Another Time, Another Pace: The Musical Rework
2/5/2016
I listen to a lot of older music these days, and it fairly often strikes me that what I am listening to is not the first version of that particular piece of music, or is an unfamiliar earlier version of something I know. I am often pleased to find a new version of a familiar work when it has an unexpectedly different approach from the original.
These markedly different versions I like to call reworked, rather than "covers". This is not to say don't appreciate a new version which is well-done, or even better done, in the same style. But I do like the shock of the new as well.
When I was young and inexperienced I was vaguely aware of the "Cover Version", which I dismissed as usually deriving from commercial considerations, rather than artistic ones.
I knew, for instance that here in New Zealand, a long way in distance, time, and transport from the cultural centres of the world, it might be a while before overseas hits got here. Delays could be over publishing rights, or the overseas label not wanting to release here at all. It was common practice back in the Forties and Fifties for recording companies to listen to overseas short-wave radio, select a suitable NZ artist in their stable, and record and release a NZ version before the original could be released here. This is not covering a record, it is ripping it off! (ref. Blue Smoke: The Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music 1918-1964 By Chris Bourke)
I also knew that often, pretty close versions of songs would be released after the original, by other artists in the same overseas market hoping to cash in on the popularity of a existing version. These are what I class as true "cover versions".
It took me a while to realise that, irrespective of covers, current popular hits were not always new, and many were updated versions of previous recordings up to decades old. I recall it being something of a creds game amongst my peers to know what wasn't new, and to know who the original artists were.
By the end of the British wave of pop music in the Sixties, I was learning about the Blues, and the old black artists whose recordings were being reinterpreted by the young bands. I began to meet people who had the actual black artists' recordings. This was deep stuff, and not everybody I knew was aware of, or even interested in tinny recordings of a bunch of gravel-voiced old fellows with no accompaniment but acoustic guitar. I recall a feature of some of these recordings, also present in the "folk music" scene, was for there to be a spoken announcement of pedigree or credit at the beginning, in the manner of "This is a song I learned from so-and-so", or "I'd like to thank so-and-so, who taught me this style of picking" etc. This is also a bit different from being a "cover", it is about passing on music for the appreciation of others, with an honest acknowledgement of its origin. (Ahem, as opposed to my youthful idols Led Zeppelin, who unbeknownst to me shamelessly plundered the musical world with nary a nod in anyone's direction. Check out this item at willardswormholes.com: - ZEPPELIN TOOK MY BLUES AWAY Trading Cards – An Illustrated History Of Copyright Indiscretions! ) p.s. Sadly the site is now gone, see Willard's Wormholes 2007-2017 R.I.P.
As the decades rolled on and my musical experience and tastes broadened, I abandoned my earlier youthful pretension about contemporary music that "Only artists who write their own material are worth consideration", and began to appreciate that artists are free to, and always have, borrowed from and been influenced by other artists, in both space and time. Not every musician or singer is talented at both interpretation and creation.
I am even inclined to argue that is impossible to be entirely original, not a lot comes of naive creation by someone who has had no contact at all with any musical tradition. I mean, just listen to these girls, The Shaggs. This is what happens without tradition. They are, as Wikipedia says, "primarily notable today for their perceived ineptitude at playing conventional rock music." ;-)
These markedly different versions I like to call reworked, rather than "covers". This is not to say don't appreciate a new version which is well-done, or even better done, in the same style. But I do like the shock of the new as well.
When I was young and inexperienced I was vaguely aware of the "Cover Version", which I dismissed as usually deriving from commercial considerations, rather than artistic ones.
I knew, for instance that here in New Zealand, a long way in distance, time, and transport from the cultural centres of the world, it might be a while before overseas hits got here. Delays could be over publishing rights, or the overseas label not wanting to release here at all. It was common practice back in the Forties and Fifties for recording companies to listen to overseas short-wave radio, select a suitable NZ artist in their stable, and record and release a NZ version before the original could be released here. This is not covering a record, it is ripping it off! (ref. Blue Smoke: The Lost Dawn of New Zealand Popular Music 1918-1964 By Chris Bourke)
I also knew that often, pretty close versions of songs would be released after the original, by other artists in the same overseas market hoping to cash in on the popularity of a existing version. These are what I class as true "cover versions".
