Without the Beatles

Y'all, I'm so happy to finally have this finished to share with you.  I've been trying for, well, a very long time to compile covers of all of the Beatles original songs released between 1962 and 1970, as heard on the 1987 CD releases, including Past Masters vol. 1 and 2.  I've finally finished this to my satisfaction.

The rules are this: One song per artist.  I have to like the cover version.  I also have to like it as much about as much as, or more than, the original.  Admittedly these are super arbitrary standards, but they're not lax.  I made very few compromises on this, and I'm willing to stand by the results as, if not ideal or perfect, _good enough_.

I don't have complete write-ups ready, but I have kept a running text file of my playlist.  For your delectation, here are my complete results as of 2020-04-16.

Singles and EPs:
Maggie Wong & the Jungle Lynx - From Me To You
Los Solitarios - Gracias Muchacha (Thank You Girl)
The Dickheads - He Loves You
Conjunto Misterio - Sem Ti Não Sei Viver (I'll Get You)
Anand Milind - Tumse Hai Dil Ko (I Wanna Hold Your Hand) / Al Green - I Want To Hold Your Hand
The Swinging Blue Jeans - This Boy
The Boys - I Call Your Name
Los Reno - Mucho Dinero (I Feel Fine)
The Churchills - She's A Woman
Robert Quine & Jody Harris - Yes It Is
Adrian Belew - I'm Down

Bad Brains - Day Tripper
Stevie Wonder - We Can Work It Out
Tempest - Paperback Writer
Wang Chung - Rain
Elvis Presley - Lady Madonna
Soulful Strings - The Inner Light
Assagai - Hey Jude
The Head Shop - Revolution
Marcia Griffiths - Don't Let Me Down
Mike Melvoin - Ballad of John and Yoko
The Laughing Dogs - Old Brown Shoe
Bossacucanova - You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)

Please Please Me:
Daniel Johnston - I Saw Her Standing There
Halloween, Alaska - Misery
The Smithereens - Ask Me Why
The Limit - Please Please Me
Sandie Shaw - Love Me Do
The Mints - P.S. I Love You
Fingerprintz - Do You Want To Know A Secret
The Kestrels - There's A Place

With the Beatles:
The Quick - It Won't Be Long
Moon Martin - All I've Got To Do
Prince Buster - All My Loving
Gregory Phillips - Don't Bother Me
Jackie Lynton - Little Child
The Treasures - Hold Me Tight
The Rolling Stones - I Wanna Be Your Man
Robert Palmer - Not A Second Time

Wouldn't have imagined this would be the first album I'd wrap up, but life works in mysterious ways.  This one is heavily indebted to Douglas's list from 2005 - he definitely has a lot more knowledge about the early Beatles songs than I do.

In this volume, we have Sparks-inspired glam, the obligatory power pop, classic ska, Joe Meek-style pop, Phil Spector-produced doo wop, the Stones (the one obligatory pick from this record) and Robert Palmer in his Gary Numan phase (recorded in 1980, chronologically the latest recording here - a fine illustration of my biases).  God, it really does sound fucking great.  Short - once one strips the cover versions from the first couple Beatles records, they're all short - but so fucking great.

A Hard Day's Night:
Indexi - Ucini jednom bar (A Hard Day's Night) / John Mayall - A Hard Day's Night
Phil Ochs - I Should Have Known Better
Reparata and the Delrons - If I Fell
Idiosyncratic Routine - I'm Happy Just To Dance With You
Rita Lee - And I Love Her
The Bats - Tell Me Why
Me and the Boys - Can't Buy Me Love
Blue Ash - Anytime At All
Joe Cocker - I'll Cry Instead
The Flow - Things We Said Today
The Back Alley - When I Get Home
Joanne Victoria / The Standells - You Can't Do That
The Now Generation - You'll Never Know (I'll Be Back)

Making progress.  The thing about Beatles covers is that good ones show up when you don't expect them.

Indexi - Ucini Jednom Bar: A lighter touch than the Beatles' version, lots of piano and (particularly to my taste) marimba from this Czech-language cover.  (Those of you who are sick of my fondness for foreign-language covers will be pleased to know that this is the only foreign-language rendition for this album.)

Phil Ochs - I Should Have Known Better: one of the oldest covers on the project, just a fun off-the-cuff '64 performance by Phil Ochs and Eric Andersen.

