Hi – I’m Dfactor, a NYC blogger/singer/songwriter/rocker. I usually live over at Waved Rumor and MySpace.

I’m writing about my 2006 recording project, the 12 Covers-12 Months series that I started in January 2006. Here’s the final part of the rundown of rock and roll cover versions I did during the year, with this segment focusing on the last four months of the year September to December. Hope you like it. Read Part One here and Part Two here.

September cover – Guided by Voices – The Brides Have Hit Glass

So much to write, so little room to make it right. Guided by Voices is the band, and Robert Pollard the man, who inspired and reawakened my musical impulses in the mid-1990s after a long dormant spell (I had played in high school and college bands, but stopped playing soon after for a loooong time). After hearing GBV’s 1996 LP “Under the Bushes Under the Stars” in a Chicago record store, I became hooked on the band, joining the Internet mailing list Postal Blowfish, seeing the band live, and buying and listening to all things GBV. In 1997, while living in Ohio, I wiped the dust off my old guitars that had been stored in Mom & Dad’s basement, and bought an old 1980s 4track recorder that weighed a ton, and started recording my own mini-anthems. Amazingly, from that inspiration, it’s snowballed to here from that point.

Between 1998 and 2000, besides singing and writing songs in Anthemic Pop Wonder, I also drank, er, played in a GBV cover band with a group of about 5-6 other guys, all of whom I still call friends. Our collective, known as Gloomy Basement Vampires, Cold Michigan Basement Kids or Greg Brady Vanguard depending on the evening, learned so many of Pollard’s early classics like “Sensational Gravity Boy”, “Color of My Blade”, “Exit Flagger” and Rubber Man”. Videos of this amazing band exist, and one of these days we’ll digitize them and upload for posterity’s sake.

But I digress. “Brides Have Hit Glass” seemed a solid choice for a GBV cover as it wasn’t a rave-out rocker to simply bash out, and one that had some opportunities to bring out more of the melody and the lyric. The song resonated with me because of its mature theme of man-wife breakup, and the chords work well together.

Long live Robert Pollard – long may he rock.

October cover – The Replacements – Color Me Impressed

Another absolute classic band in my rock and roll canon – The Replacements were my early rock and roll champions. Thanks to my old university buddies Randy & Buzz for turning me onto the Mats early on enough, so we were able to see a bunch of early shows on the Mats’ visits to Chicago before I split for the great Northeast woods. It was another seven years before I’d see the Mats on their swansong tour of 1991.

I used to see The Replacements in Chicago clubs Exit, Cubby Bear, Tut’s (with Bob Stinson sporting dress and rolling around the stage) and elsewhere between 1982-1984.

One show in particular sticks out in my rock and roll memory – July 7, 1984 – R.E.M and the Dream Syndicate playing live at Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom, and then The Replacements and the Del Fuegos playing later at Cubby Bear. Pete Buck and Michael Stipe showed up at the club gig (of course everyone expecting Pete to play with the Mats on Let it Be, which didn't happen), my friend and I chatting with Dream Syndicate's drummer on the merits of The Medicine Show vs. Days of Wine and Roses, and great atmosphere throughout the whole club. Cool night!

“Color Me Impressed” is impressive for several reasons – it introduced new Westerbergian lexicon to the English language, which is still in use today, and it’s the name of the best-known Replacements website.

Curiously, though, according to Pure Volume stats, this cover is among the least-listened to songs on my 12 Covers-12 Months page. Heavy.

November cover - Todd Rundgren – I Saw the Light

“It was late last night…”

“I Saw the Light” starts out with those melancholy words, and it turned into my recording manifesto for this song. Not wanting to take a power pop spin at it, and not having such a good grasp of piano, I decided to get all Ricardo Montalban on ya’ all for this and arpeggio my way across the pop universe with this old Todd track.

I’ve enjoyed strumming this one around the apartment over the past few years, and it came in handy when I needed a quick and easy cover when time was tight. Sweet diminished chords, a lovely relationship lyric and half-decent guitar pickin’ turns this great pop song into one of my left-field cover cuts.

December cover – Cheap Trick – Auf Weidersehen

“Bye Bye, So Long, Farewell…”

These are among the final words I scream and shout out to complete my year-long covers series! Auf Weidersehen by Cheap Trick, is a deliciously dark-humored anti-suicide ode from Cheap Trick’s “Heaven Tonight” LP.