It took me a while to realise that, irrespective of covers, current popular hits were not always new, and many were updated versions of previous recordings up to decades old. I recall it being something of a creds game amongst my peers to know what wasn't new, and to know who the original artists were.
By the end of the British wave of pop music in the Sixties, I was learning about the Blues, and the old black artists whose recordings were being reinterpreted by the young bands. I began to meet people who had the actual black artists' recordings. This was deep stuff, and not everybody I knew was aware of, or even interested in tinny recordings of a bunch of gravel-voiced old fellows with no accompaniment but acoustic guitar. I recall a feature of some of these recordings, also present in the "folk music" scene, was for there to be a spoken announcement of pedigree or credit at the beginning, in the manner of "This is a song I learned from so-and-so", or "I'd like to thank so-and-so, who taught me this style of picking" etc. This is also a bit different from being a "cover", it is about passing on music for the appreciation of others, with an honest acknowledgement of its origin. (Ahem, as opposed to my youthful idols Led Zeppelin, who unbeknownst to me shamelessly plundered the musical world with nary a nod in anyone's direction. Check out this item at willardswormholes.com: - ZEPPELIN TOOK MY BLUES AWAY Trading Cards – An Illustrated History Of Copyright Indiscretions! ) p.s. Sadly the site is now gone, see Willard's Wormholes 2007-2017 R.I.P.
As the decades rolled on and my musical experience and tastes broadened, I abandoned my earlier youthful pretension about contemporary music that "Only artists who write their own material are worth consideration", and began to appreciate that artists are free to, and always have, borrowed from and been influenced by other artists, in both space and time. Not every musician or singer is talented at both interpretation and creation.
I am even inclined to argue that is impossible to be entirely original, not a lot comes of naive creation by someone who has had no contact at all with any musical tradition. I mean, just listen to these girls, The Shaggs. This is what happens without tradition. They are, as Wikipedia says, "primarily notable today for their perceived ineptitude at playing conventional rock music." ;-)
It should be noted that I am not talking about the Remix, which only involves rearranging the existing elements of a work into a new version. This is just as valid, as a creative process, but is not the same as a rework, or cover.
Nor am I talking about Sampling, another can of worms altogether. I am aware some people vehemently downgrade the talents of those who use this technique, but it is artistically valid in my view, as long as credit is given. It is only a mechanised version of learning someone else's work and reproducing it; or at the extreme, a creative collage known as Plunderphonics. Check out this subversive and funny sampled work, Frontier Psychiatrist, by The Avalanches. And again, I have seen comment that makes me believe that, as I and my peers did with reworks, young listeners find it a matter of creds to spot and identify samples.
Nor am I talking about the Mashup, a modern technique enabled by digital editing techniques, where two or more individual recordings are "mashed together". There have been some remarkably surprising and pleasing results from this process. Two of my favourites are Blondie vs The Doors - Rapture Riders by Mark Vidler (was blocked on YouTube for copyright reasons, ha-ha, try this link instead.) and one of Christina Aguilera's "Genie in a Bottle" by Freelance Hellraiser back in 2001, which couples the pop star with the raucous guitars of "Hard To Explain" by New York's The Strokes: - The Strokes Vs Christina Aguilera - A Stroke Of Genie-us. Also try this example, not entirely to my taste; but you can't tell me there is no talent involved in producing "Rolling In The Black"- ADELE vs AC/DC (Roland NewAge ~ remix♪mashup). Confusingly, some mashups called Version vs Version, actually use two versions of the same number as source material. In the playlist below is "Just One Look" by Doris Troy, reworked by The Hollies. But there was an overlay mashup of Doris Troy's version with one by Linda Ronstadt, made possible by the similarities, sadly now "Video unavailable This video contains content from WMG, who has blocked it on copyright grounds"
For an example of something not strictly classifiable as either sampling or mashup, although I lean to the sampling description, try this popular YouTube video, currently running at 35 million views! Madeon - Pop Culture. He appears to have built his own deck to cue samples in real-time. DEFinitely not my taste in listening material, but an undeniably talented performance.
Nor am I talking about Sampling, another can of worms altogether. I am aware some people vehemently downgrade the talents of those who use this technique, but it is artistically valid in my view, as long as credit is given. It is only a mechanised version of learning someone else's work and reproducing it; or at the extreme, a creative collage known as Plunderphonics. Check out this subversive and funny sampled work, Frontier Psychiatrist, by The Avalanches. And again, I have seen comment that makes me believe that, as I and my peers did with reworks, young listeners find it a matter of creds to spot and identify samples.
