No Flava Original Twists Reviews (coverfight)

[king_arthur]

Most of the songs are in, and I'm not sure when I'll be able to set up the regular coverfight voting interface, so... here ya go:

http://www.songfight.net/covers/2010cf/

We're still waiting on roymond, Jon Eric, Rabid Garfunkel and Mark - if any of you folks already sent your song in, it got lost somewhere, so please resend...

We are also still waiting on Lord of Oats, who I haven't heard from yet... if there is anyone who has gotten over this crud that is going around and would like to do a cover of a Niveous song, at least we can make sure nobody gets totally stiffed.

For those who sent an updated version of their song, please check and make sure I got it posted... and if I didn't please resend.

To resend songs, either put them on a webspace and PM me with the URL, or just email them to charles16@cox.net (emailing seems to work better). Or just post a link to the song here, since we're no longer keeping things secret.

Anyway, everybody enjoy the music, let me know if any of the links are wrong, and feel free to post review comments. I will update when I figure out how to get voting set up, and I'll post new songs as they come in.

Thanks to everybody for participating and for getting things in on time (or close to it!)

Charles (KA)

[fluffy]

Oh holy crap LMNOP I totally love this. Totally giving me shivers. I love where you riff on things and add in a proper bridge and so on. This has completely made my day.

<3 <3 <3

(I will review other things eventually too of course but of course I had to get the important stuff out of the way)

[Generic]

Got a day off from work today. Woohoo!

I'm covering Jan's "Half a Million Nerds," and it'll be done by this evening.

[fluffy]

For anyone who's as anal-retentive about id3 tags as I am and are running Linux, OSX, or some other UNIX variant (or are Perl-savvy on that other operating system everyone seems to like), I wrote a simple tag fixer in Perl. Save it to fixtags.pl and set it executable, and then use it like this:

Code: Select all

wget --no-parent -nd -r -l 1 http://www.songfight.net/covers/2010cf/
./fixtags.pl index.html


Obviously you need HTML::Parser and id3v2. This will work as long as King Arthur doesn't change the columns around in the HTML.

[Billy's Little Trip]

Ross, I love it!!! You make my song sound like a deep story. Which it does have meaning, but you made it sound great. I still laugh at my effervescence/convalescence rhyme, lol. But you even made that sound legit. Thank you, good sir.

[Billy's Little Trip]

By the way, I noticed I sent the wrong version of my song for Wages. I changed the harmony towards the end because it sounded awful. Is it too late to get you the fixed version?

[Generic]

Small request: can the "(generic)" be taken out of my name as listed? I've never written, recorded, or otherwise published anything under the name "generic," with the exception of the largely informally-written posts on this board.

King Arthur, I never in a million years would have guessed anyone would pick that song. You completely turned it around; great job!

Ross, you've taken a BLT song and made it your own. A real pleasure to listen to.
fluffy, your "Orchestral" version of "Tomato" is waay better than the instrumental.
Jan Krueger, your wackadoo choral+orchestral version of Naked Philosophy's "Sorry to Inform You" is an intriguing listen, and it makes me feel quite a bit better about the liberties I've taken with your song.

[king_arthur]

By the way, I noticed I sent the wrong version of my song for Wages. I changed the harmony towards the end because it sounded awful. Is it too late to get you the fixed version?

Yeah, no problem, we're still gathering up the final versions of a few other songs, so no problem with anybody resubmitting. Just, uhh, take your revised mouth parts and send them to my cox... address...

Charles (KA)

[Billy's Little Trip]

By the way, I noticed I sent the wrong version of my song for Wages. I changed the harmony towards the end because it sounded awful. Is it too late to get you the fixed version?

Yeah, no problem, we're still gathering up the final versions of a few other songs, so no problem with anybody resubmitting. Just, uhh, take your revised mouth parts and send them to my cox... address...

Charles (KA)

Straws were grabbed on this day in 2010.

...no pun intended.

[fluffy]

fluffy, your "Orchestral" version of "Tomato" is waay better than the instrumental.

Yeah, I should have probably rescinded the instrumental one, which was really more of a scratch recording to get the arrangement down.

[Caravan Ray]

Awsesome Tuur!!!

I had almost forgotten that one! It would have been my second ever attempt at recording a song, and the first I wrote for Songfight (I recycled a previously written one for my first entry).

You do it the way it would have sounded in my head when I wrote it - but it was a sound I was (and probably still am) completely technically incapable of reproducing. You have real drums!!! Mine just had some repetitive thumping sound. It actually sounds like a pretty good song in your hands (well, as far as 3 Little Pig-based songs go, I suppose)

Thank you very much. Very much appreciated

[king_arthur]

Caravan Ray's studio version of his cover of Rabid Garfunkel, "Stranded" is now uploaded.

