The Song Fight Bulletin Board

How about April 1 - April Fools? That seems like a great day to end this coverfight.

April 4th would be great for me.

Oh man, I am far behind. I guess I burned out a lot on FAWM. Gotta get to work.
-bill

Well, at least I finally got mine done today. And I'm pretty happy with it!

Less than one week remaining! and I've only received entries from exactly 50% of the entrants! Don't be a stiffer!

REMINDER: THIS IS DUE TOMORROW

JUST FOR THE 40% OF YOU WHO HAVE NOT YET SUBMITTED

Going to be late, I'll warn you now...
-bill

Tiny Robots are going to be late too.

Octothorpe will try to make it worth the wait.

Okay, we've heard from the three late folks so I've gone ahead and posted the entries on a really cruddy basic page.

Yeah! That was so cool...

Paco, your cover of Under Over is the version of that song I had in my head back in 2011, but didn't have the skills to execute. Except that your backing vocals are better than my head version. Love it.

Also, Jerkatorium's cover of Control Yourself is legitimately great and I can't stop listening to it.

Hi All,

Sorry we are running late on this. Hard to coordinate everyone's schedules.

King Arthur - You are the king and you gave this excellent song the KA treatment. Sounds great! Thank you!

Ken

Hey, fluffy, thank you for the cover - I'll admit it took me a few listens to get used to the instrumentation, but it's growing on me. And thank you for running the coverfight.

You have a lot of songs. I was expecting to have to listen to your entire catalog to find something that I could contort myself in order to work with. "A Problem of Perspective" came up first and I thought, "Hm, that's perfect for my style!" Then I listened to the other 109 entries anyway and still ended up going with that first one.

(My second choice was "Gone Phishing.")

Anyway, it was fun. Both doing the cover and running the coverfight. :)

Would be interesting to hear what you'd do with "Red Skates" but I appreciate the song you did. Thanks!

I really liked Fluffy's cover - I think it captured the heart of the song while taking it somewhere different (man). I also like Jerkatorium's 'assault' on Hereustics Inc - took me a while to warm to it (only because of the liberties it takes with the melody, I think) but it bears repeated listens, for sure! All were good, mind.

Oh and just to say if people think I was mocking Jerkatorium by adding a verse about circle jerking in kevlar armour, well I was; but only in an admiring, appreciative, playful way. Actually, I had written those new words as part of a lyric for the fight but had not managed to do anything with them at the time. so it seemed too good an opportunity not to infect their talent with my weirdness

j$

king_arthur wrote:Would be interesting to hear what you'd do with "Red Skates" but I appreciate the song you did. Thanks!

That one was my third choice. :)

(and #4 was Lavender Splendor)

j$ wrote: Oh and just to say if people think I was mocking Jerkatorium by adding a verse about circle jerking in kevlar armour, well I was; but only in an admiring, appreciative, playful way. Actually, I had written those new words as part of a lyric for the fight but had not managed to do anything with them at the time. so it seemed too good an opportunity not to infect their talent with my weirdness

Thank you for the cover of Watching the Riot. I think your added verse is the best aspect of the cover regardless of intent. In general, in any cover I want to hear what the covering band has done to transform the song. Why listen to a faithful, accurate rendition when you could just listen to the original? I love The Dickies cover of "Eve of Destruction", Devo's "R U Experienced", Splitsville's "I'll Never Fall In Love Again" and oh so many more, specifically due to the wild spin the bands put on those songs.

Adding a new verse is a surprising and impressive way of putting your mark on this song. Other than that, the cover has an interesting tone and cool stereo effects. And anyone putting accordion in a song (even if it's a sample or software instrument) will always get points from me. I like your singing and I was glad to hear what you did with the song.

Having said that, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little disappointed with your choice of Watching the Riot; you picked our only song that had just four chords and just one verse, and as such is probably our least interesting composition (imo).

For this OFCF my favorite cover is Sockpuppet's cover of "A Problem of Perspective". After hearing Sockpuppet's version a couple of times I went back and listened to the original. Man, that's good songwriting. And I really like the Sockpuppet spin on it, the beats and the video game synth settings, the strong bass and the earnest singing.

Jerkatorium wrote:Having said that, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little disappointed with your choice of Watching the Riot; you picked our only song that had just four chords and just one verse, and as such is probably our least interesting composition (imo)

When I was listening to your archive, that was my first impression about the song. But there' was something about it that kept it floating around my brain, if only if it was so different from any of your other entries. I came to really enjoy it and think there was a realy good tune and mood in it that *maybe* the approach you had taken didn't do the full justice to. So that's why I picked it, to see in my own cack-handed way if I could 'release' the great song I heard. The four chords structure leant itself to the 'dub lite' arrangement I wanted to do, as well. FTR, I originally planned to add another verse at the beginning, a capella but decided the song as I had done it couldn't really stand any more length (oo-er).

I'm glad you (kinda) liked it!

j$

I was going to wait until all the entries were in before reviewing the coverfight as a whole, but I guess it would be gauche of me to not go ahead and talk about iVeg's cover of my Tw3rp. :)

I like the instrumentation on it, and the nod to the original symphonic buildup. Did you record those cellos yourself or were they stock samples or what? (In the original they were stock.) Not a fan of some of the vocal delivery, though, like "to achieve immortality" - everything's all bunched up weirdly. Which, incidentally, is how I recorded it on my first few takes before I figured out a better rhythm for it, so it's a totally understandable thing to do. Also I'm listening to the SF recording of it and holy crap was it rough (the album version is somewhat better although still not great).

Also, I feel like I should mention that it's only coincidence that iVeg's cover of my thing ended up first on the site, and my cover of King Arthur ended up last - the assignments were done by an unbiased random number generator, and the site is presented in alphabetical order with all the stiffers at the end. :)

Jerkatorium wrote:For this OFCF my favorite cover is Sockpuppet's cover of "A Problem of Perspective". After hearing Sockpuppet's version a couple of times I went back and listened to the original. Man, that's good songwriting.

Thank you!