Take Two

Simon Rumble got me thinking about great covers:

I love cover versions of classic songs, but only when the cover finds a new angle on the song. So if you’re an acoustic vocalist, there’s little point covering Cindi Lauper or Tori Amos. Ditto if you’re a metal band, don’t cover Black Sabbath unless you’ve got some really new idea.

Interestingly, the best ones I’ve found so far have been power/glam metal covers.

I just thought I’d add a few noteworthy covers in that category: A Perfect Circle covering Lennon’s Imagine, Vanessa Carlton doing Paint it Black (Rolling Stones), and Norah Jones’ rendition of Ride On by AC/DC (as the last piece of a concert I went to at the Hammersmith Apollo).

I’ve bought a new electric guitar. It sounds fantastic and is beautiful—even Nadia fell for it. It’s an LAG Roxane Standard 200 and looks like this (this picture shows a brown one though; mine is dark cherry):

I also bought a Fender FM25 DSP amp. It sounds great—at least at low volumes (I haven’t tried anything else yet; I don’t fancy becoming “the loud guy”). It’s got several built-in effects too; enough to keep me from running around buying pedals and effect boxes any time soon.

I’ve never actually heard of LAG guitars before today. I just went down to Denmark Street to browse while Nadia was busy doing something else. In the second shop I was handed the guitar/amp combo above and when I mentioned I’m a bit shy I was promptly given a pair of headphones. Armed with those I could play without inhibitions and quickly fell in love.

Not wanting to just buy the first guitar I found I went to Andy’s Guitar Centre and tried out a second-hand (but mint condition) red Epiphone SG (not certain that link shows the exact model but it looks very similar). It was around the same price as the LAG, and its fret-board felt a little nicer, but it was very top-heavy and felt out of balance. It was also nowhere as nice looking.

After bothering Nadia on the phone I went back to try the LAG again. It was hanging there—in all its gorgeous glory—just waiting for me. It only took me a few minutes to reach the conclusion that I had to take it home. Playing it quite a lot today I realise that I’ve fallen head-over-heals for it; once or twice I’ve even heard Nadia snicker when she’s caught me talking to it…

Martin Brooks, with Mark Fowler’s camera, managed to snap the above picture of me playing Guitar Hero 2 just before we went off to the Fotango Christmas meal. I am in all likelyhood attempting to play Monkey Wrench by Foo Fighters; it was a bit more difficult than I expected, so I was concentrating very hard on hitting the right buttons—which is why I didn’t notice anyone taking my picture. Greg McCarroll—another Fotangonite—is doing the backing vocals.

I’m not usually very fond of (and therefore not very good at) playing video games but Guitar Hero 2 is very fun. The way I’ve played it it’s more a group of friends listening to and interacting with great music than a game. Two people can play at the same time (rythm/lead or guitar/bass), both co-operatively and competitive, and both players can have a different difficulty setting.

I’m selling my dearly beloved Q65 speakers. Having grown up and amassed more furniture I simply don’t have room for them any more. May they go to a good home.

Sniff.

Update (2006/12/17): They’re gone! They went for a steal; or a song, if you prefer.

Having realised that I almost exclusively use iTunes for listening to music, I’ve gone through my CD collection and ripped them at higher quality. You’d think this would use a lot more disk space, but it’s actually not very bad; I’ve taken the opportunity to go through and remove duplicates, which help.

I also had a look a playlist I’ve not noticed before—I cannot even remember if I’ve created it, or it’s some iTunes default list. At any rate, the list contains the 25 most played songs in my collection, and it is an interesting mix. The list contains: A Perfect Circle (8 songs), Anneli Drecker (1), Björk (4), Massive Attack (1), Paradise Lost (1), Tool (3), Ugress (4) and Vanessa Carlton (3).

Björk managed to slip four songs into my top six—very impressive. Jóga is in first place, followed by Play Dead; the fifth entry has Venus As A Boy, and Hunter takes sixth. What I find really peculiar is that while I like most of the work by the rest of the artists in this list, those songs by Björk are actually the only ones of hers I like. At all. It really is a love/hate relationship.

I was going to link to all the artists’ web-sites above, but showing my hippy nature (again—this is getting embarrassing) I chose to link only to Ugress because they have several songs available for download on their site, free of charge. Also, it’s not a crappy Flash site that invariably requires Flash version N+1, where N is the version you currently have.