It appears that Shonen Knife’s cover has some pop cultural legs as well, as the song appeared a year after its initial release as the closing theme to the 1995 film The Last Supper and has shown up again as recently as last year’s Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life reboot. Their version is definitely faster and edgier, though. Punk covers of ’50s and ’60s songs aren’t a booming genre, but there’s a surprising number of them out there. But even before that, Shonen Knife began their history of important covers when alternative-flavored tribute album to The Carpenters, If I Were A Carpenter, came out in 1994. If you’re looking for a good place to start with the band, they just released their first “greatestest hits” album Rake It In this past May. At its best, a good cover song can be better than the original. Author Topic: punk covers of 60s songs (Read 17194 times) reducer. VideoI collect cover songs. Girl Groups & Punk Beats: The Covers by The Dollyrots, released 12 June 2020 1. While the Riverboat Gamblers shave a little of the pop polish off of “Let’s Go Crazy” by approaching it with a more raw abandon, the fact that they never quite capture the outright fury of Prince’s original guitar work may be the most punk revelation about the whole cover. 4. Their take on the Swedish pop quartet’s 1975 single “S.O.S.” retains the original’s minor-key intro and verses while bolstering the major key chorus blasts with additional horn and guitar work. This cover is a prime example of a band hitting its stride right out of the gate and it actually serves as a fantastic entry point for getting acquainted with X’s catalog. Punk rock Christmas tunes are rare; punk rock Chanukah songs are even rarer. On August 6, 1996, the Ramones played their final show at the Palace in Hollywood. Most likely, all kinds of different bands, eras and sounds. And for more love songs for the record books, here are The 50 Most Romantic Songs … However, their Crystals/Ramones mash-up of “Da Doo Ron Ron/I Wanna Be Sedated” serves the dual purpose of highlighting the band’s best selling points (lead singer Kelly Ogden’s charmingly plucky vocal delivery and Luis Cabezas’ lock-step rhythm guitar playing) while also framing their sonic influences in a cleverly meta way. So much so that anytime the term “punk cover” is uttered into the ether, Topper Headon’s rumbling drum intro starts thundering somewhere in the distance. © 2021 Paste Media Group. The song that put rap-rock on the map, and gave Aerosmith a comeback. Ruby Soho 6. Tarantino not only featured the song on the film’s soundtrack, but he also included multiple scenes of the band performing a few different songs, including an extended sequence where almost the entirety of “Woo Hoo” ran over multiple shots of The 5.6.7.8’s playing along. Here are 10 alternative covers that are comparable to, if not better than, their original versions. This is what happens when the worlds of punk and metal collide (Image credit: Getty) There was once a time when punks and metalheads were mortal enemies. To that extent, they’ve ceremoniously covered artists like Mötley Crüe, KISS, Judas Priest and Alice Cooper, but it’s their strutting cover of Generation X’s “Dancing with Myself” that most adequately captures The Donnas’ musical moxie. Bryan Ferry, I Put A Spell on You (Screamin' Jay Hawkins) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESJxRt9I-Ag The Rolling Stones, Not … Walk This Way-Run DMC. You can also check out their recent live session in the Paste Studio in New York. And if you want to listen to the songs in question, I’ve done a lot of the work for you; just click on the YouTube link at the bottom of each song description. Here was a song that combined three of my greatest sonic fetishes: covers, punk rock, and the ’50s. The ultimate fuck off love song. After signing to Epic Records on the strength of their second album Prison Bound, Social D frontman Mike Ness dialed up the rockabilly and country elements of their sound for their first major label release, 1990’s Social Distortion. For their cover, The Ataris managed to recapture Henley’s wistfully reminiscent tone while revamping the song’s sonic palette and cleverly swapping out the lyric’s Grateful Dead reference for a more relevant punk-themed update: “Out on the road today I saw a Black Flag sticker on a Cadillac.” Within the glut of early-’00s pop-punk covers, The Ataris’ “Boys of Summer” remains one of the era’s top-shelf standouts. Punk cover supergroup Me First and the Gimme Gimmes released their very first 7” single in 1995 and it contained a John Denver cover on each side: “Country Roads” on the A and “Leaving On A Jet Plane” on the B. Pepper Knew My Father (1988) and This Bird Has Flown (2005). While the band had been covering Johnny Cash songs in concert as far back as 1985, Ness decided to commit his newest eruptive homage to The