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    [punkrockmonday #28] Nirvana/Terry Jacks/Jacques Brell, and Beck/Them/Bob Dylan

    I came across this gem today, Nirvana covering Terry Jacks in Brazil:

    I think they had to trade instruments to keep just a smidgeon of ironic distance from the schmaltzyness of the original. This kind of necessity is the curse of my generation.

    Here's the version Nirvana is covering (Rod McKuen actually did the original adaption; but it only became a huge hit in 1974 with Terry Jacks version):

    And here is the Jacques Brel song that McKuen adapted.

    Jacques Brel is a God.

    I'm trying to think of other kinds of trilogies like this, where you such a short series of borrowings and where the end terms are radically different. The only one I could think of where you get three songs like this involves Beck's Jack-Ass.

    Jack-Ass is an essential song for the growing up of Generation X. It was abundantly clear from Beck's initial album that he could do sincerity, but he always kept this kind of mocking, ironic distance. Then Odelay was similar, brilliant melodies and poetry, but always maintaining just enough distance to where it could still be a joke. He tried to keep that distance by calling the song "Jack-Ass" and making weird science fiction references, but ultimately failed. The performance and melody just pack too much non-ironic emotion.

    The positive reception of Jack-Ass completely freed Beck up to do non-ironic music (though he is obviously still a master of irony). Indeed, Mutations is often described as the album by the guy who wrote Jack-Ass.

    Here's a weird thing. Jack-Ass samples Them's 1970s cover of Bob Dylan's It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. This is absolutely clear from listening.

    And if we listen to Dylan's version, Them's song is clearly the same song. But you'd never otherwise be able to tell that Dylan's is the grandfather of Beck's song.

    I'd like to say something preachy about the copyright regime in the United States that the Walt Disney Corporation purchased a few decades ago (strictly speaking, they purchased the Congresspeople), and how it's just about killed popular music. But I'm really just racking my brains for any other trilogies like these two.

    In traditional blues and folk there are lots of of sorites series (I meditated on some here) where different versions of the same song end up creating different songs at the ends of the series, but I can't think of any other ones where there's a clear influence yet the first and third in the series are so different.

    1. [Punkrockmonday #1] The White Stripes – Jack the Ripper (orig. Screaming Lord Sutch), Black Math, and the Big Three Killed My Baby
    2. [Punkrockmonday #2] Roy Cook – Saint Paul Cathedral, Minneapolis Capitol Building, Aayla Secura Mosaic, and Firefly Class Spaceship
    3. [Punkrockmonday #3] El Général- Rais Le Bled (President, Your Country)
    4. [Punkrockmonday #4] Charlie Patton -High Water Everywhere, Part 2
    5. [Punkrockmonday #5] Henry Rollins- What Am I Doing Here; Willie Nelson- Me and Paul; Rainbow Connection (orig. Kermit the Frog)
    6. [Punkrockmonday #6] Philip Larkin – Church Going
    7. [Punkrockmonday #7] David Bowie – Time
    8. [Punkrockmonday #8] P.J. Harvey – When Under Ether; White Chalk; Broken Harp
    9. [Punkrockmonday #9] Allison Kraus and Robert Plant – When the Levee Breaks (orig. Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie)
    10. [Punkrockmonday #10] Doog – Famous Blue Raincoat (orig. Leonard Cohen); sElf – Back in Black (orig. AC/DC); Johnny Cash- Down There By the Train (orig. Tom Waits)
    11. [Punkrockmonday #11] John Lee Hooker – Hobo Blues; Weird Al Yankovic – My Sharona; Edgar Cruz – Bohemian Rhapsody
    12. [punkrockmonday #12] Pixar Studios – Cars 2; The Bang Bang – Sitting in a Car; Angry Samoans – Hot Cars; Black Flag – Drinking and Driving; Gary Numan – Cars; Queen – Bicycle Race
    13. [punkrockmonday #13] Betty Bowers – Betty Bowers Explains Traditional Marriage to Everyone Else
    14. [punkrockmonday #14] Sesame Street – Sure Shot (orig. Beastie Boys)
    15. [punkrockmonday #15] Neil Degrasse Tyson – Stupid Design
    16. [punkrockmonday # 16] C.M. Punk – run up to Money in the Bank victory
    17. [punkrockmonday #17] Dead Kennedys – Riot
    18. [punkrockmonday # 18] Cookie Monster – God's Away on Business (orig. Tom Waits)
    19. [punkrockmonday # 19] The Legendary K.O.- George Bush Don’t Like Black People
    20. [punkrockmonday #20] Mance Lipscomb- Ella Speed
    21. [punkrockmonday #21] Iggy Pop – Lust for Life; Iggy Pop – The Passenger; Iggy Pop – I'm Bored; Iggy Pop (orig. The Stooges)- I Wanna Be Your Dog; Iggy and the Stooges – Search and Destroy
    22. [punkrockmonday #22] Iris Dement – Easy's Gettin' Harder Every Day
    23. [punkrockmonday #23] Louis C.K. – Are You a Lizard?; U2 – Maggie's Farm; Pink Floyd – The Post War Dream; Morrissey – Maggie on the Guillotine; Newtown Neurotics – Kick out the Tories
    24. [punkrockmonday #24] The Maria Bamford Show 01 – Dropout; The Maria Bamford Show 02 – Maria Gets a Job
    25. [punkrockmonday #25] Blind Willie Johnson
    26. [punkrockmonday #26] Some songs about Death
    27. [punkrockmonday #27] Gillian Welch – Look at Miss Ohio; Iris Dement – Easy's Gettin' Harder Every Day; Fiona Apple – Oh Sailor
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    9 responses to “[punkrockmonday #28] Nirvana/Terry Jacks/Jacques Brell, and Beck/Them/Bob Dylan”