Reparata and the Delrons - If I Fell: If the title "Myrmidons of Melodrama" wasn't already taken Reparata and the Delrons could lay claim to it.  From their first era - Beatles covers were really popular LP padding in these days, but "padding" doesn't necessarily equal "bad", as I think Reparata and the Delrons prove.

Idiosyncratic Routine - I'm Happy Just To Dance With You: The Better Better Beatles.

Rita Lee - And I Love Her: Rita Lee has tons of Beatles covers, but this is probably the best, from her "Build Up" LP, with some nice arrangement and beat variations and some good wah wah guitar.  This is another great melody that is often covered.

The Bats - Tell Me Why: Power pop that I waffled on for a while - it's good and energetic, but it does sound a lot like the "Duck Tales" theme song.

Me and the Boys - Can't Buy Me Love: Found on the same cassette as Joanne Victoria (see later), and it's not necessarily as punchy as the surrounding songs (though a lot of this is just a question of mastering), but the Stooges-style sax is great, enough to push it over the top, which is a relief because there are so many weak and bad versions of this song (and the Beatles' own version is so good) that I despaired of ever finding an adequate version.

Blue Ash - Anytime at All: I left the project dormant for a little while and revived it when I happened to chance across this Ohio power pop take on "Anytime at All".  "A Hard Day's Night" is the Beatles' greatest power pop LP, and so it's a little trickier to find power pop versions that do it justice, but this does.

Joe Cocker - I'll Cry Instead: "I'm working on a project of the best covers of all the Beatles' originals."
"Joe Cocker's on there, right?"
"Oh, yeah. Of course."

The Flow - Things We Said Today: The song reinvented as a doom metal song.  The relentless bolero drumming doesn't help, but it works well enough.

The Back Alley - When I Get Home: And followed up by a Vanilla Fudge-style "heavy psych" remake of "When I Get Home".  Loses something from the original, obviously, but also gains, I would argue.

Joanne Victoria - You Can't Do That: I know nothing about this piano/voice rendition from an '80s cassette Beatles tribute but I'm glad to have it, even if I'm not sure enough about it to make it the only version here.

The Standells - You Can't Do That: Their first live album mostly gets deprecated in comprison to their later work, but this is a pretty stonking Beatles cover by any standard.

The Now Generation - You'll Never Know: Another of the first songs to make it onto the embryonic version of the playlist, a splendid reggae take.

The Beatles For Sale:
The Clevers - Sem Reposta (No Reply)
Marianne Faithfull - I'm A Loser
Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle - Baby's In Black
Glyn Johns - I'll Follow The Sun
Kristine Sparkle / Zhang Xiaofeng - Eight Days A Week
Barbara Dickson - Every Little Thing
Rosanne Cash / The Savoys - I Don't Want To Spoil The Party
The Fantastic Dee Jays - What You're Doing

The last Beatles album I came up with _any_ covers for, yet one of the first ones I've managed to finish off.  Really, I took so long because this is pretty much my least favorite Beatles album; it just comes off sounding uninspired, and none of their songs from it have really gone down as "classics".  Possible exception: Eight Days a Week, which was the last song I found a cover for... took me FOREVER, because there are SO MANY AWFUL COVERS of "Eight Days a Week".  Fortunately there's a pretty comprehensive blog and I eventually ran across one that was on a junk shop glam comp... a comp I had, but I had the original version, which doesn't have this cover... Anyway, the pretty dumb shuffle of the song translates well to a glam stomp.

The one obvious pick for the album was Yes' cover of "Every Little Thing", but I fucking hate that cover, exemplifies everything that was wrong about Yes, and finding somebody else doing "Every Little Thing" was tricky... but I do have this album of covers by Barbara Dickson, who has a voice that's sad like Robert Wyatt's.  One of the only "happy" songs in a set of pretty big downer tracks and it's done in a totally morose manner.  Speaking of "morose" we have an early Marianne Faithfull recording here.

It took me a while to actually listen to Glyn Johns' "I'll Follow the Sun" because I wasn't sure how seriously I should take a cover by Glyn Johns.  Once I heard it it became an obvious pick.  Johns isn't a great singer but the song is very well engineered.