Man in Black to tape, helping to earn Social D their first gold-selling record and creating a signature song for the band that is still a euphoric cornerstone of their live shows. Right before the deluge of ‘80s punk covers that oversaturated the late-’90s and early-’00s, Bremerton, Wash. pop punk trio MxPx beat most bands to the punch with their knockout cover … But if you’d rather keep your rowdy and raucous reworkings to singles, please find the 30 best punk rock cover songs below. For example, their five-track EP The Holiday Has Been Cancelled contains elements of wah-wah horn lounge rock, ska-tinged hardcore, twangy alt-country cowpunk and an ABBA cover. The very genre flew in the face of racism, for example, by combining white “hillbilly” country music with black rhythm and blues music. Before we get to this list, though, have you checked out Soundfly’s podcast “Themes and Variation ” yet? Throughout the years, she’s chalked up an extremely successful track record of channeling other artists and their songs, but her decision to cover a television theme song in a non-ironic, straight ahead way was an incredibly bold move. Beginning in the late 70’s and early 80’s, there have were a disproportionate number of punk and new wave bands covering ’60s songs with either affection, cynicism or just plain silliness. “Last Kiss” by J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers, covered by Pearl Jam. However, the album’s most pleasant surprise is L7’s roaring (and thematically on-the-nose) cover of “Hanging on the Telephone” that opens Parallel Lines. A great punk cover of the Crickets song. After singing and playing guitar in The Runaways throughout the latter half of the ‘70s and then producing the only studio album the Germs ever made in 1979, Jett went on to start a trailblazing solo career that is still going strong to this day. A smooth, classy reggae cover of the Beatles’ 1965 hit from hardcore punk pioneers Bad Brains who used to pedal this one out live. When The Ataris released their fourth album So Long, Astoria in 2003, “In This Diary” was tagged as the album’s lead single. 50 great post-punk songs. And if you want to listen to the songs in question, I’ve done a lot of the work for you; just click on the YouTube link at the bottom of each song … Walking On Sunshine 8. While The 5.6.7.8’s kinetically bouncy cover of the 1950s rockabilly quasi-instrumental “Woo Hoo” was originally released on the Japanese trio’s 1996 album Bomb the Twist, it gained a significant amount of popularity in the early 2000s thanks to its in inclusion in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Volume 1. Expect gelled hair and black t-shirts aplenty. Pop-punk maestros New Found Glory have been putting their own spin on songs from movies for decades (From The Screen To Your Stereo, volumes 1 … The cover itself was critically acclaimed, with many including Paul Simon himself complimenting the version for its inventiveness, punk aesthetic and respect to the original. Not all of the Punk Goes… releases were covers, and this is our first entry from a non-cover song. First, the 1980s seem to be the decade that is most ripe for the original source material to be covered. 5. With its roots stretching as far back as a 1902 Broadway musical, Dropkick Murphys’ interpolation of “Tessie” earns the distinction of being the oldest original on this punk covers list (although it’s certainly not the oldest original in the Celtic punk band’s catalog of covers that’s rich with Irish folk traditionals). The Sex Pistols were one of the quintessential punk bands of the ’70s. Shadowplay-The Killers. The Plugz were a Mexican-American punk band that formed in the 1970s. What many people fail to see, however, is that 1950s rock ‘n’ roll was the beginning of the nonconformist attitudes that permeated much of the ’60s and ’70s. The 1974 Bryan Ferry cover recasts the song as a sinister semi-joke, capped by an incendiary and mad guitar solo by Davy O’List. It's easy to look at Rhino's four-disc 2006 box Rockin' Bones: 1950s Punk and Rockabilly and confuse it with the label's 1999 four-disc box Loud, Fast & Out of Control: The Wild Sounds of '50s Rock.It has the same garish neo-pulp artwork, covers the same era, and even has several of the same songs, usually big hits like Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" or Jerry Lee Lewis' … Punk Goes Crunk came out in 2007, which is probably why it got away with being called Punk Goes Crunk. When she released her adaptation of Them’s “Gloria; as a single from her landmark debut album Horses, she used a scathing live cover of The Who’s “My Generation” as the single’s B-side. The blueprint of a punk band covering a punk song isn’t a guaranteed recipe for success, no matter how well-intentioned. It’s a very different interpretation of the song that Ghoti Hook’s, however; it’s slower and more thoughtful. Punk rock started in 1976 on New York’s Bowery, when four cretins from Queens came up with a mutant strain of blitzkrieg bubblegum. Yes, I’ve included a second cover of “Earth Angel” on this list, because Death Cab for Cutie’s is just as noteworthy (arguably more noteworthy, even) as Ghoti Hook’s. What more appropriate way to mark the first U.K. punk single than by thumbing your nose at the biggest band in the world on your B-side? Author: DelNuelo. 