it is played much better as well. Reznor's minimalistic version works too, but the sheer buildup as this one comes to it's end is so much better than the downright silly screaming and discordant noise the original ended on.

Spoiler : 1 :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIw0ewEsNHs
Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen)

Hallelujah has been covered a ton of times, so it says a lot that this is, unarguably, the best version.

The original was a good song, certainly, but it had... well, a bit too much meat on it's bones. It was unmistakably a product of the 80's, complete with all the awkward little production techniques that plagued a lot of 80's music. More recently, Alexandra Burke's version has taken this issue to a much greater extreme, making it as bombastic as possible, most likely to cover up for the fact that her vocals are far inferior to those in previous versions, and totally missing what was great about the song in the process. John Cale's (1992) version was a significant improvement, stripping it down quite a bit to a mere few instruments, leaving more room for the impressive vocals.

And it was most likely this version which inspired Jeff's, the definitive version, which takes things even further, and strips the song down to it's absolute bare minimum, leaving nothing more than a single guitar, and one of the best vocal performances in history. The reverb on the guitar gives it an echo-like sound, perfectly accentuating how minimalistic the song is.

But most importantly, the vocals here are superb. As far as I'm concerned, Jeff Buckley is one of the best signers to ever grace this earth, and Hallelujah is his definitive song. His voice sounds as though it's about to crack at any second, yet hits every note perfectly, gradually escalating, but always sounding bizarrely gentle nonetheless, finally breaking into a shiver-inducing croon as it comes to a close.