Nor am I talking about the Mashup, a modern technique enabled by digital editing techniques, where two or more individual recordings are "mashed together". There have been some remarkably surprising and pleasing results from this process. Two of my favourites are Blondie vs The Doors - Rapture Riders by Mark Vidler (was blocked on YouTube for copyright reasons, ha-ha, try this link instead.) and one of Christina Aguilera's "Genie in a Bottle" by Freelance Hellraiser back in 2001, which couples the pop star with the raucous guitars of "Hard To Explain" by New York's The Strokes: - The Strokes Vs Christina Aguilera - A Stroke Of Genie-us. Also try this example, not entirely to my taste; but you can't tell me there is no talent involved in producing "Rolling In The Black"- ADELE vs AC/DC (Roland NewAge ~ remix♪mashup). Confusingly, some mashups called Version vs Version, actually use two versions of the same number as source material. In the playlist below is "Just One Look" by Doris Troy, reworked by The Hollies. But there was an overlay mashup of Doris Troy's version with one by Linda Ronstadt, made possible by the similarities, sadly now "Video unavailable This video contains content from WMG, who has blocked it on copyright grounds"
For an example of something not strictly classifiable as either sampling or mashup, although I lean to the sampling description, try this popular YouTube video, currently running at 35 million views! Madeon - Pop Culture. He appears to have built his own deck to cue samples in real-time. DEFinitely not my taste in listening material, but an undeniably talented performance.
Music is a braided river of many streams, nobody owns the riverbed, and there is constant separation into distinct genres, then re-combinations, all becoming part of the main flow eventually.
I kept coming across examples of reworking I wanted to remember,
and ended up using that great tool of music, YouTube,
to assemble a playlist of them. What follows is the result.
and ended up using that great tool of music, YouTube,
to assemble a playlist of them. What follows is the result.
To begin, check out this sensational live video I couldn't include in the playlist below as it is not available at YouTube.
I have a whole VHS E-180 3 hour videocassette I saved solely for this appearance, because it was such a stand-out performance.
(Despite Bjork obviously not having the lyrics down pat!)
I have a whole VHS E-180 3 hour videocassette I saved solely for this appearance, because it was such a stand-out performance.
(Despite Bjork obviously not having the lyrics down pat!)
Björk & PJ Harvey rework The Rolling Stones' song, Satisfaction,
performed live as a duet at the Brit Awards 1994.
Here we have a complete reworking of a 5 piece rock band's pop hit into a minimal brooding drone which gradually intensifies to a defiant shouter. There are nice contrasts: -
I think their performance turns the whole song on its head, and a what seems a cocky male complaint about consumer and sexual gratification becomes an almost feminist statement of resistance to that attitude, ending in the final shouted line, "That's what I say!"
(Deep analysis here, I have to say I understood all of that at age 14 when I heard it.)
The original 'Stones version features in the playlist below, and an audio-only version of Björk & P.J. Harvey.
Check also Otis Redding's version with horns, as the 'Stones version was meant to have.
- P.J. Harvey's motionless cool demeanor and Björk's fiery inability to stand still,
- Björk's rudimentary keyboard accompaniment of droning chords and PJ Harvey's loose, distorted choppy guitar playing,
- PJ Harvey's restrained sardonic vocals and Björk's unrestrained free-form improvisatory vocals.
I think their performance turns the whole song on its head, and a what seems a cocky male complaint about consumer and sexual gratification becomes an almost feminist statement of resistance to that attitude, ending in the final shouted line, "That's what I say!"
(Deep analysis here, I have to say I understood all of that at age 14 when I heard it.)
The original 'Stones version features in the playlist below, and an audio-only version of Björk & P.J. Harvey.
Check also Otis Redding's version with horns, as the 'Stones version was meant to have.
Playlist of some music with reworked versions
I make no apology for the size of this playlist, it is constantly updated as I find things, and was not created for this blog.
There is a drop-down list of the vids if you wish to cherry-pick. Click the little hamburger icon at top right of the player.
There is a drop-down list of the vids if you wish to cherry-pick. Click the little hamburger icon at top right of the player.