This is just in from Andrew Hamlin who states, “A new take on one of Tom’s (Tom Kipp‘s) old favorites!”
***********************************
To which Tom replied:
Hi Andy:
If only it weren’t phoned in from “My Producer Said This was a Good Career Move” Land!
No death-defying vocal swoops or witty inflections. Utter rhythmic stasis. Hell, Prince even sang it notably higher!
And Miz Corinne BR throws away the glorious perversity of the lyric like it was Norah Jones covering Hootie half-covering “Tangled Up in Blue”.
Is she supposed to be “The Next Rihanna” or somesuch?
Now, here’s how ya do “Preee-awwwnce”, as Steve Martin so wittily pronounced it a few years ago on SNL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbzxA-5OfWc
– Tom Kipp
***********************************
I find Lauper’s version of this rather musically uninventive, though her vocal is fine. On the other hand I love the Crooked Fingers cover of “When You Were Mine,” which finds something totally different in the song.
– Joe Mabel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AYmzvSQ838
***********************************
As with her fabulous recasting of The Brains’ “Money Changes Everything”, the function and achievement of the Cyndi Lauper/Rick Chertoff [her uber producer] version of Prince’s greatest early song is more than simply doing a rousing, more or less “straight”, cover, wonderful though that was/is.
In fact, Cyndi/Rick’s slightly greater achievement was in recognizing two of the great then-lost songs of the era, songs which had entirely passed by the record buying public in 1980 when originally released [though not the better rockcrits], and making them cornerstones of one of the great commercial behemoths of the THRILLER/PURPLE RAIN/BORN IN THE U.S.A. era! [And don’t forget, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” was a cover as well….]
Alas, repeating such a unique feat–vast critical acclaim, genius song reclamation, and singles/LP sales of a magnitude Planet Earth will never see again–proved beyond their all-too-mortal ken, though their later “True Colors” was an even bigger hit single, for whatever reason.
But while I’d be loathe to rank Miz Lauper a greater artist than Madonna o’er the long haul, I feel perfectly comfortable proclaiming that Cyndi/Rick’s SHE’S SO UNUSUAL is a Great Album, something Miz Ciccone never quite managed in my view, aside from her 1990 singles compilation, which ain’t the same thing.
Re: the Eric Bachmann/Crooked Fingers “Americana-fication” of “When You Were Mine”, I’ll simply say that playing the song on a banjo and slowing it to a po-faced crawl is more an amusing stunt than a notably great musical accomplishment, and add that I’d much rather have heard his band The Archers of Loaf tear it asunder circa 1995 than hear this Will Oldham-manque variant, much as I do respect Mr. Bachmann’s current alt country [and former Indie Rock] songwriting.
For another fascinating cover of the song, look no further than Detroit’s ever-soulful Mitch Ryder, who was attempting yet another comeback when this appeared in early 1983, about half-a-year ahead of Cyndi/Rick, if memory serves:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v46baOda7SE
– Tom Kipp
***********************************
I see Bachmann’s take on the song as much more than a stunt (though it certainly
is that, and an impressive one). Without changing a word, he brings out a darker
take on the lyric. The humor is still there, but there is more of a note of
longing, which is only faintly there in Prince’s take and (I find) missing from
Lauper’s. I would say that it is emotionally (though certainly not musically)
the strongest take on the song that I’ve heard, Prince’s own included.
– Joe Mabel
***********************************
To me it’s just “The NEBRASKA Effect” all over again, Joe, but nowhere near as dark as even Bruce managed t’git thereby.
You acoustify, you strip down, you deploy that Tom Waits/toothless bluesman vocal affect [unless you’re Bruce, who mostly figured out how to express himself personally within said limitations without risking minstrelsy], and then selectively adopt that glacial pace. Presto! Suddenly all your songs have at least a superficial gravitas.
If they’re YOUR OWN songs, they may even deserve said weight, but in this instance I’ll stand by my [mild] dismissal, given that the entire Crooked Fingers ep from whence “When You Were Mine” was excerpted [for the purposes of our discussion] consists of cover versions, mostly unlikely, hence the stunt/jokey element.
I mean, why else yoke Springsteen’s “The River”, Neil Diamond’s “Solitary Man”, Kristofferson’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down” and Bowie/Queen’s “Under Pressure” with the aforementioned Prince, if not to amuse, whether ironically or not, it’s hard to be certain?
Removing all the tension brought about by the original juxtaposition of their Grim/Heavy/Downer Lyrics with their Lively/Anthemic Music seems to me the surest way to eradicate these relatively famous songs’ synergy and impact.
Not to mention that it’s a simple trick [“Hello, Vanilla Fudge! Hello, Cardigans!”], and rather too easy for my taste, particularly in this era of rampant all-cover albums and all-too-numerous “tribute” LP atrocities.
Re: Herr Bachmann and his cover proclivities–Bryan Ferry he ain’t. Nor Alex Chilton. Nor Peter Stampfel. Not David Johansen either. He demonstrates none of their imagination with regard to arrangement or widely-varied stance.
And among his Indie contemporaries, Mark Kozelak [of Red House Painters, Sun Kil Moon, and mucho solo] has to my ears a far subtler and more revelatory knack for finding poignance and even revelation in the unlikeliest of cover versions, often [but not always] using similar means.
End of the day, I’d put that Crooked Fingers ep down to a brief case of “writer’s block”, if I had to hazard a guess, rather than notable inspiration.
I’m sure Eric B. had fun, but I’m less sure about US….
Regards,
– Tom Kipp
