A Blast From the Past, Rarities Edition

| April 25, 2020

It’s not often you see a cover version of a song where the cover singer does it better than the original artist. That’s particularly true when the original artist is named “David Bowie”.

Then again, it does happen on occasion. I ran across the following on Youtube the other day; it just might be an example. Enjoy.

If the backing band sounds familiar – yeah, that’s Bowie (guitar, sax, and backing vocals) along with Trevor Bolder (bass) and Mick Ronson (guitars) from the Spiders from Mars plus Mike Garson (piano) backing Lulu on the tune (Ansley Dunbar played drums). All but Dunbar recorded the original version with Bowie.

The song was the B-side for Lulu’s version of Bowie’s The Man Who Sold the World – which is absolutely excellent, too. But her version of The Man Who Sold the World (which Bowie produced) and Bowie’s original are different enough in style that it’s hard to compare the two in terms of who performed better.

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FWIW: this version of Lulu’s cover of “Watch that Man” doesn’t seem to have quite the same sound quality as the one above. But the photo montage that accompanies it is a fascinating bit of rock-and-roll history (though it gets a bit repetitive towards the end). IMO it’s worth a look for that alone.

Category: Pointless blather, Who knows

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NHSparky

Can’t really complain about Nirvana’s cover of The Man Who Sold The World, either.

Then there was this song Bob Dylan did that ended up being covered by another artist who turned it into a classic. The tune and artist? Jimmy Hendrix, All Along the Watchtower.

HT3 '83-'87

The most ‘covered’ song of all time has to be ‘The House of the Rising Sun’. This is my favorite rendition by Eric Burden & The Animals. Look up the history of this song…it goes back aways.

Fyrfighter

A newer remake of that done by Five Finger Death Punch is a really good one too.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXYIxJScSik

A great example (IMHO) of this is the 5FPD remake of the Offspring song “gone away”. The original was done as a tribute to a friend that died from an overdose, the remake changed the tempo, and made it about a service member loosing buddies in battle. Maybe it’s just me, but it gets a little dusty in the room when I watch the video.

5th/77th FA

Tanks for the stroll down Memory Lane Hondo. Man it was a long long time ago when we were that young, wasn’t it. The pictures along with the audio was how we used to roll. How many of us sat there, while the platter was rotating at 33&1/3 RPM, looking at the album cover pictures and singing along with the vocals printed there. Good Times!

And, yeah…Lulu was hot! She could’ve hung her hat on my bed post any time.

Thunderstixx

I saw Led Zeppelin live at the Kingdome in Seattle in 1977 just before I ETS’d.
Best concert ever.
Fast Forward to 2014, Heart Jason Bonham plays a series of concerts with Jason Bonham, the son of Led drummer, John Bonham and sounds even better than the original band, Led Zeppelin.
A true classic remake of a great song !!!

Thunderstixx

Aw shit….
Forgot the link…

Thunderstixx

Here’s another for you.
Rumours of Fleetwood Mac is every bit as good as the original band and has none of the drama associated with it.
A beautiful lady singing a beautiful song.
It just doesn’t get any better than this !!!