When the cover is better than the original (8): “The Sound of Silence”

 

Disturbed:  “The Sound of Silence”  (Simon and Garfunkel)

 

This song has been covered hundreds of times.  It is so iconic, for its musical, social and political significance, that it feels almost sacrilegious to suggest one of those covers is better. I think this one is.  The singer, David Draiman, had formal training as a Jewish Cantor, but found his calling as the lead writer and singer with the heavy metal band Disturbed.  Covering “The Sound of Silence” was a major departure from their usual style, but it became one of the group’s biggest hits. It’s not just his voice—it’s the entire arrangement which gives me the shivers.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9Dg-g7t2l4

 

 

The two most important reasons to watch this video: Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughan

 

 

 

(If you’re not into reading my intros, just skip to the video, but don't miss it—it’s one of the best things on youtube.)

 

Albert King was one of the legendary Three Kings of blues (Albert, B.B. and Freddie).  He was self-taught, and did not read music.  He played a right-handed guitar left-handed and upside down.  He was not as commercially famous as B.B., but was probably the more agile and fluid player, and was also a great vocal stylist. His unorthodox playing style gave his chording and progressions a unique sound (clear parallels to Jimi Hendrix, who also played his guitar “backwards”.) 

 

Stevie Ray Vaughan was born and raised in Texas, and he and his brother Jimmy became major figures in the world of blues and southern rock.  Stevie Ray considered his greatest influences to be King and Hendrix.  He emerged as of the greatest electric guitarists of all time, a master of both emotion-drenched blues and ferocious, technical shredding.  He achieved a level of commercial success that eluded most of the great Black musicians, and unlike others in the industry, he worked to redress that injustice:  he devoted considerable effort to bringing the older generation of Black musicians to a broader audience, often inviting them to play as guest stars in his own concerts.  At a time when Black musicians were abandoning the blues, Stevie Ray was seen by many as the force almost single-handedly keeping the blues alive.

 

I was fortunate enough to see both King and SRV live—King in a tiny venue in Mountain View, CA. which held perhaps 150 people, and SRV twice in local stadium-sized venues.  They remain among the most treasured memories I have of live music performances.

 

Here is a 1983 recording of the two of them together.  King was 60 at the time, SRV only 29.  They had become great friends, and Albert often referred to Stevie Ray as his son.  This could  have been remembered as a hand-off of sorts, a passing of the torch, but Stevie Ray died before Albert, killed in a helicopter crash just after playing at a music festival in 1990.

 

This video is almost an hour long, but if you love blues or rock, it is a one-of-a kind artifact of a vanishing musical era.  It’s like the Rosetta Stone for electric blues, or all-you-can-eat lobster, take your pick.  If you have not seen it before, I promise you it’s worth every minute.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqekVZH3B_Q

The epic duet that never happened

 

Nightwish have been blessed with two of the greatest voices of all time—Tarja Turunen, their co-founder and original vocalist, and Floor Jansen, their current vocalist.  Unfortunately, while the two have performed together in other settings, they never shared the stage as part of Nightwish.  Until now.

 

This video was produced by weaving together footage from Tarja’s last performance with Nightwish in 2005, and Floor’s epic debut at Wacken Open Air in 2013.  The editing is a bit of wizardry—you feel as though this actually happened and you were there.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f27vgpcTpOw

 

Note: Nightwish are currently touring North America, probably for the last time as a band. If there are tickets left in your area, do whatever you have to do in order to go see them.

More than covers: Channeling Janis Joplin and Stevie Ray Vaughan

Some covers are simple imitations.  These add new ideas while capturing the fire and spirit of the originals.  Here are two spectacular young bands keeping the music alive.

 

Asterism: “Scuttle Buttin’” (Stevie Ray Vaughan)

 

The first time I ever heard SRV, I was hooked after one bar.  I was helping a friend with some refinishing on his house, and he had music blasting as we worked.  At one point, a guitar chord rang out, with a tone unlike anything I had ever heard--reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix, but fatter and more resonant.  A few bars into the song, I asked who the hell this was, and my friend told me it was a guy named Stevie Ray Vaughan.  I immediately went and bought his albums, and made sure to see him the next two times he came anywhere within driving distance.

 

SRV played blues, but was also a great songwriter and a blindingly fast, technical guitar virtuoso.  He broke into the mainstream, a rarity for blues musicians, and used his drawing power to bring long overdue exposure to many of the old musicians who had been neglected and mistreated by the commercial music industry. Soon after the second time I saw him, as he was departing a music festival where he had just played, SRV was killed in a helicopter crash, leaving gigantic hole in the world of blues and rock. Like his hero, Hendrix, he had an outsized influence on musicians to follow, despite a career cut tragically short.

 

Asterism are a young power trio who may just be the most talented threesome since Cream.  Here they are, covering SRV’s iconic instrumental, “Scuttle Buttin.’” They keep the core structure of the piece, but add in some crazy hammer runs on the guitar and big bass and drum solos.  This is from their only tour of the US to date (they were still too young to drink in the establishments where they played).  They played four dates in Texas, SRV’s home state, and did this piece at each stop, as a tribute to him.  It is encouraging to know young musicians still know and love the work of the greats.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtB_VrYLRaM

 

 

Liliac: “Piece of my Heart” (Janis Joplin)  Written by Ragovoy and Berns, and first recorded in 1967 by Erma Franklin (Aretha’s older sister).  The version that blew up is Joplin’s 1968 recording with Big Brother and the Holding Company.

 

Janis Joplin.  No filters. No security. No post-production polishing. No bullshit.  What you saw was just what you got.  She broke a lot of barriers--a woman, making it as a headliner in an overwhelmingly sexist business; a white person who did the blues without stealing anything, because she lived the blues, as much as any Black artist. A singer without a singer’s voice, whose raw, broken sound remains iconic.

 

Liliac are, in my opinion, the only young, up and coming American rock and roll band that really bring it.  They are five siblings (three brothers, two sisters), children of a Romanian immigrant who works in the L.A. music industry mixing hip-hop records (you cannot make this stuff up).  He gave them instruments to keep them busy as kids, and things just took off.

 

They started gaining nationwide attention while the youngest was eight and needed help to reach his keyboards.  Their taste runs not to hip-hop, but to blues, hard rock and heavy metal.  Call them a modern day metal Partridge family. Their breakout came when Melody (yes, her real name), the third sibling, developed into a vocal monster with a voice that has been compared to Ronnie James Dio and, yes, Janis Joplin. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz-EuUMD338