Our neighbor, Rick, is a dj. He had a weekly slot on WRUR for years, he substitutes on “Open Tunings” when Scott is out of town and he has a show on WITR in the Fall. He builds his shows around artists’ birthdays and he plays music by the artists and versions of their songs by others. He buys tribute collections, cds of cover versions of Leonard Cohen or Neil Young or whoever and he would say, “You like Doug Sahm. Check out this collection.” Or “You like the Velvet Underground. Check this out.” I finally told him. I like the originals, by the original artists. I have a hard time with covers.
That paragraph was all a set up for the experiment Peggi and I did this afternoon. I lined up all six songs from the brand new “Bewitched – A Tribute to Luna” record by Angel Corpus Christi with the original versions. Even though we’re friends with Luna’s lead singer’s sister we are not familiar with the band’s music. I created a setlist that interleaved the Luna version with the Angel version of each of the six songs. The first thing I noticed is that all six of the Angel versions are shorter than the originals.
The abbreviation suits the cleaner pop approach. The songs are airier with more dimension in the production. The voice is much sweeter. Angel removes the removed quality of the Luna songs and loads them with personality. The six songs are pop classics in her hands. Lovedust is our favorite, the Angel version.
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