    1. Roberta L. Millstein Avatar
      Roberta L. Millstein

      Does this count?
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallows_Pole
      Interesting to see the video for the Terry Jacks version. I never thought it was about suicide; always thought it was a terminal illness. Not sure what I think about that.

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    2. bzfgt Avatar
      bzfgt

      Sampling probably shouldn’t count or it would be too easy, right? I mean insofar as the song that samples sometimes has little resemblance to the song that is sampled. So I would think there would be some kinship beyond the presence of a sample required as part of the parameters? So Paris’ “Bush Killa” (I think it is) samples Ice Cube’s “The Product” which samples “You Can Make It If You Try” by Sly Stone, and the ends of the series don’t resemble each other at all, but I take it that’s too easy for what you’re suggesting?

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    3. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      Yeah, that’s a great one. I think Led Zeppelin thoroughly botch both it and When the Levy Breaks. Their performances are great in themselves but bizarrely inappropriate to the subject matter. There’s no hint of dread. Maybe they did that intentionally, but I don’t get it.
      One of my favorite recent covers of a song in Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthology_of_american_folk_music) is Nick Cave and P.J. Harvey’s ultra-creepy version of Henry Lee (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0FGrJG0VEs).
      Cave’s own satanic take on Stagger Lee (NSFW and Trigger Warning- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYyl78qQPVI) is absolutely brilliant. It makes you listen to all of the earlier versions differently, realizing just how horrifying are the events recounted in them. Cave’s version is a good case of what I was talking about above in part because the music and lyrics are so completely different from earlier versions. The only thing that is the same is that Cave repeats Stagger Lee’s name and Stagger Lee kills someone (in addition to all of the other violent mayhem). But we still consider it a version of the same song, and he intends for us to hear it that way.
      The earlier versions combined horror at Stagger Lee’s acts with just a little bit of being impressed at how nobody could push him around. By hyperbolically (but not to the point of humor) adding to Stagger Lee’s litany of sins and making it so much more disturbingly graphic, Cage increases the horror. Then at the end he has Stagger Lee kill the devil himself, making a nod to the tradition of being impressed by the outlaw.
      As far as I know, Stagger Lee is always clearly a bad guy, but John Hardy is a little more mixed. Wikipedia has a list of all the people who did versions of it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hardy_%28song%29 . The main trope of the song is that he’s killed someone, flees, and then thinks he’s going to get free because he’s at the state line, but it didn’t work that way. And then various friends and family members visit him in jail while he’s crying. And some combination of them and him say that it’s better to be dead than to be in chains. It’s a pretty subversive song all around. I think the only way people could get away with expressing that sentiment publicly was in a murder ballad.

