Covered, A Revolution In Sound: Warner Bros. Records
Among Rock Band’s 60 or so songs on the Wii, there are a handful of songs where the artist is listed as “as made famous by.” For example, you have “Paranoid, as made famous by Black Sabbath.” This seems to be the case when they got publishing rights to the song but couldn’t get the actual version to use in the song. These songs are still fun to play, but come on, any version of “Paranoid” without Ozzy singing isn’t really “Paranoid,” now is it? Well, Covered is basically an entire album of “as made famous by.”
The record labels aren’t even trying anymore. In 1990, for their 40th anniversary, Elektra released Rubáiyát, a two-CD (four-LP) collection of contemporary Elektra artists covering classic tracks from Elektra’s catalog. It came in one of those stupid double-CD jewel cases that was bigger than two single-CD jewel cases, but that also meant it came with a 53-page booklet filled with images of artists and records in Elektra’s history. It had The Cure doing The Doors, Billy Bragg doing Love, Kronos Quartet doing Television, and Metallica ridiculously won a Grammy for their cover of Queen’s “Stone Cold Crazy.” It was great from start to finish and, as a collection of jewels, truly lived up to its namesake.
19 years later it’s Warner Music’s 50th anniversary, and Covered is the same concept, but it’s 12 tracks, as opposed to Rubáiyát’s 39, seems hastily performed and compiled, and is being given away for free in the lunchroom at My Baby’s office (where, to be fair, they’re probably partners with Warner Music, so are more likely to get this kind of schwag regularly). The cover art is uninspired and most of these tracks sound like ass. Not the kind of ass I usually complain about where the fidelity is bad, but the kind of ass where things have been compressed to make it all sound loud but instead it just sounds slick and over-produced. I’m guessing it was a collaborative effort by some exec on his way out and some intern with no sense of what music sounded like before mp3s ruined everything.
Of the tracks I know on here, all but a couple are crazy faithful versions. This is not the way to impress upon me that your new artists are lighting a new way forward for your collective. Nor does it demonstrate the quality of your catalog, because when somebody does a faithful cover of a classic, it only makes you long for the original. To do a successful cover, you almost always have to add a new interpretation. (Faith No More excluded, as somehow their versions of “War Pigs” and “Easy” were incredibly close to the original and still sound better.)
The two unfaithful covers of songs I’m familiar with are The Flaming Lips doing Madonna’s “Borderline” and The Used doing Talking Heads’ “Burning Down The House.” The Flaming Lips continue to impress me, as their slowed-down, trippy version demonstrates a stubborn refusal to conform to a sea of mediocrity. The Used get points for using distortion as an instrument, I suppose, but theirs is a super-compressed version of a classic, with no dynamic contrast, and it’s almost unlistenable. The souls were sucked out of two of my favorite songs, Faith No More’s “Midlife Crisis” and Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid,” by Disturbed and Avenged Sevenfold, respectively, in exactly the same way.
Faithful doesn’t automatically equal awful, though. James Otto’s voice carries Van Morrison’s “Into The Mystic.” And given that his voice just like that of Neil Young, I have to imagine Adam Sandler’s (yes, that one) version of “Like A Hurricane” is quite faithful, though I’m sure it pales in comparison to Young’s.
And on and on. Most of this is sickening in the way it just flies past you, not saying anything interesting. But, hey, it will sound “good” in your car on the freeway and streaming over the Internet through your computer speakers, so who gives a crap about the rest. Record labels are in their death throes, but their neglect of artist development, fidelity, and format standards did them in more than any technological advancement. They killed the CD and it’s taking them down with it. Good riddance. This half-assed effort will serve as a meta-milestone on the long, dreary path to the format’s grave.
Rating:
Mixers: none
Keepers: “Just Got Paid” (Mastodon), Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles” (The Black Keys), “Into The Mystic” (James Otto), “Like A Hurricane” (Adam Sandler), “Borderline” (The Flaming Lips with Stardeath And White Dwarfs)
Filed Between: Course Of Empire (Course Of Empire) and Cracker (Kerosene Hat)
Tags: 2 lunchboxes, 2009, CD reviews, fidelity, music, music industry