I’ve always liked this raging rocker from Cheap Trick. It’s a song that dates back to its Rockford, IL and environs clubs days in the early to mid-1970s. But it’s much loved in the Cheap Trick fan community and the band still occasionally plays it live (here’s a short clip of Cheap Trick playing Auf Wiedersehen recently…). Anthrax covered this song in the 1980s, and here’s an mp3 of Chicagoans Local H doing a cover of it at my old college stomping bar Otto’s in DeKalb.

With my usual aplomb, though, I forgot a few parts in recording the drum and bass tracks and sharp-eared listeners will hear the band-aid vocal and guitar fixes I needed to do to wind up this song. It was a blast to record – loud, Louder and LOUDER.

All is all, I’m happy I tackled this year-long covers project – I’ve been living with these songs in my head for years, and it was fun to push them out on a unsuspecting public. Bringing the end to the series with my favorite hard rock pop band Cheap Trick seemed fitting, final and fun. Rock and roll, um, yeah, good stuff. Keep the energy alive.

Dfactor will be playing at Pianos in NYC on Dec 6th (main level) , doing the whole cover series.

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Posted by Michele Christopher at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Del.icio.us It | Fark It | Digg It

Hi – I’m Dfactor, a NYC blogger/singer/songwriter/rocker. I usually live over at Waved Rumor and MySpace.

I’m writing about my 2006 recording project, the 12 Covers-12 Months series that I started in January 2006. Here’s part two of a rundown of the covers I did, May to August, aka Summer, with the whos, the whys, the wherefores, the insights, the problems and the happy accidents. Hope you like it. Read Part One here.

May cover – Billy Bragg – A New England/The Wedding Present - What Have I Said Now?
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For those of us who have ever carried a guitar in our arms, a fire in our belly and a voice to shout it all out, Billy Bragg is our storyteller friend genius. Here’s a guy that for some reason only has ever been in one band -- an early punk band called Riff Raff, but then left that and went solo and has pretty much stayed solo (Mermaid Avenue/Wilco collaboration notwithstanding) for his entire career. Inspired by Joe Strummer and filled with a passion for the fiery politics of The Clash, Billy used his literate talents and hummable knack for melody to kick off a thrilling career in the 1980s as the punk troubadour.

“A New England” has been an oft-covered song, but what led me to it in particular for my covers series was Billy Bragg’s solo rendition of it on the Conan O’ Brien show this summer. He walked onstage, electric guitar in hand, and played the song with a freshness as if he’d just wrote it a few weeks earlier. All the confusion, hesitation and sincerity embodied in the lyric came out flowing in that 2-min. performance on Conan. I said “Sheesh, I gotta do a flavor of that bird!” (Searched for it on YouTube for you groovy flag wavers, but sadly came up empty-handed; but found a delicious version of A Great Leap Forwards instead)

But, of course, just throwing down a quick ‘lil ditty for my cover of the month seemed a shortchange of sorts, so I dug back into The Wedding Present song “What Have I Said Now?” from their 1989 “Bizarro” release to wrap into an, ahem, ‘medley’ of indie Brit-folk. After the heavily rock-processed April cover of “Paper Dolls” I wanted something more immediate and clear. So I grabbed two mics, my recorder and guitar and went into my echo-laden bathroom for a direct-to-mic, live reading (3rd-take performance) of both of these fine relationship songs.

June Cover – Mott the Hoople – All the Young Dudes
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For this music-craving teen growing up in the 1970s, CIRCUS magazine was my Pitchfork, my People magazine and my “Please Kill Me” in real time, rolled together in one. Rolling Stone was caught up its own ass in its self-importance, covering the cocaine dinosaurs of the era and the whole “LA stoner mellow” scene. Ugh. To me, CIRCUS stood out in its New York-centric rock outlook, always looking past the LA loving-Hefner Playboy mansion-bullshit rock scene and into the louder, faster in your face kind of rock and roll. Because of CIRCUS, I was exposed to Iggy Pop, David Bowie, KISS, the Dictators, the Ramones, early Genesis and Mott the Hoople.

I had read about how David Bowie had taken a liking to Mott the Hoople and helped glam up their sound in late 1972 and early 1973. When the LP “Mott” came out in 1974, I was all over it. I ended up enjoying Honaloochie Boogie as well as All the Young Dudes. But when it came to the covers series, the Bowie cover it was, rocked up in all its glory. I always liked this song, descending riffs and all, but wanted to make it faster and cooler. “Kick like a mule, it’s a real mean scene…”

Sharp-eared fans will notice that I sadly flubbed it a bit, adding an extra beat on the chorus during the recording of my drum track. And when that happened, I just rolled into it, adjusting the guitar and bass to lend another chord in there. The wonders of impromptu recording, will they ever cease?

