How To Do A Cover Version (Be Llŷrious Edition)

No apologies to those that are bored of me mentioning him, but we’re fast approaching what would have been Llŷr’s birthday, and so today a moment of synchronicity.

I’ve written before, here, just after he passed, that I wouldn’t be writing this blog were it not for my best buddy reigniting in me a love of music.

One day, I visited Fopp in Cardiff – unless it has reopened since I left, it’s no longer there – and had come away with a double CD compilation album called Guilty Pleasures Rides Again.

And when I got home, I found that Llŷr had visited the same shop and bought the same CD; we listened to both discs and by the end we had disagreed with about 90% of the songs being described as “guilty pleasures”.

“What’s wrong with this?” one or the other of us would say, cocking a thumb in the direction of the CD player.

This morning’s record falls squarely into our agreed category of “Why Would You Be Embarrased To Like This?”, because it’s ace, and I won’t have a word said against it, and neither would he (nor, it later transpired, would his older sister, Hel):

Clout – Substitute

It wasn’t until much later that I found out it’s a cover version, but it’s one that fits my theory which is this: that, irrespective of how great the original may be (and on this occasion, it’s plodding and dull by comparison), you like the one you heard first, the one you’re more familiar with.

The Righteous Brothers – Substitute

S’not a patch, is it?

More soon.

Same Title, Different Song

One of the reasons I avoided watching The Who at Glastonbury last year (apart from the fact that I would much rather watch FFS, a decision which, having watched the footage when I got home, I was completely correct in making) was that I had been so disappointed by them when I last watched them at the same place in 2007.

And one of the reasons I was so disappointed by them then was that they didn’t do this, to my mind one of their greatest singles:

The Who – Substitute

On balance though, I would have been more impressed had they performed this entirely different song with – you guessed it – the same title:

Clout – Substitute

I bloody love that record, and it is at least partially responsible for this blog.

Whilst it’s a record I seem to have always known – I listened to a lot of Radio 2 as a kid – I didn’t come into ownership of my own copy until I wandered into the Fopp record store that used to be in Cardiff one day about 10 years ago and came out owning it, on a double compilation album called “Guilty Pleasures Rides Again”. I hadn’t noticed it on the track listing when I decided to buy the CD, but when I got home and listened to it and it got to this track I remember thinking “What the hell is this doing on an album I’m supposed to feel guilty about liking?”

And then I realised I’d been thinking it for the previous ten tracks on the same CD (ELO and Manfred Mann are in that ten track bunch, for Christ’s sake – what’s wrong with liking them??)

I feel a new thread coming on…..

Anyway, imagine my surprise when several years later I found that Clout’s “Substitute” was in fact a cover version, the original having been done by (and I’m open to correction here, in case there’s an even earlier version I’m unaware of) this pair of housewives’ favourites:

The Righteous Brothers – Substitute

More soon.