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    4. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      Paris! The Asiatic lord of light!
      Yeah, just sampling probably isn’t enough. The Beck song is interesting because the sample is long enough to have a melody, and that melody is an integral part of the song, which has a completely different melody from It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.
      I don’t know how this would apply to hip hop, which has suffered the most from the current copyright regime.

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    5. Brannon McDaniel Avatar
      Brannon McDaniel

      “No hint of dread” with “When the Levee Breaks”? Really? The long instrumental intro (highlighted by Bonham’s iconic drumming) seems pretty ominous and dread-inspiring to me. It might not be the same sort of dread that one gets from the McCoy and Minnie version, but “thoroughly botched” seems a bit strong.

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    6. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      I should clarify that I recognize the rock and roll divinity of the brothers Zepp, and so realize that any such criticism borders on sacrilege. I also recognize that it’s an absolutely canonical rock song for very good reasons.
      However, after living through a couple of bad hurricanes it just seems to miss the mark to me. Abject terror combined with fury at God (for natural evil) and Man (the Army Corpse of Engineers, oil companies, venal politicians, etc.) and immense sadness strike me as appropriate affective responses. I just don’t get anything close to those three emotions in Zeppelin’s version of the song.
      My three favorite flooding songs are Charlie Patton’s High Water Everywhere (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=336dDZsU1Eg), Legendary K.O.s George Bush Don’t Like Black People (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGRcEXtLpTo), and Randy Newman’s Louisiana 1927 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGs2iLoDUYE). Fear, anger, and sadness.
      The punk rock bluegrass maestro Mike West has a bunch of wonderful prophetic songs he wrote pre-Katrina that he won’t play any more. Unfortunately they aren’t on youtube. There is a little bit in the documentary “Won’t Let the Angels Take you Away,” the opening bit which is on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLsiLcCGZIE). The documentary covers them having to leave New Orleans during Katrina. The bit where he’s talking to his daughter over some pictures starting at around the one minute thirty second mark still makes me cry. The stuff with his dogs at the three minute thirty second mark is pretty powerful too. And the music’s great. He talks about why he doesn’t want to play his flood songs at around 5:30.

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    7. Brannon McDaniel Avatar
      Brannon McDaniel

      Fair points. I think I have a better idea of what you meant by ‘dread’, and I agree that this sort of dread doesn’t seem to be present in Zeppelin’s version.
      Thanks, by the way, for the links.
      For what it’s worth, I’d never accuse anyone of sacrilege (or anything in the vicinity) for not liking Zeppelin. I love them, but there are plenty of wince-worthy moments (most of them involving Plant) in their albums.

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    8. bzfgt Avatar
      bzfgt

      I am very pleased that you are hip to Paris. I would add the Grateful Dead’s version to the Stagger Lee mix, which is a (great) original brand new song written about the same incidents. Only live versions need be heard, though.

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    9. Roberta L. Millstein Avatar
      Roberta L. Millstein

      Dread, hmm. For me what the Led Zepp version of Gallow’s Pole conveys is an increasing frantic urgency. To me, the contrast you speak of is what makes the song so chilling.
      After liking the Led Zepp version for years, I became re-interested in the song when I heard the Peter, Paul, and Mary version, which is very different:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNSyqazXfGE&feature=kp
      Led Zepp’s is closer to Lead Belly’s than PPM’s:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsgGNWlNAfA&feature=kp
      Of course, the problem here for your thesis is that there are so many versions of this song that it might be hard to figure out the genealogy. Wikipedia says that Led Zepp’s comes from Fred Gerlach’s, which I found here:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sUFihFieT8
      I will check out the Stagger Lee songs, thanks.

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