Covers......

Billy Joel - Goodnight Saigon

We met as soul mates
On parris island
We left as inmates
From an asylum
And we were sharp
As sharp as knives
And we were so gung ho
To lay down our lives
We came in spastic
Like tameless horses
We left in plastic
As numbered corpses
And we learned fast
To travel light
Our arms were heavy
But our bellies were tight
We had no home front
We had no soft soap
They sent us playboy
They gave us bob hope
We dug in deep
And shot on sight
And prayed to jesus christ
With all our might
We had no cameras
To shoot the landscape
We passed the hash pipe
And played our doors tapes
And it was dark
So dark at night
And we held on to each other
Like brother to brother
We promised our mothers wed write
And we would all go down together
We said wed all go down together
Yes we would all go down together
Remember charlie
Remember baker
They left their childhood
On every acre
And who was wrong?
And who was right?
It didnt matter in the thick of the fight
We held the day
In the palm
Of our hand
They ruled the night
And the night
Seemed to last as long as six weeks
On parris island
We held the coastline
They held the highlands
And they were sharp
As sharp as knives
They heard the hum of our motors
They counted the rotors
And waited for us to arrive
And we would all go down together
We said wed all go down together
Yes we would all go down together

The Stranglers - Strange Little Girl

The Stranglers.... you can probably get high by simply listening to some of their songs. I'm not going to talk about the lyrics of Golden Brown or try to explain the influence of "mind broadening substances" on music.... Suffice it to say The Stranglers made the most of their personal experimentations and were able to put part of their experiences into music.

First time I heard Strange Little Girl, it gave me shivers (a bit like the first time that I read Jeanie's lyrics (Falco) or when I started to figure out what Emma was all about). It's a wonderful song, full of emotions and feelings which are hard to describe, but which we all recognise....

First time you hear songs like this, thoughts that go through you're head: "That song really reflects how I feel", "Nothing gets me like this song does" and a whole bunch of similar stuff...... Thing is, there are actually quite a few songs that seem to have the same effect on the same individual, whilst being totally uncomparable. For me, The Girl with the Far Away Eyes (The Rolling Stones), Max (Paolo Conte), Johnny & Mary (Robert Palmer), Dear God (XTC), We've Only Just Begun (The Carpenters), Against All Odds (Phil Collins), Halo (Texas) .... and dozens of others literally make me plunge back in nostalgia and melancholy.

Since the end of the '80s, a lot of contemporary artists have covered a lot of those songs, with mitigated succes. More often than not, the cover versions tend to emphasize on the nostalgia aspect (the fact that people recognise some of the tunes and are automatically attracted to them, thus boosting sales), but without creating the same effect on our other senses. There are of course many exceptions (The Sisters of Mercy their version of Emma is just wonderful, Eloïse by The Damned, Everything's Gone Green by Razed in Black, ....), but the majority remains very pale, often even shameful versions of the originals.

Tori Amos - Strange Little Girl

I was rather amazed that Tori Amos (whose music I like a lot) made a remake of this classic Stranglers' song. Don't know why she did it, but a gut feeling says she probably had very strong emotions about the original version. I'm still not sure whether I really like it or not, but it's definitely something special.....