50. While the Sex Pistols and The Clash usually dominate any discussion about late-’70s U.K. punk bands, The Damned actually hold the distinction of releasing the first U.K. punk single (“New Rose”) and full length album (Damned Damned Damned), as well as being the first U.K. punk band to do a proper U.S. tour. It is a cover version of a reggae song by the Equals, written by member Eddy Grant, who had a number one hit in the US a couple of years later with "Electric Avenue." Punk Goes Pop Volume 4 spawned three singles: Pierce the Veil's cover of "Just the Way You Are", Woe, Is Me's cover of "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F. What comes to mind when you think of a "punk rock song?" Take a classic song and rip through it, reconstructing it into the then modern age. The surprise success of “Boys of Summer” resulted in The Ataris earning their highest chart rankings (No. our partners use cookies to personalize your experience, to show you ads based on your interests, and for measurement and analytics purposes. 12th September 2013. German thrash metal pioneers Sodom created a cover of thee 1963 hit song Surfin’ Bird, by the band Trashmen. Recorded for the 2004 movie Mean Girls, the song appears over the film’s closing credits and kicks off the hit-or-miss soundtrack in style. It’s an ingenious sonic smirk to the genre’s lineage that’s also just a really entertaining listen. Years before the platinum-selling polish they showed on 1997’s Let’s Face It, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones showed a spunky pioneering spirit on tracks like “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love.”. John Sellers | July 14, 2009 - 4:11 pm Author: DelNuelo. Third, in some exceptional cases, the cover versions unquestionably eclipse the original, as with The Clash’s “I Fought The Law,” Social D’s “Ring of Fire” and pretty much every Ramones cover. The song, however, was penned by the the masterful John Prine, who recently passed away from COVID-19. The acoustic punk song is a time-honored tradition that has seen a rise -- due to necessity -- during this year of isolation. 22. When they released In My Eyes at the tail end of 1981, they closed out the seven-and-a-half minute four-track EP with an aggressively furious cover of the 1960s pop single “Steppin’ Stone” made popular by bands like The Monkees and Paul Revere & The Raiders. Comprehensive as it was, we left open the question of what might be the world’s greatest individual covers. Released during the late summer of that year’s baseball season, the song went on to gain a second life as a Boston baseball anthem as the Red Sox went on to “reverse the curse” and win their first World Series in 86 years. Furthering the song’s serendipitous success, the band’s cover of “Woo Hoo” also popped up in quite a few commercials around that time period as well. Goldfinger often mixed various ska elements into their punk-fueled catalog, and while that shows up here in the song’s closing moments, their take on “99 Red Balloons” mostly roars along on only the purest open-throttled punk muscle. Once a common way to have music cover more territory, so-called “cover songs” are now largely novelties or tributes. This song is an incident that makes those songs rarer by one. Dancing With Myself 2. Bad Reputation 3. For X’s part, “Soul Kitchen” is almost unrecognizable as a Doors original, as Exene Cervenka’s unmistakable howl, John Doe’s gruff background vocals, Billy Zoom’s vigorous guitar work and D.J. Sometimes it was because the song was loved and sometimes it was with a snotty, year zero destruction of the past – oddly many of these versions now sound, arguably, better than the originals. The result ends up being two great tastes that taste great together as Graffin’s menacing bark plays perfectly off of Fat Mike’s snotty sneer and the singalong background harmonies are pretty spot-on, especially for a punk record that was recorded and mixed in just six days. Fun fact: This is the second song on this list (after “I Fought The Law”) originally written by Sonny Curtis, the singer-guitarist who fronted The Crickets after Buddy Holly’s death. Check out the Best Ever Covers of Madonna, Fleetwood Mac, Talking Heads, Beyoncé, Pink Floyd, and more here. Many people probably consider ’50s rock and punk rock polar opposites. 