Play it Again: Cover Songs in Popular Music

280 Pages·2010·3.85 MB·English

by  George Plasketes

Play it again:
Cover SongS in PoPular MuSiC
always,
for Julie, Anaïs, and Rivers…
three Originals
Play it again:
Cover Songs in Popular Music

george PlaSketeS
Auburn University, USA
© george Plasketes 2010
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
george Plasketes has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents act, 1988,
to be identified as the editor of this work.
Published by
ashgate Publishing limited ashgate Publishing Company
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union road 101 Cherry Street
Farnham Burlington
Surrey, gu9 7Pt vt 05401-4405
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www.ashgate.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Plasketes, george.
Play it again : cover songs in popular music. – (ashgate popular and folk music series)
1. Cover versions.
i. title ii. Series
782.4’2164–dc22
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Plasketes, george.
Play it again : cover songs in popular music / george Plasketes.
p. cm.—(ashgate popular and folk music series)
includes bibliographical references and index.
iSBn 978-0-7546-6809-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Popular music—History and criticism. 2. Cover versions—History and criticism.
i. title.
Ml3470.P58 2009
781.6309—dc22
2009035084
iSBn 9780754668091 (hbk)
iSBn 9780754699910 (ebk)
V
Contents
Notes on Contributors vii
General Editor’s Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
introduction: like a version 1
George Plasketes
Front Cover: treAtiSe
1 Further Re-flections on “The Cover Age”: A Collage and Chronicle 11
George Plasketes
UnDer the CoverS: hiStory, iDeoLoGy, iDentity
2 Charting Cultural Change, 1953–57: Song assimilation through
Cover recording 43
B. Lee Cooper
3 the Cover Song as Historiography, Marker of ideological
transformation 77
Sheldon Schiffer
4 Cover up: emergent authenticity in a Japanese Popular
Music genre 99
Christine R. Yano
the SonG reMAinS the SAMe? SonG AnD ALBUM
5 From Junk to Jesus: Recontextualizing “The Pusher” 111
Andrew G. Davis
6 David Bowie’s Pin-Ups: Past as Prelude 127
Stuart Lenig
vi PLAY IT AGAIN: COVER SONGS IN POPULAR MUSIC
Look WhAt they’ve Done to My SonG: GenDer, iDentity,
MeDiA MAkeoverS
7 Queering Cohen: Cover versions as Subversions of identity 139
Erik Steinskog
8 Covering and Un(covering) the Truth with “All Along the Watchtower”:
From Dylan to Hendrix and Beyond 153
Russell Reising
9 the Same yet Different/Different yet the Same: Bob Dylan
under the Cover of Covers 177
Greg Metcalf
Don’t ForGet to DAnCe: teChniqUe AnD teChno
trAnSForMAtionS
10 “Hide and Seek”: A Case of Collegiate a Cappella
“Microcovering” 191
Joshua S. Duchan
11 the Mashup Mindset: Will Pop eat itself? 205
DDaavviidd TToouuggh
12 Camp transitions: genre adaptation and the Hi-nrg/Dance
Cover version 213
LLeeee BBaarrrroon
ConteMPLAtinG CoverS
13 in Defense of Cover Songs: Commerce and Credibility 223
Don Cusic
14 artist intentions: a Case for Quality Covers 231
Remy Miller
BACk Cover: ePiLoGUe
15 appreciating Cover Songs: Stereophony 243
Deena Weinstein
Bibliography 253
Index 265
notes on Contributors
Lee Barron is Professor of Media Culture and Society at university of
northumbria. He has published extensively in journals such as Body & Culture,
The Journal of Popular Culture, Chapter and Verse, International Review of the
Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, and in a range of edited collections on popular
music and film.
B. Lee Cooper is the author of 15 books on various aspects of popular music,
including the three volume series Rock Music in American Culture (Haworth,
1995–99), and more than 400 articles and book/record reviews. one of his recent
publications is an anthology of essays on New Orleans Music: Legacy and Survival
(2008).
Don Cusic is Professor of Music Business at Belmont university in nashville,
tennessee. He is the author of 12 books on popular music, including a biography
on eddy arnold and gospel music.
Andrew G. Davis recently completed his Ma thesis on political satirist
Bill Hicks in the Department of Communication & Journalism at auburn
university in alabama. Davis is the co-founder and executive Director of the
Feathered Serpent Collective, a multi media arts management firm. He is host of
Grown Folks’ Show, a weekly public radio broadcast Wegl/alabama specializing
in funk, r & B, soul, groove and blues.
Joshua S. Duchan is a Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Music Department
at Bowling green State university in ohio. He has published several articles on
various dimensions of college a cappella.
Stuart Lenig is a professor of theatre at Columbia State Community College in
