Cover songs retain their listening pleasure again... and again
By PAUL DAILING
Kane County Chronicle

If a writer covered someone else's manuscript, it would be considered plagiarism. Not so in the music world.

Cover songs are a staple in music's history. While many adore the singer-songwriter ideal, musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, John Coltrane and Aretha

Franklin in part based their careers on other people's music.

So far, the business has not grown tired of cover, either.

Bands such as Me First and the Gimmie Gimmies and Moog Cookbook have made careers out of warped, ironic covers of pop tunes — Me First in punk, Moog Cookbook with a Moog brand synthesizer.

Punk icons the Sex Pistols made their name in part with a thrashing version of "Steppin' Stone" by the Monkees. Even classical music is not safe. "Dave Goes Crazy" by the Toasters is a ska version of "Flight of the Bumblebee."

Covers may be thought of as silly things, or as attempts to capitalize on other, better musicians.

But think of this: Jimi Hendrix's flaming-guitar cover of the national anthem at Woodstock is considered one of the seminal moments of modern music.
Even the "Star Spangled Banner" took its tune from a British drinking song written in 1776.

While no one has ever said a concert violinist is "covering" Mozart, classical music also has a history of using other songs.

Antonin Dvorak built a career from turning Czech, Slavonic and Moravian folk tunes into symphonies and other pieces. Tchaikovsky incorporated Russian folk tunes and the national anthems of France and Russia into his "1812 Overture." Although that may be more "sampling" than a cover.

While covering is taking someone else's whole song, sampling is taking a part.

Sampling is taking snippets of other songs and incorporating them into a new tune. For example, hip-hop star Tone-Loc used the guitar riff from "Hot Blooded" by 1980s hair band Foreigner in his 1989 hit "Funky Cold Medina." Sampling dates back to Jamaican DJs in the late 1960s or early 1970s. They called the sample-heavy style of reggae music they created "dub."

Sampling has moved from dub to hip-hop and more recently to other types of music.

One extreme of sampling is interpolation, where a musician will take an entire song, remix it (change the speed, editing, pitch and tempo) and write new lyrics for it. One recent example would be last year's "Let's Go," a version of Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train" done by Trick Daddy, featuring Lil' Jon and Twista.

Devin Thompson of HiggyDiggy Productions, a small hip-hop, funk and jazz label from Joliet and Chicago, said interpolation has become more popular and profitable in the last 10 years or so in hip-hop.

"What you've done is kept the familiar tune that people know and it sells," he said.

Sampling is quick, easy and, unlike with covers, artists did not have to pay royalties if they record what they took.

However, a three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati recently removed the distinction, requiring musician's to get a license if they wanted to sample another artist's music for their own recordings.

Band on the Run
St. Charles resident Tom Colton hates "Mustang Sally," but he knows it by heart.
"And 'Brown Eyed Girl.' You can't survive without playing that song," he said.

Colton has been in the music business for 28 years. He has a scattering of CDs and at least eight bands under his belt, ranging from his country rock/Americana-esque Kampfire Kowboys to Band on the Run, a Paul McCartney and Wings tribute group. He currently plays lead guitar for Kimberly Kane and Big Trouble, a band that mainly rocks out on other people's music.

"We play anything from Aretha Franklin to Liz Phair to Hole to No Doubt to Shamika Copeland," he said.

He said that cover songs, even "Mustang Sally," are a necessity to the gig musician, especially to suburban audiences.
"When they hear a cover song that they know, they're much more likely to get up on the dance floor and dance and drink and the club owners like that," he said.

Chicago is the place for original, experimental music, he said. Out in the 'burbs, people are more comfortable being comfortable.

While hoping he does not sound like "a sour old guy," Colton said the music scene currently is favoring cover bands over groups playing original songs. Bands playing 1980s music are popular now, and bands playing early 1990s material are growing in popularity. There also are plenty requests for 1960s and '70s standards from The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and more.

"You can't lose with those songs," he said. "You just can't lose."

Record labels often think covers are a safe bet, too.

While they cost more in royalty fees, albums featuring a prominent cover pique the curiosity of potential album buyers, Thompson said.
"They'll say, 'Let's see if it's better, let's see if it's different,'" he said.

Especially if they think the musician will do it in a new way. Thompson, who is also a musician, said that album buyers would be more intrigued if he recorded a song by the metal band AC/DC than if a white musician did.

Cover bands are different from tribute bands, Colton said, in that tribute bands perform more than half of a musician's set is from one artist. Colton's first tribute band was Rooster, which did a Yes/Genesis/Who show in the 1980s, when the tribute bands first were making it big in the city.

"The band that started packing the clubs in the early '80s was a band called Fayrewether," Colton said. "They were from Ohio. They did a Genesis tribute. The guy who did Peter Gabriel, he looked like him, he played like him."

While Colton said he is happy performing covers and some original compositions with a talented band, he still toys with tribute band notions.

One idea is to do a Brian Setzer tribute band, honoring the work of the once and future front for the Stray Cats and former head of the Brian Setzer Orchestra.
"It might be fun for me to do, but it might be a hard sell," he said.

Longevity is rare for a tribute band, said. And a good tribute act is difficult to pull off.

"It can be a joke or it can be real good," he said. "If you look like a fake Elvis, it doesn't work."