New Monday #112
Happy Monday—
Did you all get your free Power Grid Disruptor plug-in? Get it before it’s gone. Yes, it’s an April Fools' Day joke but it’s also real and works. And we will probably develop it into something more full-featured. If you’ve got feedback on it, email us.
This week... I confess this is a bit of a journey down a series of connected rabbit holes. I gotta say... I love when one song opens up a path through...
The Cover Forest
I hate gyms, mainly because of the loud music that’s generally ass, and also because lifting and moving things that are, at the end of the day, back exactly where they started seems a waste of time. Not that I would enjoy manually transporting rocks around the neighborhood more, but somewhere in between the gym and boulder movement is using a VR headset and an app called Supernatural. It plays music and I hit virtual ball things with virtual bats. Someone gets a music performance royalty, I burn calories. A cool game idea would be re-enacting scenes from gangster movies involving baseball bats, or maybe not.
The other day, I'm whacking heads and the song is The Final Countdown—Europe's 1986 smash hit.
Swedish Hair Metal
1986. You couldn’t escape this song, the video, or the members of Europe politely headbanging. I was ok when Grunge put a knife in the spandex belly of Hair Metal. It was dopey stuff, but it had a gentle innocence about it. Alice in Chains was trying to kick a habit; Europe was leaving for Venus... Venus... The Final Countdown was a good song and a huge hit: number one in 25 countries. And there was no denying Europe as a band could really play, and singer/main songwriter Joey Tempest could really sing.
I knew every note and nuance of this song, and I immediately noticed that I wasn’t hearing the original recording. Yes, Joey Tempest singing, but not 23-year-old Joey, more like 62-year-old Rolf Larsson (his real name). Still a powerful voice, but tearing on top, pulling on the throat, straining. Young Joey was effortless. Rolf might need to sit for a bit after a particularly good take.
Europe recut the song in 2016, probably for licensing purposes due to some record label selfishness. It’s neither as good a recording nor a performance as the original. They lowered the key.
The 2016 recut: https://youtu.be/3GNeZ3kUPxA?si=3Ok68jdwIWz4yB1l
The 1986 original: https://youtu.be/4hj8M8XZpis?si=PfzPlKng8JZVzU3Z
Holy hell, that guy could sing. This was cut pre-autotune: he had to hit those notes himself, no Melodyne training wheels.
I hate when bands re-record classics. It’s a “cover” that never measures up to the original. Rarely does a better recording beat out a better performance. There is a moment to a song cut basically live in the studio by a bunch of excited kids. That moment isn’t caught by Sven doing his guitar part as an overdub in his home studio 40 years later.
In the US, Europe came and went. We don't wonder about the guys in the band; we assume they're now all working at IKEA. No. They're still selling records, mainly in Sweden and Japan. Europe has had a wonderful career. Still touring. Still wearing leather. Still excellent players.
Mr Tempest also puts out solo records. I listened through for something interesting—I’m always looking for ideas to steal. Basically, most of it is Swedish Bon Jovi, but this one.... this is really good. Try to anticipate where the chords are going.
https://youtu.be/EaZZPLaXegk?si=G81yPFI1FFbjVQrC
That’s a gem of a song. Someone should cover it. Wet Leg should cover it.
Speaking of Bon Jovi and covers, Supernatural also fed me this piece of crap. I couldn’t get past the first chorus.
https://youtu.be/4l-_tBTq9OQ?si=91G1Z6evp24_lXKz
I don't mind Bon Jovi. Again, great players and basically harmless. The video for Wanted: Dead or Alive might try to portray them as gunslingers, but really they were a bunch of horny toads drinking and banging their way across the US. But they dropped the ball on this cover of a fantastic, cornerstone song of the 1970s.
The boys from New Jersey fumbled it on the groove. The hook of The Boys Are Back in Town is the upbeat shuffle groove. Thin Lizzy GROOVED. Bon Jovi tends to thud along like they’re swimming through a pool of mayo or cottage cheese. It was cut in 1989 for a compilation album of covers, Stairway to Heaven / Highway to Hell, a collection of songs made famous by musicians who died of addiction. Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy died from addiction complications in 1986.
Here’s the Thin Lizzy original—so much better. A deep listen to Thin Lizzy is recommended.
https://youtu.be/nN120kCiVyQ?si=x8snkGXivzT7hCog
Reinvent It
I think if you’re going to cover a song, you should reinvent it. Maybe like this?
https://youtu.be/bAr_SXHtNnM?si=cvTnF3Gr23HxkSJR
Good lord! That fuckin’ ROCKS! This is a brilliant cover. If you’d not heard the original, you’d think it was the product of this particular band, School of Fish. They maintain a bit of the exotic melodicism of the George Michael original, but imbue it with their own thing. This should have been a single.
School of Fish had a pretty big minor hit, 3 Strange Days. A great song. Great guitar sounds. Clearly a drum machine—an Alesis HR-16 to my ear. It was a game changer because it sounded great, was easy to use, and it was cheap. I had one and loved it. It’s all over recordings from the late 80s and 90s. Listen for it here:
https://youtu.be/_m0bI82Rz_k?si=4ff-TLRdyabeByAG
Shine was an 8-track demo that managed to get released. The song is great, the recording is a mess, God, I love it.
This is REALLY an awful recording. It’s amazing that it made the radio and hit #4 in the top 40. Collective Soul was basically a guy named Ed Roland, a songwriter and an accomplished audio engineer. He and some buddies made a demo that was released as an album, Hints, Allegations and Things Left Unsaid. Shine is easily the worst recording on the record. The distinctive “YEAH” was sung through a toilet paper tube. You should try this. Works great on guitars, too. Stick an SM57 down a tube and put the tube in front of an amp. Killer riff. Killer guitar solo by Ross Childress.
An unlikely cover of Shine won Dolly Parton a Best Female Country Vocal Grammy: https://youtu.be/8e-Ip9RagkU?si=Ot1LfaryY7kv5eTi
Perfect Day
This one... Al Green singing Lou Reed’s Perfect Day. Al Green released it in 2023. Singer Raye, from last week, did a background vocal on it. She’s so mixed back you can’t hear her. But now that Raye is big hot sauce, it’s been remixed—her vocals replaced Reverend Al’s in the second verse—and it was released in January 2026.
It seems obvious that soul singers would interpret Perfect Day as a love song, framing it as what it appears to be: a beautiful day spent by two lovers.
Lou Reed, in interviews, claims the song was about a nice day he had with his wife at the time, I dunno. Lou Reed isn’t that nice, nor is he that simple. Lou Reed is like Dan’s dog Lilly, always looking for someone to bite. The narrator in the song is some lonely dude fantasizing about something that never happened. He’s a creep, a stalker. The ending vamp, “You’re gonna reap just what you sow,” is a threat.
Listen to the original: https://youtu.be/9wxI4KK9ZYo?si=kTK84RbpJTgKnPy_
Piano and string arrangement by the late great Mick Ronson. By the way, this was cut at Trident Studios on a Sound Techniques A-Range console... our channel strip is coming, my friends, it’s coming...
Angine de Poitrine
I wrote about this avant-weird microtonal polyrhythmic duo from Quebec back in November. They’ve since BLOWN UP, touring Europe and now the US. They made The NY Times two days ago.
There are tons of videos of these guys now. This one is my favorite, starting off with a nod to perhaps Discipline era King Crimson and then turning into a disco nightmare. These guys are dynamite.
Again, get your Power Grid Disruptor plug-in. Have a great week. Get your butt in the studio.
Warm regards,
Luke