We have _two_ country covers on this CD.  The Beatles weren't a country band, their Buck Owens tribute notwithstanding, but particularly the songs on this record, being downer songs, translate pretty well to that idiom.  "I Don't Want To Spoil The Party" is the only Lennon/McCartney song to hit #1 on the country charts, fact fans, though I had to round things off with a more energetic contemporary take by the Savoys.  Shawn Colvin and Steve Earle's "Baby's in Black" is of more recent vintage, but just as good... I do have a soft spot for this song.

Besides power pop, the secret weapon for early Beatles songs is Latin American pop groups.  They loved doing Beatles songs, often in Spanish or Portuguese, and in general got the vibe of these songs really well.  On top of this we have an actual garage band, the Fantastic Dee Jays.  Garage bands tended more towards songs by the Yardbirds or Pretty Things than the Beatles, and this Beatles cover may hint to why.  The Beatles, despite their reputation, were not always note-perfect in the studio, but this version of one of the Beatles' more basic songs is a shambles.  But it's such a FUN shambles, every bit as appealing as the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie".

Help!:
The Carpenters - Help!
The Retreads - The Night Before
The Glands of External Secretion - You've Got To Hide Your Love Away
Los Hermanos Carrion - No Vivo Sin Ti (I Need You)
Andrew Lubman - Another Girl
The Oohs - You're Going To Lose That Girl
Brian Bennett / Sly & Robbie - Ticket to Ride
Bryan Ferry - It's Only Love
Les Faux Freres - Une Fille Pour Deux Garcons (You Like Me Too Much)
Teenage Fanclub - Tell Me What You See
The Dillards - I've Just Seen A Face
PP Arnold - Yesterday

Rubber Soul:
Cristina - Drive My Car
Peter Walker - Norwegian Wood
The Godz - You Won't See Me
Low - Nowhere Man
Morgan Visconti - Think For Yourself
13th Floor Elevators - The Word
The Free Design - Michelle
Charles River Valley Boys - What Goes On
Oxbow - Girl
Martin Simpson - I'm Looking Through You
Johnny Cash - In My Life
The 'E' Types - Wait
Bit-A-Sweet - If I Needed Someone
The Pair Extraordinare - Run For Your Life

Davey Graham covered "I'm Looking Through You".  Martin Simpson's version is better.

Revolver:
Fred Lonberg-Holm - Taxman
Jeddah / BB Seaton / Sugarcane Harris / Esperanto / Mal Waldron / Uranium - Eleanor Rigby
R Stevie Moore - I'm Only Sleeping
Bongwater - Love You To
Ewa Bem - Here, There, and Everywhere
Silverchair - Yellow Submarine
The Shop Assistants - She Said She Said
Roy Redmond - Good Day Sunshine
The Flamin' Groovies - And Your Bird Can Sing
Caetano Veloso & Gilberto Gil - For No One/Superbacana
Plume - Doctor Robert
Jimmy & the Rackets - I Want To Tell You
Earth, Wind, & Fire - Got To Get You Into My Life
Morgana King - Tomorrow Never Knows

Sgt. Pepper:
Jimi Hendrix - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Christmas On Earth Continued)
The Beach Boys - With A Little Help From My Friends
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum - The Putrid Refrain (Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds)
Ultrasound - Getting Better
Duffy Power - Fixing a Hole
L'Infonie - She's Leaving Home
Elekrticni Orgazam - Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Sonic Youth - Within You, Without You
Aki Takahashi - When I'm Sixty-Four
Fats Domino - Lovely Rita
Kellogg's - Good Morning Good Morning
The Waterboys - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)
The Fall - A Day In The Life
The Tall Dwarfs - Runout Groove

I prioritized it because I wanted to hear the whole thing.  It's Sgt. Pepper's, so things are going to get weird.  No, really.  It's going to get VERY STRANGE ahead.  PLUG YOUR EARS!  WATCH OUT FOR YOUR EARS!

I wasn't impressed by the versions of Sgt. Pepper, famously arranged for live performance by Jimi within two days of the album's release, I'd heard before, but I somehow had missed the "Christmas on Earth Revisited" performance... Now this is just fucking classic Jimi right here.

And it goes into the band Jimi dismissed as "psychedelic barbershop".  It's BRUCE of all people on lead vocals, but this "Wild Honey" sessions outtake sounds just so completely charming it's hard to criticize.