July cover – New Order - Love Vigilantes
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A bit of a cheat on this one; I had performed New Order’s “Love Vigilantes” at a few of my 2005 shows and happened to catch a decent recording of it from my live set at Galapagos (Brooklyn) taping from early ’05.

So it was end June ‘06, I’m a closet sun bunny, my wife and child were waiting for me, and I didn’t quite feel like holing up in a recording studio for my July cover. So I nicked this version. The soundman caught my voice OK (puberty crack and all), but ‘twas a shame the guitar was mixed down.

This track from New Order’s Low Life release has been revered in certain circles for being a fairly straight narrative from NO’s Bernard Sumner, but in true Manchester fashion, he’s pretty much disowned the lyrical nod to England’s Balkan war, being quoted as saying “"It was a pastiche; a pisstake. People are so pious about lyrics. The first single I ever bought was 'Ride A White Swan' by T-Rex. Absolute gibberish. But I didn't give a fuck. Bow down before the tune. The tune is God."

August cover – Husker Du – Pink Turns to Blue
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Grant Hart’s “Pink Turns to Blue” is a cover I never thought I’d do. When it came to Husker Du songs, I was always firmly in the Bob Mould song camp. His songs were angrier, rougher, more dissonant and a bit scary. A perfect soundtrack for a punk kid in the early 80s. Grant’s songs, simpler melodically but frustratingly repetitive, were always on my back shelf list. Don’t get me wrong, I liked ‘em, but for every “Sorry Somehow” and “Books About UFOs”, I preferred “Chartered Trips” and “First of the Last Calls”.

But therein is the rub – I can’t play guitar like Bob Mould. He’s a one of a kind on those monster early Husker songs. The tone, muscle and distortion achieved in those Husker Bob songs is just completely beyond my playing capabilities. It’s a great sound and technique, one I’ve could never learn. It’s in the hallowed hall of iconoclasm. It’s singularly unique. It totally resonates with me. Let it be.

So I found a Husker song I could play. The arpeggio’d C#m with an up and down finger on the A string is just darn fun to play. And it’s from Zen Arcade, the much-heralded 'best' Husker Du LP ever (though I still prefer “Metal Circus” for its brevity and “New Day Rising” for its speed). And even though I’ll never play guitar like Bob Mould, I did spend some time learning the Mould solo on “Pink Turns to Blue” – I think it’s the highlight of the song in a way, and I’m glad I captured it pretty closely.

Dfactor will be playing at Pianos upstairs in NYC on Dec 6th at Pianos (main level) , doing the whole cover series.

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Posted by Michele Christopher at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | Del.icio.us It | Fark It | Digg It

by Dfactor

Welcome another new member of the FTTW cabal, NY musician Dfactor. His weekly column will detail his 2006 effort to record a rock and roll cover version each month. He relives the agony and the ecstasy here at FTTW.

Introduction

Faster Than the World has invited me to come in and write a bit about my 2006 recording project, the 12 Covers-12 Months series that I started in January 2006. I’ve been recording and singing for five years prior with my NYC pop outfit Anthemic Pop Wonder but as that tailed off in late ’04 I found myself in 2005 writing a bunch of news songs and learning a load of covers. So when I bought an inexpensive Fostex 8track recorder for Christmas 2005, I wanted to break it in a fun, creative way.

And what better way than doing covers? Everyone’s doing rock and roll covers these days. Rock is old - 50 years old in 2006, give or take. But its rollicking backbeat and crashing guitars still make it a joy to play and remember. Cover versions usually go in one of two ways – a faithful rendition, meant to evoke the original’s charm and excitement with one’s own take on it, or a reinvention rendition, where covers are completely deconstructed and popped back together with much more of the covering artists’ sensibility.

I’ve never quite understood the latter– why go to the effort to do a cover if you’re not going to invoke at least some of the timelessness of what makes it a great song?
Ah, art, I never understood ye…. In any case, Here’s part one of a rundown of the covers I did, January to June, with the whys, the wherefores, the insights, the problems, the happy accidents. Hope you like it.

January cover – The Seeds “Pushin’ Too Hard”

In the spirit of restarting my recording efforts back to the garage (or in my NYC apt dwelling experience, back to the bedroom) I started my series with the easiest song I know - a cover of the garage rock classic The Seeds “Pushin’ Too Hard”. It’s a pumpin’ snarly two-chord smash up that made waves upon its initial release, eventually reaching #36 on the pop singles chart in early 1967.

How cool is this song? Two chords all the way through (used later by The Modern Lovers to nearly similar effect on “Roadrunner”), chintzy organ and barely detectable drums, all fronted by Sky Saxon’s punk-laden vocals. One can’t get any better than that if you like rock and punk.

