Some people keep silent because they have nothing to say, while others keep silent because they know when to speak.
Not so sure about the rest of you, but I’m a man who loves a good cover song, & usually you’ll find these deconstructing the original & reforming it with just the lyrics intact. & sometimes even that goes out the door (for better or for worse – though when is a cover not a cover anymore??). Despite fear of losing any “cred” I once had or try to hold onto as a music fan, I’ll admit it here & now that my No.1 guilty pleasure album may just as well be Cat Power’s The Covers Record; I won’t say it’s my favorite album by any measure (though at one point in my life I tried to pretend like this was true), but certainly it goes places a lot of other albums are afraid to go. The concept is simple: put the artist in a room with a handful of previously-recorded numbers & take away any semblance of the “original” track, to be replaced only by echo-laden vocals & sparse instrumentation. The Stones’ “Satisfaction” is practically unrecognizable without its driving power-riff & chorus anywhere to be seen, for example, & the Velvet Underground’s “I Found a Reason” is completely & unabashedly re-formed to make something else entirely (a 2-minute piano piece where the empty spaces hang heavier than the keys themselves, & one of my favorite songs of all time).
Anyway, this post wasn’t going to be just about this album, because really it isn’t that amazing, but rather I wanted to make an attempt at starting to post songs-in-twos: an original & its cover. I’m starting with “Paths of Victory” – a traditional song that Bob Dylan breathed new life into, unsurprisingly – mainly because I’ve just worked out a ukulele arrangement for it & I’ve been playing it non-stop these days. So, for what it’s worth – Dylan & Cat Power, head to head.