After a few months of serious writer’s block, inspiration struck me one morning a couple of weeks ago. It came to me on the car ride to work, in the form of “Dandy” by Herman’s Hermits.[1] I’ve heard The Kinks’ version of the same song at least a dozen times, it being a track on my much beloved Kinks compilation CD set The Ultimate Collection. However, until that morning, I’d been completely unaware that Herman’s Hermits had also recorded a version. This was kind of a big deal for me because, despite my being less than a quarter century old, I’ve been practically raised in a vacuum of pop, rock, and folk hits of the ’60s, so it’s not every day I encounter a previously undiscovered song[2] from that era. And so it got me thinking.
First of all, it got me thinking of the differences and similarities between the two versions. For one thing, the Hermits version didn’t sound a whole heck of a lot different from the Kinks version, and yet the very subtlety of those differences only enhanced the feeling that two completely disparate moods were being expressed between the two. Now I realize that part of this observation might be colored by my own understanding of The Kinks and Herman’s Hermits from the standpoint of someone who was born long after both bands ceased to be contemporary and whose views of each — i.e. Kinks =”rock” and Herman’s Hermits = “pop” — are therefore inevitably informed by modern-day popular opinion and the retrospective pigeonholing of once unclassified groups into newly invented and ever-narrowing categories or “subgenres.” But to me, there’s a trace of venom in the Kinks version that the Hermits version seems to lack completely. I’d even go as far to say that Herman’s Hermits aren’t capable of the acidity, of the subtle mean-spiritedness that’s so prevalent in The Kinks’ body of work. The Hermits’ softer edge does not necessarily make an inferior version of “Dandy;”[3] if anything, it makes both versions more interesting, because why bother covering something someone else has done if you’re not going to put your own spin on it?[4] Like I said, it might just be that Peter “Herman” Noone — or his musical persona, anyway — comes off as a much more benign and amiable person than Ray Davies does,[5] but to me, while the Hermits version comes off as the kind of playful taunting that could only a close friend of the eponymous good-natured playboy could get away with, Davies’ tone on the same song is anything but friendly; he can barely contain its contempt (or perhaps bitter envy?) for the womanizing ne’er-do-well.
So that’s what the Herman’s Hermits version of “Dandy” got me thinking a couple of weeks ago. But that’s not all. It also reminded me of all those times I’ve thought critically (or maybe even not so critically) about cover songs, and all the times I’ve wanted to geek about the subject on here but never really had enough incentive to do so. I’ve toyed several times with the idea of compiling a top-ten list revolving around cover songs, such as “Top Ten Cover Songs You’ve Never Heard” or “Top Ten Cover Songs That are at Least as Good as the Original.” I’ve ultimately rejected such ideas for numerous reasons: the tedium of choosing just a select few songs that I deem worthy out of an innumerable and ever-growing entirety of cover songs;[6] the presumptuous nature of phrases like “that you’ve never heard” or even “that are at least as good as the original”; the fact that “little-known cover” just as often means “song that is well known but, unbeknownst to many, is not the original version”;[7] the whole tricky question of, “if Singer-Songwriter A writes a song, Group B records it, and then, years later, Singer-Songwriter A decides to record the song themself, who’s covering who?”[8] You get the idea. So I figured I’m gonna make this a regular, recurring feature on this blog instead. ‘Cause I’ve got a lot to say about different interpretations of songs, and one blog post isn’t gonna be enough to say all I’ve gotta say. Plus, this’ll give me a lot more to blog about on a regular basis. Y’know, between the infrequent and ill-named Video of the Week posts; tirades against sexism, stupidity, bad radio, and what used to pass for music television; occasional Top-Ten lists involving long-defunct bands that no one my age has any excuse to know as much as I do about; and geekfests over Jack White/Noel Fielding/Muppets/etc. Oh, yeah, and that apology to Kate Moss I’ve been meaning to write.
Oh, and feel free to post in the comments section. I’d be happy to hear whatever suggestions my readers (readers? What readers?) might have about what cover songs they’d like me to…well…cover here. Or anything else you’d like to say, as long as it’s not nasty or immature (I’ll take criticism as long as it’s not name-call-y or irrational). It gets lonely here sometimes.
Edit: I couldn’t get the footnotes to work properly because I’m not sure how to link to another place in the same document. So when you see a number between brackets, [like this], it means that there’s a correlating footnote at the bottom, but you’ll have to scroll down manually for now to read because I’m not tech-savvy enough. I was hoping the footnotes would be a good alternative to the parenthetical asides that always seem to clutter up my posts, but I guess I’ll have to go back to posting like that for now.
[1] And I know that this particular version was by Herman’s Hermits because it was on satellite radio and that little title screen thing told me so.
[2] Or, in this case, a familiar group’s unfamiliar rendition of a somewhat familiar song by another familiar group.
[3] I, for one, will always think of “Dandy” as a Kinks song. But then, I’ll always think of “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” as a Cher song, which has spurred arguments with friends who swear by the Nancy Sinatra version.
[4] David Lee “Just a Facsimile Gigolo” Roth, I’m looking at you.
[5] To put things in perspective, I’m pretty sure Ray doesn’t get along too well with his own brother. Who was also his bandmate.
[6] Compiling a list of top studio albums or music videos of a band that’s long gone: tricky, maybe, but manageable. Trying to pick a tiny handful of end-all-be-all essential out of an eternally-expanding wellspring of material: impossible and futile.
[7] See also “Cum on Feel the Noize”; “Tainted Love”; “House of the Rising Sun”; “I Shot the Sheriff”; “All Along the Watchtower.”
[8] See also Kris Kristofferson; Carol King; Bob Dylan.
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