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Intro: Today we’re looking at a song by Otis Redding, an artist underappreciated in his own time but celebrated after his death, and the Blacks Crows, a group who were perhaps outside of their own time and deserved to be bigger than they were. Let’s take a look at the historic context in which each hit came out in. The scenes: 1968 was a tumultuous year with the assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy. The Tet offensive marked the beginning of the end of the Vietnam War. The Apollo 8 mission circled the moon ten times. African American Athletes Tommie Smith and Johnny Carlos raised their black gloved fists as a protest against racial discrimination at the Mexican Olympic Games. In 1990 Operation Desert Shield began with America sending troops to Saudi Arabia after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.   The Simpsons airs on TV for the first time. The first web page is published on the World Wide Web and a hole in the Ozone layer is discovered. The Original:...

Intro: Whiskey in the jar is a traditional Irish song perhaps dating from as far back as 1650. It contains many popular themes found in that genre of song, drinking, sex and killing Englishmen. It was also one of the biggest rock songs ever.    The scenes: It’s 1972, eleven Israeli athletes are killed by Arab gunmen at the Munich Olympics. Bloody Sunday show the escalation of tensions between the IRA and the British government with the loss of innocent lives. The Watergate Scandal comes to light in the US. In 1998 the Good Friday agreement puts an end to the sectarian violence in the north of Ireland. Bill Clinton denies having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky, only to later admit that he did. The Original: The song Whiskey in the Jar was released by the Irish rock band Thin Lizzy by their record label Decca. It topped the Irish charts and reached no. 6. In the U.K. The band itself disliked the decision to release it, feeling that it didn’t represe...

Intro: So far in this series I’ve looked at songs that can be put in the camp of interpretations. There was just a different vision of the song   This is the first time I will look at a song in which the version was more successful and considered better than the original (even by the song writer himself). This is a case of the version taking on a life and trajectory of its own. The Scene: It’s 1967/1968, and America’s military presence in Vietnam escalates, with military personnel reaching a total of 475,000. Protesting became more intense and rioting and looting becomes widespread across American cities, cumulating in the National Guard being called in to restore law and order in Detroit. The Beatles continue to revolutionize popular music with their “Sargent Pepper’s lonely Hearts Club Band”. Israel acquires vast swathes of territory after the six day war.   The Original: All Along the Watchtower was written and recorded by legendary singer song write...

The Scene: It’s 1995, the year in which we saw Richey James Edwards heartbreakingly surreal disappearance from the Manic Street Preachers, Tupac have   a No. 1 album whilst in prison, The Beetles and   Queen release “new” material and Bjork   telling everyone about the joys of being quiet. But did you know that the Oasis song “Wonderwall” hit No.1 and No.2 in the British charts at the same time? The original:                            Wonderwall by Oasis was the anthem of my youth, and there is no way in hell that overplay could scratch its raw honesty and ubiquity. My mate Keith played and sang a great version of it, we sang it on the way to parties, we sang it at parties, on the bus on the way home from parties, at our school graduation, at weddings, we chanted along with it, at the pub. It came on the radio like the unexpected visit of a good friend. From it’s simple opening gui...

Last week; we looked at Placebo’s very different, but faithful interpretation of Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush. This week we’re going to look at  versions, whilst having differences, are also very similar. That’s not to diminish either one; we just need to look at them in a different context. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5cp0S5TUsykE80AbvwBFej?si=QxUzGqEjRGmRcUva5GWvUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWmD_HcOcfU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVOuRQPPdoo Versions are done for many reasons. Sometimes, it’s done out of love and respect for someone else’s artistic work. Almost all bands start out doing versions of other people’s songs, they learn by copying, by doing, continuing that process even after writing your own music, is natural and organic. Then there’s the business side of things. Covering a hit by a big artist has its own built in marketing, as the public already have some “brand name awareness” of the song. They essentially want to ride the tai...