I could try and POSSIBLY succeed in finding a "proper" version of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".  (The soft "no novelty versions" rule excludes Shatner, and the soft "one song per artist" rule excludes Rita Lee.)  But why bother when you have a segue this great into the last song on the last Sleepytime Gorilla Museum album?  Sgt. Pepper isn't about being "proper".

(Update 2020-04-16: This fucking Noel Harrison Jacques Brel/Anthony Newley-style take on Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds... you know what, let's add this one in.)

If you think I'm going to pass on the chance to pimp for Ultrasound, you, sir or madam, are wrong.

I did regret cutting Duffy Power's fantastic version of "I Saw Her Standing There" in favor of Daniel Johnston's, so I'm making up for it with his much less-known take on "Fixing a Hole" from '73.

L'Infonie... got me back into this project.  Sedric mentioned them offhand on his Facebook page, and I'd never heard of them, so I went to check them out and realized they'd done a version of "She's Leaving Home" I rather liked.  A few days later and y'all get this abomination.

A Serbian post-punk band doing "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite"?  Well that's an obvious "yes".  Such an obvious "yes" that I had to check out the rest of the album too... and the rest of the album pretty much sucks.  Their cover of "Metal Guru" contributes nothing to anything.  They even do a version of "When the Music's Over"... man fuck you the one true post-punk version of "When the Music's Over" is the Gaznevada version.  Whatever, this song rules.

Not one, but _two_ songs from the 1987 "Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father" tribute record here.  (Guess the other one.)  Man I'm not a Sonic Youth fan as such but they kill "Within You Without You".

When I'm Sixty-Four is another one of those jaunty songs that have hundreds of cover versions, all of them bad.  Claudine Longet does it.  I guess I shouldn't think less of her for being a murderer.  Jon Pertwee... JON PERTWEE?  Fucking hell, was "Who is the Doctor" not punishment enough?  Fortunately I can't find a copy on the Internet.  THANK YOU INTERNET!  (Update 2020-04-16: Found it.  CURSE YOU INTERNET!)  The Cowsills live on the Mike Douglas show... this one is actually VERY GOOD.  I like the Cowsills, Susan Cowsill is a great singer, and they don't keep the stupid trad jazz arrangement like nearly every other version does.  The sound quality is pretty poor, though, and Susan unfortunately blows the lyrics.  I still do strongly recommend this version, however, and wish they'd recorded it properly.  A version by the "12-Tones Barbershop Chorus", but this is unfortunately _not_ a 12-tone arrangement.  AHA!  AHA!  Almost as good.  Alvin Curran did an arrangement!

Fats Domino did "Lovely Rita"?  That can't be any goo... what?  God damn.  Fats, I think I just found my thrill.

I couldn't find a version I liked of "Good Morning Good Morning".  I couldn't!  Hundreds of songs, including songs I absolutely hate, by the Beatles, and the one I couldn't find a version I liked of was fucking "Good Morning Good Morning.  I was down to Marillion (no thanks) and Micky Dolenz (actually... Nah.)  ("A Thousand Strokes And A Rolling Suck" by the Sea Nymphs almost counts.  ALMOST.)  So I went with the Kellogg's Cornflakes ad that inspired John Lennon to write the song.  FUCKING TAKE THAT.  And sorry Micky.  I do love you.

The Waterboys track is from their "Fisherman's Blues" album, which on the basis of this I should probably listen to?  They turn a throwaway filler "reprise" track into something wonderful and majestic.  Which is great because the "reprise" track was always going to be a difficult one.  I don't know how to handle different versions of the same song.  If a band can cover the same song in a different language with a radically different arrangement, how am I to handle versions with different arrangements and different words?

Come on, of course this was going to be the other song from "Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father".  All respect to Chocolate Snow.  Though their version sounds better with a monologue about inflation over the top of it.

This is the Beatles: I have MULTIPLE COVER VERSIONS OF THE RUN-OUT GROOVE TO CHOOSE FROM.  I like the Tall Dwarfs version better than the Swell Maps version.  Sorry, Swell Maps.

