cover Versions – Peter M. Ball

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

I’m Hot and I’m Sticky Sweet…

Some days need a bit of Def Leppard. Some days do not. Today, well, it’s one of the former. Weirdly, I missed the period when Def Leppard was actually a big deal. Hysteria came out in 1987, which means I was both 9 years old and living in the middle of nowhere, far from the pop cultural embrace of TV and cinema and popular radio. I was far more likely to be reading books back in those days, getting exposed to music through my dad’s LP collection (although I wasn’t yet allowed to play records on my own) or the soundtracks to the handful of movies we saw when we came to Brisbane for the holidays. Basically, I didn’t even really process that Def Leppard was a big deal until they became a lyrical riff in Bloodhound Gang’s Why is everyone picking on me in the mid-nineties. They weren’t a band by then, not really; they were a pop cultural reference that

PeterMBall 09/02/2013

Big Thoughts

The Things I Think About On New Years Day

ONE It’s the first morning of 2013 and in the writing room, writing. Not even writing, really. More dragging myself back into a writing mindset after being not-a-writer for the bulk of last year. There are days – today is one of them – when the fact that I still do this amazes me. I figured I’d kick this year off by telling you a story (it is, after all, what I do). I want to start it with something like once upon a time I met a girl on a bus, but truthfully it’s not the kind of story you’d expect from that kind of opening. The way you starts a story sets up the ending, makes promises that need to be delivered, and I can’t deliver on that one. So instead I’ll start it like this: when I was twenty and still at university, I learned not to tell people that I wanted to be a writer. And

PeterMBall 01/01/2013

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

For what it’s worth…

…I still maintain that this is the sexiest two minutes and seventeen seconds to ever exist in music. If you can resist dancing while you listen to it, you’re a better person than I. The second-sexiest thing ever done in music is Nouvelle Vague’s cover of Guns of Brixton. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out what this says about my psyche.

PeterMBall 09/12/2012

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Twenty-Six Hours of Melancholy

A Sweet and Pensive Sadness When I was in my second year of university we studied Hotel Sorrento, a play by the Australian playwright Hannie Rayson that was later turned into a film. One of the themes running through the play – one of many – was an exploration of melancholy, and two lines in particular remained with me some fifteen years after I first read it. The first was a female character asserting that men do not feel melancholy, that it’s a particularly female emotion. The second was the definition: a sweet and pensive sadness. A sweet and pensive sadness. I mean, fuck, how do you go past that, eh? It’s a beautifully expressed idea when you hear it at nineteen, and I was immediately smitten. I don’t remember how it happened, or where it happened, but I fell and I fell hard, in a very, melancholy, fuck yeah, that’s the stuff for me kind of way. I still

PeterMBall 24/10/2011

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

because I geek for covers…

My amusement probably makes less sense if you’re not aware of the band (and song) they’re covering, but this amuses me. Oh, how this amuses me; there is a line between cheese and genius. Methinks this dances merily along it:

PeterMBall 23/04/2010

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Don’t question, just watch

Yes, I’ve been very vid-centric lately. I acknowledge this. But, dammit, some things are sufficiently awesome that you just have to share immediately:

PeterMBall 01/10/2009

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

6 Cover Versions Worth Tracking Down

I love a good cover version, especially when the artist finds a new spin. You could say it feeds directly into my own impulses to mash genres together and see what results, but musicians tend to be somewhat cooler in their experimentation. To whit, 6 cover versions I think everyone should listen to at least once: If you’d prefer not to listen to the youtube playlist, I’ve broken ’em down one-by-one below. 1) Drive, the Paradise Motel There’s a strong possibility that the pang of pure melancholy I feel when I hear the opening guitar notes to the Paradise Motel’s Flight Paths album is a pure Pavlovian response to one of those albums that served as a soundtrack for three or four straight years of my life, and the real centerpiece of the album is the cover of the Car’s Drive. The Paradise Motel take what was a minor pop hit, slow it the fuck down, and imbue it with the

PeterMBall 17/08/2009

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Friday Youtubery

Doubling up this week: One of these amuses me, and the other is pure awesome. I shall leave it to you to determine which is which.

PeterMBall 17/07/2009

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Friday Youtubery

Proof that there are people out there who do murder-ballads era Nick Cave even better than, well, Nick Cave. If you want a real insight into how scary Tex Perkin’s truly is, try listening to the Elvis Costello version of the song first. One of these is a gentle ballad sung by a punk-rock balladeer. The other gave me nightmares for a week the first time I saw it on Rage.

PeterMBall 19/06/2009

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Friday Youtubery

I’ve been thinking about my obsessive love of cover-versions this week, and near as I can tell this was the first cover I ever recognized as both a) a cover and b) far more awesome than the original.

PeterMBall 15/05/2009

Tag: cover Versions

I’m Hot and I’m Sticky Sweet…

The Things I Think About On New Years Day

For what it’s worth…

Twenty-Six Hours of Melancholy

because I geek for covers…

Don’t question, just watch

6 Cover Versions Worth Tracking Down

Friday Youtubery

Friday Youtubery

Friday Youtubery

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