Why do we need covers—we have the ORIGINALS!

FabAgit in conversation with Sascha Pohflepp

Now that we’ve *covered* [hehe] that Nouvelle Vague is *weichgespült* and competes rather with Nouvelle Vache than with its own ancestors…I DID wake up with a few second thoughts on COVERS….

Maybe it’s a GUIDE back to the starting point… Maybe the toe-tapping Neo-Bourgeois needs Bossa to get into the mood and doesn’t want to be affiliated with piss stains on a Friday Night…

HAHAHA, das ist wahr

Then it seems that cover artist have the role of an ambassador to reconnect the past/pop culture [in whatever way] with the presence and to preserve its survival for the future.
These examples came into my Monday Morning Mind:
Johnny Cash. Dude, it worked. I sat there with him on Death Row as a Solitary Man and I shook with him and Fiona standing on the bridge spanning over the Troubled Waters…

Naja, stimmt. Aber mit Cash ist es ja auch so, das der eine unheimliche Authorität hat, aus der er schöpfen kann. Das schwingen Vorurteile mit (der alte weise Mann vs die jungen Schnecken) und auch seine Persona (the man in black), aber er hat natuerlich auch viele leute gepraegt und dadurch andere leverage. Man fuehlte sind ja geehrt. Und -importante- er hat sich auch sachen ausgesucht, die zu ihm passen. Nouvelle Vache nehm ich kuenstlerisch nix ab (die machen jedoch gute solo sachen), wobei er singt sachen die ihm ja auch persoenlich wahrscheinlich recht nahe sind, I see a Darkness, etc. Oder zumindest kann man da die authentizitaet reinprojizieren als audience.

He tried to approach it from a different angle. Pointing forward. Covering songs by younger artists, maybe even more popular ones and he filtered
them back through his own genre.

Genau. Und alle wussten das er eh nix anderes mehr machen wird. Passing on the torch.

How about RAP?! Samples that loop through the tunes go straight back to the fifties, sixties or even eighties and almost make them instantly popular. Whithers’ Grandma’s Hands gave our generation some new Diggity, Dr. Dre!

Sampling ist ein guter Punkt, respect. ESG, the most sampled band on the planet.

Or maybe it’s just what Taryn Simon pointed out – a strategy using old and somehow familiar tunes to overwrite a memory that never was and at the same time create a familiarity that’ll sell it to you…
What would some bands do if covering songs was prosecuted? They wouldn’t exist. Bob Dylan as career provider!

Na die muessen ganz schoen zahlen. Wenn du was coverst bekommt der eigentliche Author (der composer in dem fall) mehr kohle als du selber.

Some people just don’t care and that’s fine too – Ignorance can be blissful, ist doch meine Lieblingsentschuldigung.
But for people who do care and simply don’t know yet, covers can be a subtle way to teach history and lead the fresh audience to its core through the back door, SMOOTH OPERATION.

Whitney Houston!

Cat Power on the other hand doesn’t use an extract of the exact tunes as the base of a new song nor does she merely cover it with a slightly more contemporary twist. She dissects. Takes the original apart, strips it down to it’s essence – sometimes past it – rearranges, slows down, recomposes, montages and puts together a new song in it’s own right; and usually in a very heartbreakingly beautiful way. Chan, the torch holder of post-modernism! Tori Amos tried that too a couple times but stripped so much that there was only a pale resemblance of the old and that screwed it up.

Ja.

But hey, Sinead O’Connor did a nice job once, didn’t she?

Mit was?

Or maybe cover artists are just doing what they are SUPPOSED to…
What if there is an undefined pop song canon that manifests what the ‘Jazz Standards’ manifest for the Jazz world? They are meant to be reinterpreted and be performed over and over and over and over….

Das find ich ja am allerlangweiligsten. Deshalb find ich auch Klassik so soul-crushing weil es die eigentliche kreativitaet unter so einem sonderbaren gedanken des channelns von vergangener Genialitaet begraebt.
Und fast alle sachen die kooperationen von klassik und pop sind, gleich mit.

And obviously I am NOT talking about Beatles Cover Bands that is just pathetic…

Haha. Oder Stones cover bands wie unlaengst in Dublin gesehen.

…
We listened to Nouvelle Vague, a dialogue with Sascha Pohflepp