tennessee. He is completing a book on glam rock to be published by Praeger
Press.
Greg Metcalf is a lecturer at the Smithsonian and an adjunct professor at the
Smithsonian university of Maryland, the Maryland institute College of art and
Johns Hopkins university in departments of american Studies, art History,
Comparative literature, english and Humanities. He has published works on
film, art, popular culture and celebrity identity in the work of Andy Warhol. He is
currently working on a book on the DvD novel for Praeger Press.
viii PLAY IT AGAIN: COVER SONGS IN POPULAR MUSIC
remy Miller is Professor of art, Memphis College of the arts in tennessee and
fronts the band the remainders. His paintings, drawings and sculptures have been
exhibited in art galleries and museums regionally and nationally.
George Plasketes is Professor of radio-television-Film and Popular Culture at
auburn university in alabama. He has authored two books on elvis Presley images
and fanaticism, and various other works on music, media and popular culture.
His most recent book is B-Sides, Undercurrents and Overtones: Peripheries to
Popular in Music, 1960 to the Present (ashgate, 2009).
russell reising, Professor of american literature & Culture, university of
toledo, recently was selected to deliver the opening address at the rock and roll
Hall of Fame and museum for its special show on psychedelic music, “I Want to
Take You Higher.” He has published two books for Ashgate’s “Popular and Folk
Music Series”—one, an award-winning volume on The Beatles’ Revolver, and
another on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.
Sheldon Schiffer is an associate Professor of Film at georgia State university
in atlanta. His interests are in subcultures and their appearance and expressions
in film, music, and media. His films include The Rise and Fall of Black Velvet
Flag, a documentary on the 1990s lounge-punk band. His new works examine
american appropriation of afro-Brazilian martial art, Capoeira in cinema, music
and popular culture.
erik Steinskog is an associate Professor in Musicology at the grieg-academy,
Department of Music, university of Bergen. His articles on queer pop, opera
and aura have been published in Trickster, Studia Musicolgica Norvegica, and
The Actualities of Aura: Twelve Studies on Walter Benjamin, a volume which he
co-edited.
David tough is assistant Professor of audio engineering technology at Belmont
university in nashville. He has worked for Capitol records, Warner Chappell and
BMi Music Publishing, and Wea Distribution, and as a producer, engineer and
writer for several independent artists in los angeles and nashville.
Deena Weinstein, Professor of Sociology, DePaul university in Chicago, is author
of Heavy Metal: The Music and its Culture (De Capo, 2000), several sociology
texts, and countless articles on postmodernism, media, celebrity, youth culture
and rock.
Christine r. yano is Professor of anthropology, university of Hawaii and author
of Tears of Longing: Nostalgia and the Nation in Japanese Popular Song (Harvard.
2002).
general editor’s Preface
the upheaval that occurred in musicology during the last two decades of the
twentieth century has created a new urgency for the study of popular music
alongside the development of new critical and theoretical models. a relativistic
outlook has replaced the universal perspective of modernism (the international
ambitions of the 12-note style); the grand narrative of the evolution and dissolution
of tonality has been challenged, and emphasis has shifted to cultural context,
reception and subject position. together, these have conspired to eat away at the
status of canonical composers and categories of high and low in music. a need has
arisen, also, to recognize and address the emergence of crossovers, mixed and new
genres, to engage in debates concerning the vexed problem of what constitutes
authenticity in music and to offer a critique of musical practice as the product of
free, individual expression.
Popular musicology is now a vital and exciting area of scholarship, and the
Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series presents some of the best research in the
field. Authors are concerned with locating musical practices, values and meanings
in cultural context, and may draw upon methodologies and theories developed
in cultural studies, semiotics, poststructuralism, psychology and sociology.
The series focuses on popular musics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
it is designed to embrace the world’s popular musics from acid Jazz to Zydeco,
whether high tech or low tech, commercial or non-commercial, contemporary or
traditional.
Derek B. Scott,
Professor of Critical Musicology,
university of leeds, uk