COVERS

We’ve worked up a couple of covers to include at Faux Faux Amis’ next gig.

I don’t have much experience with bands and covers – I can exhaustively list it in a paragraph.  It makes for an interesting potted history:

• Before Chris joined The Missing Lincolns, Nick and I bolstered our duo set with You Really Got A Hold On Me, 24 Hours To Tulsa, We Can Work It Out (I got to sing John’s bit), and Apple Blossom.  While I like all these songs, I have no recollection how we arrived at them.
• Post-Chris Lincolns, I remember playing one cover – Paul Simon’s I Know What I Know.  We spontaneously launched into it, on a remarkable night at The Phoenix where we could do no wrong and played a bunch of encores (one of my top five favourite gigs).
• The Michael Jackson Pollock Experience, in our sole appearance, performed I Wanna Be Your Dog.
• Cool Weapon covered Suicide’s Ghost Rider, and TV Rock’s Flaunt It (I’m going to confidently state we’re the only band to play both in the same set).  We also spent a lot of time rehearsing EMF’s Unbelievable, but it never made it out of the jam room – instead, it’s now my go-to karaoke song.
• The Bluffhearts disastrously covered John Prine and Iris Dement’s In Spite Of Ourselves – we played it once when Na and I drunkenly launched into it without bothering to tell the band, or having rehearsed it.  Unsurprisingly, that was the first and last time.
• Lulu & The Tantrums covered Ramones’ I Wanna Sniff Some Glue on Collective Unit Negation Theory.  The three note solo made it the most complicated song on the album.
•  The Vindications, my Scottish quintet, covered both The Gories’ Sister Anne (my choice), and Ray Charles’ Hit The Road Jack (Jasmine’s choice).
• And now Babyfreeze has had a crack at Ramones’ Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight Tonight), and Prince’s Lonely Christmas (which has become one of my most popular videos on Youtube).  Speaking of which, Nick has done some incredible cover versions with Prom, including (off the top of my head) Prince’s Dirty Mind, Talking Head’s Nothing But Flowers, and PJ Harvey’s Big Exit.

I also covered a couple of KISS and AC/DC songs with ‘The Dull Thuds’, a band put together with some work colleagues for a charity talent show.  I only mention it so I can run this photo:

Choosing covers is a weird art – there’s a lot of variables in locating that sweet spot between too obvious/obscure, too reverential/antagonistic, etc.   I’d been toying with including an Iris Dement or Tuff Darts song, but these first Faux Faux Amis covers fell into our laps – I want to get out playing them while they still has some of that fresh energy attached.