My older brothers had a garage rock basement band in the mid-late 1960s. Covers by The Cyrkle, the Lovin Spoonful, Music Machine, Cryin’ Shames and others you’ll find on the Nuggets box set filled their setlists. And I used to sit on the basement stairs,
a wide-eyed 7yr. old, soaking it all in. It’s to my brothers’ crappy band that I owe much love for introducing me to all the great 60s garage rock classics of the day; most of which I heard from the basement steps, played in rudimentary form.

From their record collection, I learned about 60s garage rock. And it hasn’t left me since.

I didn’t even know how to use my new Fostex when I started recording. I just laid up the mics, played my chords and guitar solo and used an old Casio I had laying around for the chintzy keyboard sound. I sure wasn’t trying to invoke the Summer of Love, but more of a Season of Fun.

February Cover – The Jam “That’s Entertainment”

Now after I’d finished and posted the Seeds’ cover, I enlisted my pal Mike I to help out with getting me set up on ProTools mixing software. We met and Mike walked me through Protools mixing essentials, and I think I was able to play with it a bit before recording my February
cover.

I’ve been a huge fan of The Jam, having seen them several times live as a young punk in Chicago (Park West ’80 and Aragon Ballroom ‘82, an amazingly fiery show that was duly noted with “SWITCH Chicago gig, brilliant!”on the back of the Dig the New Breed! Live LP - it was!). Paul Weller always played as if his life depended on it. He was young, talented and cocky, and made a lasting influence on young’ns like Oasis’ Noel Gallagher.

I’ve tried to cover other songs by The Jam, but my guitar playing doesn’t sound at all like the slash and burn rhythmic stylings of Paul Weller, so I couldn’t really do justice to great rockers like “Private Hell”, “Thick as Thieves” or “Running from the Spot” and other mid-to-late period classics.

So I picked the easiest song by The Jam to play – “That’s Entertainment”, the classic slice of British life focused around the mundane, the tea cup, football pitch and drizzling rain. Capo 4^th fret (3^rd?) and four or five chords. I used some wooden blocks to try to get the sound of echoes in the song’s background. And for the first time recording, I tried some backwards guitar, which came into play on my cover as well. Came out alright, methinks.

And just this week Paul Weller announced plans to play a 3-night stand at New York‘s Irving Plaza in January 2007 to play the music of The Jam, the Style Council and his solo music over the course for the three night stand. I’ve already picked up tickets and am very excited to reconnect with the Godfather of Mod.

March cover – Edison Lighthouse “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Grows)”

Yummy pop fun! I had a blast recording this one – this 1970 pop song was created by studio musicians operating under different pop band umbrellas, with various pop hits to their credit.

With “Love Grows”, I wanted to rock this one up a bit, as the original is pretty pop smooth. Crank up the guitars and make ‘em a little rough. Again, I pulled out the Casio for the middle solo bit.

From this formative time period of my pop youth, I could’ve picked a number of similar sounding great pop songs – Badfinger’s “No Matter What” or “Baby Blue”, The Raspberries “Tonight” or “Go All the Way” or others.

This song has great melody, cool guitar chords, a ‘truckers-chord’ cool key change near the end and a happy love song disposition. And since I’m a sucker for love, it works in my favor. It would be hard for me to cover angry emotional songs; it just ain’t me baby.

April cover – Screams “Paper Dolls”

This cover of “Paper Dolls” is directly from my record collection. was a Midwestern hard pop rock band from the Champaign, Illinois region, a very fertile musical breeding ground in the 1970s. I must’ve bought this LP when I was reading long-ago Chicago-area music mags like Triad, which exposed to me to a lot of underground music. Not that Screams was underground; they were very much in the Cheap Trick/Off Broadway mold of hard pop that I’ve enjoyed my whole life, and fashioned my early ’00 band Anthemic Pop Wonder around that sound.

The whole LP is good, but I was most fond of “Paper Dolls” and the way it takes off at the end. Nice chord change from major to minor in the verses, and a rollicking good vocal. Banging the drums on this recording was a blast.

After this song went up, Screams original singer (and songwriter) David Adams reached out to me and congratulated me on the effort – he liked the way I used ‘alright’ in the intro as a count-off. He’s even posted the LP as MP3s on his business home page.

Dfactor will be playing at Pianos upstairs in NYC on Dec 6th at Pianos upstairs, doing the whole cover series.

Posted by Michele Christopher at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | Del.icio.us It | Fark It | Digg It