[Generic]

Alright, my cover of "Half a Million Nerds" by Jan Krueger is now complete! Sorry about the tardiness, but it was really hard to coordinate schedules with Hunky; that dude never returns my phone calls.

Link here: http://jon-eric.com/Songs/Covers/Jon%20Eric%20-%20Half%20a%20Million%20Nerds%20(Jan%20Krueger%20cover).mp3

[Caravan Ray]

Caravan Ray's studio version of his cover of Rabid Garfunkel, "Stranded" is now uploaded.

thanks King

sorry about the small lyric flub in the video Rabs

[Generic]

Caravan Ray's studio version of his cover of Rabid Garfunkel, "Stranded" is now uploaded.

thanks King

sorry about the small lyric flub in the video Rabs

I guess I should apologize for the altered lyrics as well. I'll post a transcript soon.

[jack]

After checking them all out..........

My Top Shelf: Ross, Idiot King, BSS, Minty, LMNOP, BLT

Others I enjoyed: Tuur, Lonbobby, King Arthur, J$, Fluffy's Orchestral Tomato, Caravan Ray, Octothorpe, BLT, Jon Eric

Gold: LMNOP

Silver: Ross

Bronze: Minty

[MintyHandy]

Fluffy, thanks for the great cover. The orchestral arrangement was soothing, and your vocals were nice, but something about the way you phrased "eat me" made it seem so much dirtier than the original (this is something I approve of.) Also, when your layered harmonies came in, I was both captivated and amused. Awesome. I'd forgotten how much more I enjoy my own songs when I hear more talented people perform them!

Oh, and the instrumental version is awesome, because you somehow (in my head at least) evoked Kimya Dawson's voice in your lead strings, and collectively the whole thing sounds like a scene at a traffic accident (random horns all colliding into something that sounds like a tune.) I could not be happier about this.

[fluffy]

Reviews based on listening to the original versions first, unless otherwise noted. Order is just how iTunes decided to put them into the playlist. Everyone seems to have done an amazing job of making the songs into ones like how they would do those songs if they had done them to begin with. Maybe I should leave it there but I am compelled to say something specific about everything.

tuuur doing Caravan Ray - What you have done here is make a version of the song that is very clearly like what Caravan Ray was going for to begin with. A very well-done and competently-executed version of a nice, simple, straightforward song.

Ross Durand doing Billy's Little Trip - Wow, that was pretty unexpected. That is the same song and yet it's not at all the same. But it sounds like how the song wanted to be to begin with. Even though the original also still sounds quite happy the way it is. I love when people claim songs as their own without cheapening the original, and you have quite clearly pulled this one off.

Octothorpe doing Ross Durand - And Octothorpe does to Ross what Ross did to BLT. The funny thing is I misread things and thought this was BSS doing Ross Durand and so I said "and BSS does to Ross what Octothorpe would do to Ross if they were doing what Ross did to BLT." But then I got set straight and now things make a lot more sense (not the least of which is why the hell it's using painfully-obvious drum machine drums).

Niveous doing Berkeley Social Scene - Nice idea for a transformation of this song, but it's marred a bit by muddy vocals and wobbly delivery. This is pretty close to being a trancey-ambient track, and I keep expecting it to build into one but it doesn't.

Naked Philosophy does LMNOP - Do more stuff like this. It suits you.

Minty Handy does Sven Mullet's feet - This was actually my top choice for a serious Sven Mullet cover, so I'm glad you decided to do it too. Funny how that works out. I probably would have ended up making it longer rather than 33% shorter though. A nice instrumental performance there. I was expecting you to do it on the ukulele which would have probably not been as good. When you get your voice back I wonder if you'll put the vocals in and how that will turn out.

Lonbobby does The Idiot Kings - Yet another case of the cover sounding quite a bit like how I suspect the original meant to be. I'm not so fond of the heavily-autotuned/vocodered/whatever vocals but I guess that's an inextricable part of your style at this point, and it doesn't detract too badly at least. This kind of makes me think of mid-90s scene demos. I liked mid-90s scene demos.

LMNOP does me - I already posted about this one but I guess I can say some more stuff. There's some pretty interesting things you've done to the vocal rhythm here, and the simplified chord progression works pretty well. (I normally play it as Amin, Fmaj, Emaj when I do it on guitar. It's also one of my songs designed explicitly for loop pedal performance.) The guitar jamming during the bridge is great. The very very minimal synthesizer patch used for the accompaniment also adds so much to it. I love this so much.

King Arthur does Jon Eric - The original song is one of those ones that has a way of insinuating it into my brain in a very catchy way that makes me want to stand on my own head (meaning with my feet) just to make it and its screechy vocals go away. Sorry, Jon. But King Arthur has made it very listenable. Hopefully when the original version gets stuck in my head next time I can have the King Arthur version replace it, because I wouldn't mind that at all.