Magical Mystery Tour (American):
Das Damen - Song for Michael Jackson to $ell (Magical Mystery Tour)
Bjork - The Fool on the Hill
Yonin-Bayashi - Flying
Daniel Mantey - Blue Jay Way
Kenny Ball - Your Mother Should Know
Yogurt - I'm The Walrus
Milton Nascimento - Hello Goodbye
Rotary Connection - Black Noise
Donal Hinely - Strawberry Fields Forever
Sting feat. Robert Downey Jr. - Penny Lane
Canarios - Baby You're A Rich Man
The Freedom Sounds - All You Need Is Love

The White Album:
The Dead Kennedys - Back in the USSR
The Five Stairsteps - Dear Prudence
Lucky Sperms - Tomorrow Never Knows/Glass Onion
The Heptones - Ob La Di, Ob La Da
The Pixies - Wild Honey Pie
Han(s)olo - The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill
Prince - While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Los Loud Jets - La felicidad es un arma caliente (Happiness is a Warm Gun)
Groove Collective - Martha My Dear
Johnny Flame - I'm So Tired
Roslyn Sweat & the Paragons - Blackbird Singing
Bubblyfish - Piggies
Charlie Parr - Rocky Raccoon
Skupina F. R. Cecha - Namale Mam (Don't Pass Me By)
Lydia Lunch - Why Don't We Do It In The Road
Alison Krauss - I Will
Uakti - Julia
Pato Fu - Birthday
Elliott Smith - Yer Blues
Harry Nilsson - Mother Nature's Son
The Feelies - Everybody's Got Something To Hide (Except For Me And My Monkey)
Rubin - Sexy Sadie
Husker Du - Helter Skelter
Yim Yames - Long, Long, Long
Nina Simone - Revolution 1
Goran Sollscher - Honey Pie
They Might Be Giants - Savoy Truffle
Bardo Pond - Cry Baby Cry
The Shazam - Revolution 9
Ekkehard Ehlers - Plays John Cassavetes 2 (Good Night)

Yellow Submarine:
Johann Heyss - Only a Northern Song
Joy Unlimited - All Together Now
The Roots - Thought @ Work (Hey Bulldog)
Steve Hillage - It's All Too Much

Second completed record - only four songs so not much of a surprise.  This one winds up much stranger than "With the Beatles" and probably not as much fun a listen (if nearly as long - no sub-two-minute power pop blasts to be heard here), but then these are weird cast-off songs anyway, even if some of them are among my favorites.  Tight songcraft gives way to stylistic diversity and some slight evidence that the Beatles' influence on music didn't end in 1980.  We get off-kilter electronics replacing the off-kilter orchestrations of George's first song, a German soul band with a particular fondness for Beatles songs funking up a throwaway nursery rhyme, the original unreleased mix of a Roots song (Beatles samples are... not the easiest to clear), and Steve Hillage doing the Beatles' most psychedelic song as... a psychedelic song, by virtue of that alone probably the most normal thing here.

Abbey Road:
The Butthole Surfers - Come Together
James Brown - Something
New World Electronic Chamber Ensemble - Maxwell's Silver Hammer
Bela Fleck - Oh! Darling
Mike Westbrook Brass Band - Octopus's Garden
Eddie Hazel - I Want You (She's So Heavy)
Drop Nineteens / Nina Simone - Here Comes the Sun
DEVO - Because
Pedro Aznar - You Never Give Me Your Money
The Shapeshifters - Grim Tales (Sun King)
Haley Bonar - Mean Mr. Mustard
Volcano Suns - Polythene Pam
Wizz Jones - She Came In Through The Bathroom Window
Dissipated Eight - Golden Slumbers
Dobby Dobson - Carry That Weight
The Everly Brothers - The End
Charlie Byrd - Her Majesty

Let It Be:
Loggins & Messina - Two Of Us
St. Vincent - Dig A Pony
Clammbon - Across the Universe
Hiroyuki feat Nomiya Maki - I Me Mine
Michael Jackson - Dig It
Kommunizm - Let It Be
Pearl Jam - I've Got A Feeling
Willie Nelson - One After 909
Ray Charles - The Long And Winding Road
Dhani Harrison - For You Blue
Tina Turner - Get Back

The Beatles' American record.  I don't know, it just sounds that way.  So most of the covers are by Americans.  Artists here that I wouldn't even consider listening to otherwise, like Loggins and Messina and Pearl Jam.  For some reason it works with this album.