Under The Covers Part Four: The Reckoning

Oh! I've just realised that a chapter of this particular history has, thus far, been left unwritten (I didn't just realise this, of course, I was just trying to make it look like I didn't plan my blog meticulously like some kind of obsessive weirdo). That's right, the story of the covers performed by Hands of Cuba has yet to be told. Were mistakes learnt from The Quatermass Experiment? Did we manage to actually not butcher a song? Could I get any more sexy? Well the answers to these questions will be revealed... right now.

In general the answer to all three questions is yes (especially the last one). In general Hands of Cuba relied less on covers than Quatermass, which was a wise decision in my opinion. There was also less of the "let's suggest a slighty stupid cover and then learn it but never actually play it", which was somewhat annoying and wasted an awful lot of time. In fact we only covered 8 songs during the course of our, admittedly short, career and I know this because I'm written them all down in a typical fit of list making nerdiness.

Some naturally didn't work as well as others. A synthed-up "This Charming Man", as well as getting the fanboys huffing and puffing over their NHS glasses, was perhaps an idea that worked best in its original conception, recorded alone in a bedroom on an old 4 track by my beautiful and monstrously talented other half (hi!). Similarly an electro version of Ash's "Burn Baby Burn" never really worked as well as it should have done. Still, I got to play keyboard on that one and I even got to do the guitar solo, so I'm not complaining.

Even better a few covers I think we did really, really well and not only did we stamp our own mark on them but they even became live favourites, of a sort. "No More Heroes" was pretty damn good and had the advantage of being known by everyone but not too obvious but the real success story was our version of Liliput's "Die Matrosen". Quite how we managed to make a pretty obscure song written by four Swiss women in very bad English, which prominently features whistling and an out-of-tune saxophone into such a hit is a mystery to me even now but we did it. In fact, download it now if you can. It's really ace.

So where am I going with all this? I'm not really sure except to give some friendly advice to new bands. Covers are good to start off with but it's really much more satisfying to write and play your own stuff. Also don't pick any of the old "standards" to cover as you'll inevitably sound boring at best. That is unless you follow my third piece of advice: don't continue to play anything unless you can pffer a fresh twist on it (and no, playing it in a punk style doesn't count as a fresh twist; bands have been churning out that shit for years). Bands with record deals and everything don't follow that last piece of advice, naturally, but the ones who do are the ones who make memorable covers.

Oh and I'd like to take this opportunity to apologise to all Smiths fanboys out there. I am one of you really.