1. And thus, this list was born. Originally called “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone” for all of its ‘60s renditions, Ian MacKeye and company shaved down the title and ramped up the tempo for Minor Threat’s assaulting cover. Share This Story. This slot is supposed to be for a cover of Adam Sandler's "Chanukah Song" performed Aussie punks Yidcore, an all-Jewish punk group that plays covers of a lot of classic and contemporary Jewish songs. Its not surprising that they would cover a song by Ritchie Valens, one of the first Hispanic performers to hit the rock ‘n’ roll scene. Minor Threat accomplished a lot in their all-too-short career, including spearheading hardcore punk, revolutionizing the DIY work ethic, popularizing the straight edge movement and capturing one of the most iconic) (and most copied) punk photos of all time for their self-titled EP cover. 20 on the Billboard Hot 100) and scoring their only gold record as well. Its success caused Fearless to release more pop cover albums. While The Clash’s explosive take on the Sonny Curtis/Bobby Fuller Four classic “I Fought The Law” may not have been the first punk rock cover song ever recorded, it is arguably the finest. It shouldn’t seem so surprising, then, that many punk bands (and some indie rock bands) have paid homage to their rockin’ ancestors by recording their own versions of 1950s rock songs. . This isn’t the song ABBA was trying to write, but Portishead found its true heart. After multiple cover albums and almost 20 artist-dedicated singles, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes have perfected the art of the punk cover and you really can’t go wrong in picking any of their tracks. It was actually Johnny Cash ‘s wife-to-be, June Carter, that wrote the song “Ring of Fire.” Social Distortion’s take on the tune seems to channel a bit of Cash’s bad boy attitude while still injecting it with some originality. 3:50 0:30. While most punk covers from this period hovered around the cheesier songs of the 1980s, The Suicide Machines’ decision to reach a little farther back for their tip-of-the-hat and it certainly paid off with this incredibly fun cover. From soul to punk, classical to country, a wide array of ‘My Way’ covers have taken Frank Sinatra’s masterpiece into new realms. There’s something about covers – when done right – that make them stand out among everything in my music collection. 10 in our list of Best TV Theme Songs) struts in a way that is pitch perfect in tempo, delivery and snarl, while the dual liberated feminist icon symbolism adds an additional layer to her quintessential sonic swagger. Sometimes it was because the song was loved and sometimes it was with a snotty, year zero destruction of the past – oddly many of these versions now sound, arguably, better than the originals. There’s no denying that X’s 1980 debut album Los Angeles is one of the best and most influential punk albums of all time, thanks in some small part to what they did with their searing cover of “Soul Kitchen” by The Doors. As heard in future live show recordings, The Slits further evolved the song from their studio-recorded B-side to include more jungle tom drumming and to highlight its danceable nature even more. 2 on the Billboard Modern Rock Charts and No. A studio version of Ramone’s muscled-up take on the easygoing classic wouldn’t become available until almost a year after his 2001 death, showing up as the opening track to his first solo album, 2002’s Don’t Worry About Me. One track per release, ordered chronologically from 1977 to 1985 While 1995’s The Jerky Boys isn’t an especially memorable film, it’s soundtrack remains one of the more interesting and enjoyable movie-themed entries of the decade. This Backstreet Boys cover does what most good covers do — respects and toes the line of the original, while very much becoming something new. Not every cover hits the mark of course, but the Punk Goes series has provided us with come serious gems over the years. 9: “Oh Boy!” by Buddy Holly, covered by MxPx. Punk Rock Girls 12. They have their own cover album, Songs We Didn’t Write, which features a fast-paced, punk-rock take on The Penguin’s “Earth Angel.”, 7: “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash, covered by Social Distortion. Here are 10 of the best. When Dead Kennedys released their debut album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables in 1980, songs like “Holiday in Cambodia,” “California Über Alles” and “Kill the Poor” thrust the feisty foursome (and especially lead singer-songwriter Jello Biafra) into the limelight as a politically charged punk band. Throughout their six albums and various EPs, singles and compilations, Mad Caddies have continuously augmented their punk approach by fearlessly mixing in multiple other genres to create their distinct-yet-divergent sound (polka and sea shanties included). In fact, their satirical take on the Hitler Youth would become the foundation of anti-Reaganism in much of the punk scene.