Before we were slaves in Egypt, we were Joseph's brothers and their wives, working at the right hand of a seemingly benevolent pharaoh. But as more modern freedom movements have reminded us over and over again, trust in institutions is a trust misplaced, for power shared unilaterally is power that can be withheld. 400 years and a dozen generations, and we find ourselves both enslaved and feared for our potential power as usurpers. And yet. Without Pharaoh's breeding program, we would not have become a people. Without the pressure of [...]
I think of metal and its various forms only peripherally, as some other tribe's music, acknowledged as valid yet neither understood nor experienced from the outside. But because metal rose in the sixties and seventies, a warped response to blues rock and the psychedelics that raised intensity to a level previously unheard, I have always known it; its culture is largely unchanged in nature, focusing on a core fashion and the shared experience of the live event, even as it attracts new generations. And, as within our ever-popular 2009 exploration of Punk through coverage , though [...]
The Christmas canon falls easily into several clusters of songtype: the wassail and traditional Euro-melody, the hymn and the poetic setting, the early 20th century crooner, the TV special soundtrack. Each, in its way, is a marker of a historical era; string them together, and you've got a cultural timeline of sorts, representing the common threads of the tree and the snow, family and friends, Jesus and Santa, exposing – along the way – the ways in which our perspective has changed over time. But genre and soungsource have blurred and expanded over the [...]
It's another busy week here in the boyhowdy household, what with our production of Willy Wonka a week away and midterm grading upon us at my day job. But I'm not even home today - I'm three hours away, crashing in an old friend's off-season beach house, so I can attend tomorrow's annual conference of the state's School Committees and Superintendents, where they'll be discussing social media in the classroom and school policy crafting, two subjects near and dear to my media-teaching heart. It's not a vacation per se; indeed, with [...]
Happy third birthday Cover Me! Eleven brand-new covers to help us celebrate!
We're back from our Florida vacation not much worse for wear, though the long slog home from anywhere proves a perennial challenge, and reentry into the world of work and chores is always bittersweet. Still, the heart is light, and for that, I owe my family a great debt: to my father for making it all possible, to my children for helping me see the world as ever wondrous through their eyes, and most of all, to my spouse for planning the hell out of yet another perfect Spring Break. Case in point: [...]
Cover News is a weekly feature keeping you up to date on the goings-on in the world of cover tunes, tribute albums, etc. Plus, at the bottom we post the array of cover tunes we've been sent in the past week. Have you recorded a cool cover? Send an mp3 to the address on the right! As always, follow Cover Me on Twitter for the latest news.Cat PowerThis Week's NewsOur latest Cover Commissions is in:
I have mixed feelings about Christmas. Having grown up Jewish, I always felt a little besieged by what I long considered other peoples' holiday. These days, as a professional culture vulture and cohost to a humanistic Jewnitarian household, the commercialism grates on me, though the threat of otherness has faded. I've even learned to live with the constant name-check of someone else's savior which permeates even the most innocuous of shopping mall soundtracks. But I have always loved the trappings of the holidays: the garish colorful world of [...]
Petty's back, baby! His career resurgence began with his Super Bowl Halftime slot in '08 (and history has already forgotten that he was purportedly the NFL's second choice, after Bruce Springsteen), continued with sell-out summer shed tours, and has recently hit a new peak when his four-disc Live Anthology dropped last week to a combination of critical acclaim and some why-don'
Cover Commissions is a monthly series in which a featured artist produces a special cover for this blog. The song to be covered is usually chosen by blog readers via a poll or suggestions form. Any artists interested in participating in a future installment, please email me at the address on the right.
Just last week we held a last-minute run-off to pick the winner of October's Cover Commissions
Cover Commissions is a monthly series in which a featured artist produces a special cover for this blog. The song to be covered is usually chosen by blog readers via a poll or suggestions form. Any artists interested in participating in a future installment, please email me at the address on the right.October may be half over, but at Cover Me we're making up for lost time by announcing a true
Cover Lay Down
Cover Me
I’ll Just Leave This Here #161
BAND OF HORSES – The Funeral (Sound Remedy Remix)
K-Holes - "Frozen Stiff"
Angger Dimas – Ribon Dooh (Preview)
