Cover Songs that are Better Than the original

Rick Wakeman on piano, believe it or not. My significant other and I spent ten days on Ios in the Spring of 1982 and Yusuf (Cat Stevens) had a gorgeous house there on a cliff with steps down to the water. I doubt if he still owns it, but it was fun to look at from a distance. When I was in Europe in 1971, his breakthrough LP, Tea for the Tillerman, had just come out. Just a great LP.

 

I didn't realize Wakeman played on the original too.

 

Neither did I. Yusuf/Cat looks the same, just decades older (I wish I looked as good), but Rick is huge. Huge as in around his waist. Time taps us all on the shoulder eventually.

Wakeman has an interesting history. He was a session musician during the late '60's and played on a whole bunch of well known LP's. He got a call in early '69 to play on a song being recorded by David Bowie, who Rick had barely heard of. Bowie needed someone who could play the Mellotron and Wakeman, who had just learned how, ended up being sent over. It was Space Oddity. I heard that song the first time in mid-1969 on KFMK, not long before it shut down, which bummed everyone out as they'd been on since 1967.

I heard a tremendous amount of music for the first time on KFMK, along with every other hippie in town who could pick up their low power signal. One of the first "free form" alternative radio stations in the country. The DJ's played whatever they wanted to play. They got demos all the time and if they liked what they heard they played it. Hard to beat that. Sometimes we heard stuff days after it was recorded. From the West Coast, from New York, from England, from all over. It was beautiful.

Anyway, not long after the gig with Bowie, Wakeman joined the Strawbs. Didn't see him play with the Strawbs (who were actually pretty good), but saw him more than once with Yes. Brilliant on anything with keys.

 

Joni Mitchell cover

 

was KFMK an Austin station? my googling suggests its undergone a format change since then.

 

Houston. I moved to Austin in 1980. Good grief, did it ever have a format change!

 

I accidentally downloaded the entire album instead of one song of this girl Yael Naim, she’s got a cool version of Toxic — yes by Britney Spears lol

 

somewhat surprised no one has posted anything from Emma Swift's Blonde on the Tracks. as you'd expect from the title, it's an album of Dylan covers, and one of my top plays of 2020:

 

Crazy Little thing called love - Dwight yoakam. I actually didn’t even realize it was a Queen cover.

 

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Queen, or John Hiatt?

the original, which Bonnie Raitt covered, and had a breakout hit with.

 

I keep learning something new !

 

Prefer Sharon Van Etten's cover although it's got be a specific mood.

 

Billy Joe Shaver original



Not a cover, but written by another

 

dylan cover:

 

that's great. this one was originally written for Ray Charles



and I can't say this is 'better' than the original, but this is a fun cover of the Springsteen song