Someone had an idea: get a band that has made a career of doing cover versions of songs from (loosely) the New Wave era and have them curate a two-disc selection of (loosely) New Wave-era bands doing covers of songs from earlier times.
The result can be viewed here.
As you can see, they have done a pretty good job of it. Nice to see the Silicon Teens given top billing: they are one group that seems to have completely fallen through the cracks of the space-time continuum, sadly. Also full marks for avoiding "Money" by the Flying Lizards: "Move On Up" will do nicely (although the Jam also covered that, perhaps a little bit too reverentially for it to have been included on this comp, but that would have allowed in turn for the inclusion of the FLizards' fine version of "Summertime Blues"). And Magazine's Barry Adamson-led assault on Sly Stone's "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again)" should have been squeezed in.
Whatever. As things stand, this collection still manages to include three of my all-time favourite songs, covers or no: Snakefinger winding his way around Kraftwerk's "The Model", Devo's extraordinary version of "Satisfaction (I Can't Get Me No)", which I think I have mentioned before around here, and (ditto) The Slits definitively spoiling Marvin's "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" for anyone who may later have had a notion to record it, in the same way that Hendrix appropriated Dylan's "All Along The Watchtower" in an earlier era, making the song all but untouchable from then on (heck, even Dylan himself took to playing the "Hendrix version" in concert).
(There's probably a thesis in there somewhere, along the lines of why is it that someone's own song always seems like fair game for other artists, whereas a cover version of someone else's song can become an unimpeachable standard. But I'm not going to write it.)