J$ does Lonbobby - A dark and depressing vocoder-vocal electropop song becomes a dark and depressing funeral dirge, which could have easily been a J$ song to begin with.

Jan Kruger does Naked Philosophy - This one breaks from the "how someone would do it if they were doing the song to begin with" thing. I would have never expected an orchestral choral arrangement of... Hey waaaaaaaaitaminute. Anyway! I'm not sure the arrangement works for this song but it's at least interesting and weird enough to keep me interested to hear what you did with the whole song.

Idiot King Arthur (see what I did there?) - Oh man that's a great arrangement and style and so on but was that really your best vocal take? It's very pitchy in parts. Musically and production-wise it's good, though. Interesting changes from the original.

Wages does Octothorpe - I am very very very familiar with the original song, so it's pretty obvious to me that this has none of the original music, and the lyrics are rather recontextualized through changes to the rhythm and phrasing. It's kind of weird and abstract, and that's compared to the original so that's at least something interesting that happened to an Octothorpe song.

HInc does J$ - Due to misreading things I thought you had done the orchestral arrangemenet of Naked Philosophy and I had a bit of stuff about how I hadn't heard you sing before and so was that a vocaloid or whatever, but then I realized it was Jast and it made more sense. This leaves no doubt as to who did it. This sounds a lot like the various collaborations you've done with J$ in the past so nothing too surprising I guess. Bloopy weird abstract stuff.

Sockpuppet does Sven Mullet - This was just a quick and easy covering-all-the-bases thing in case MintyHandy couldn't come through on things. I chose it because it was the only song that I could easily figure out the lyrics to and where it didn't matter so much that I don't have the patience to do a complex arrangement. So yeah it's a total cop-out but I hope you enjoyed it anyway.

Sockpuppet does Minty Handy in a string quartet - This was going to be the basis for an orchestral track and I was going to record dozens of real string parts but then I realized that my violin sounds like crap (and ordered a better one) and that I suck at playing it anyway. But I still enjoy the trainwreck of a high school chamber quartet aspect of it. Even though I already did that schtick for last year's GOM.

Sockpuppet does Minty Handy in the orchestral capacity - I also hate synthesized string ensembles, but you work with what you have to work with. This song was a lot of fun to do. It didn't come out how it sounded in my head but that's okay because I still like how it came out.

Caravan Ray does Primitive Screwheads - I haven't heard the original of this (because I don't have a nur ein archive and I'm laaaaaaazy) but this sounds nothing like Primitive Screwheads and everything like Caravan Ray so mission accomplished. I love the nice sedate sound. This would work well in a chillout room. If someone brings pot brownies to my upcoming Thanksgiving dinner I will have to remember to put this on endless loop when we're all stoned.

BLT does Wages - The intro had me worried. I was going to say something like WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT DID YOU DO WITH BLT but then the actual song kicked in and that is why I am YELLING to be heard over the ROCK. I definitely like this better than the original.

BSS fails to calm down Oats - When I heard the original version with its bleepy bloppy stuff I knew exactly how it would sound with a BSS cover. This is the song I hear under the original track. Very danceable. I hope you guys perform this at the next Song Fight LIve event, even with the self-indulgent meta references. Maybe it could close out the night or something, to explain it to people who still don't get what the hell's going on? (Like with that one weird lady who was ranting about us not playing more music at the end of the 2010 show.)

This was the best Cover Fight in a long time. (Well, also the ONLY Cover Fight in a long time.) We need to bring the tradition back. Screw all the weird sidefighty theme fights. Grab names out of a hat and just DO THIS THING. I should also get around to recording some cover ideas that I've had pinging around in my head for a while which have nothing to do with any sort of structured contest. It's silly to do things only because they're going to be judged.

[Generic]

Hey fluffy, mine's been posted now too...

[fluffy]

Jon Eric does Jast - Wow this song totally exists and stuff, which it didn't when I downloaded everything for the listening. Oh hey your singing is actually pretty good in this. Even better than your recent stuff which is in turn a lot better than your older stuff. Really good guitar playing too. The original song was nice and weird in its a capella layering and stuff but it's interesting to hear a cover that turns it into a more traditional-sounding song. I'd like to hear you do this one live at some point.

[Caravan Ray]

This was the best Cover Fight in a long time. (Well, also the ONLY Cover Fight in a long time.) We need to bring the tradition back. Screw all the weird sidefighty theme fights. Grab names out of a hat and just DO THIS THING.

Got to second that. Both the giving and receiving sides of this is extremely satisfying

[the idiot king]

was that really your best vocal take?

what's truly crazy is yeah, it was one of the better ones. i spent probably two days doing the music; that came immediately. the vocals themselves just never ever once sat right with me, and i spent the rest of the time before the deadline toying with phrasing, pitch, etc. i think ultimately the tempo was too slow for me to sing over; i ran out of breath before i could finish some lines!