"street spirit" - the darkness

"fade out again"



sitting in a pub in the countryside on a sunny afternoon, eating a moderately generous amount of reasonably pleasant food, and gently despairing at the choices of piped music at barely audible volume - an inoffensive-as-possible mix of 70s "classics" and modern ballads - when jamie cullum's smug little cover of high and dry came on. with my mind wandering away from the conversation in hand i was thinking of the folly of doing a radiohead cover when i remembered this one. it was one of the first darkness tracks i heard and at the time it raised my opinion of them beyond being a one trick novelty act - though i have since returned to the one-trick-novelty-act theory. but this reinvention of the song as a huge screaming rock song was invigourating and my mind kept returning to it throughout the afternoon - until the conversation turned to slagging off my ex which held my attention somewhat more

"dancing in the moonlight" - thin lizzy

"i always get chocolate stains on my pants"


i first got into this song on a smashing pumpkins acoustic bootleg where it is haunting and great, and then got into the original which is more powerful in its own way.

the main trouble with cover versions is that - even if you totally understand the lyric and empathise with the emotion behind it and can use it to express your own emotions - noone can ever convey the message of the words with as much emotional power as the person who wrote them.

hearing this song so much on that stupid cider advert is starting to make me sick of it - i really hope that doesn't continue.