What’s in a Song: Fever (2)

[This is the second of two posts about the popular song "Fever." Part 1 was a couple days ago, here.]

As I mentioned in Part 1 of this “Fever” mini-series, the song’s lyrics and pulsing rhythm (and reputation!) seem to lead immature and/or lazy performers down sexual pathways they haven’t really earned the privilege  of traveling. When a singer purrs the words “Never know how much I love you/Never know how much I care” while humping a microphone stand — well, it’s hard to imagine wanting to jump that performer’s bones. I just want to laugh.

So when you set out to post a handful of covers of “Fever,” from among the gazillion available, you’ve got to exercise some judgment, some restraint:

Say you’re sort of squinting as you run your thumb over the corner of the flip-card animation. Say you stop at random. And say you’ve landed on an MP3 of, I don’t know… say you’ve stopped at the Pussycat Dolls‘ cover. If you just state the obvious — Oooh, pretty girls! — you’re headed for disappointment to then conclude: “I bet they’ll do it justice!”

So anyway, those covers don’t count for me. What’s left ranges from the overly respectful — almost note-for-note, beat-by-beat respectful — to the out-there: covers which take the basic melody and bass line and flip them inside-out, making the song almost (almost) unrecognizable in the process.

To start, let’s listen to an instrumental version. “Elevator music” and karaoke accompaniments aside, there don’t seem to be a lot of these floating around, maybe with good reason: the lyrics are so bound up with the intimacy between a singer and a sung-to, that the notion of stripping them out entirely feels like a sort of theft — like having Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” hummed at you. An obvious solution, to my mind, is to honor the absent lyrics’ flirtatiousness, but cast the melody in a context of a different sort of flirtation: playful flirtation.

That’s sort of the approach taken by a pianist named Patrik “Piano” Maiani, in his jazzy interpretation below:

[Below, click Play button to begin. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left -- a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 4:50 long.]

(Who, you might reasonably wonder, is Patrik “Piano” Maiani? I have no idea. He’s got two different MySpace pages, here and here — the former seems to be for him, the latter for his music.* I’d never heard of him before finding this MP3.)

Dick Dale, “King of Surf Guitar,” takes a sort of middle route, alternating between vocal and instrumental breaks as he renders the song down in a vatful of his characteristic blend of reverb and bent notes:

[Below, click Play button to begin. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left -- a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 4:46 long.]

Aside from the guitar work, I appreciate about this cover that it downplays the finger-snaps or their substitutes (rim shots, hand claps and such) which often seem to be hammered in for the sake of hearkening back to the mid-1950s rather than for actual value. And I really like the progression in Dale’s voice, from nearly a murmur at the start, to a throat-busting crack at the end. That alone seems to tell a story, hmm?

Of the more “traditional” versions I listened to while preparing this post, I think I preferred Rita Coolidge’s most. Her voice and delivery are not Peggy Lee’s, of course, and I’m not sure I’d want them to be; the musical accompaniment (like Coolidge herself) sort of trembles on the line between country and pop. As any experienced flirt might tell you, any sort of tension you can add to the exchange at all — even the most subtle and unsaid — just beefs up the other party’s sense of something wonderful about to happen:

[Below, click Play button to begin. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left -- a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:30 long.]

Finally, two of the… the strangest covers I came across (not counting the ones in which the song is unrecognizable).

First, let me introduce you to a German group called The Beatlesøns (note the slash through the “o”). Here’s how the English-language version of their site characterizes their music:

Balkan, Irish, Country, Cajun, Flamenco, Chanson, and Rock’n'Roll — it’s good to have you as musical styles…

If you throw into this melting pot from the heavy metal guitar up to the accordion, the most diverse rock and folk instruments, and if you then spice all of this with new adaptations and melodies and pour it over selected hit carcasses of the last 50 years — then you’ll get what the Beatlesøns have been doing for 13 years now — TRASHPOLKA.

Their MySpace page adds:

The Beatlesøns’ sound is difficult to describe — imagine the Ramones supporting Debby Harry or Joan Jett singing along with Johnny Cash.

Their “Fever” is nowhere near as frightening as those descriptions might lead you to imagine; “Fever” may be a “hit carcass of the last 50 years,” but they’re not into desecration here):

[Below, click Play button to begin. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left -- a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:37 long.]

The last word in “Fever” covers? It’s hard to improve on Rita Moreno — one of my favorite mysteriously-never-hit-it-big performers — and Animal (of the Muppets), ultimately as uncontrollably feverish as ever:

So that’s pretty much all I’ve got to say about “Fever.” Except…

When I was first thinking about doing this post, it occurred to me how many songs play with fire (ha!) and heat as metaphors for sexual tension. (Not that this surprised me, y’know. It had just never occurred to me.)

And then I thought about Bruce Springsteen… First, he’s got his own song called “Fever,” which isn’t the same as the one we’ve been dealing with here. He’s got his “I’m On Fire,” whose sound speaks to loneliness as much as to sex. And finally, I thought of his song called “Fire,” a hit as recorded in 1978 by The Pointer Sisters. Interesting that Springsteen, too, plays with the “fevers of bygone years” theme: he does the Romeo-and-Juliet thing, too, but reaches way back to Samson and Delilah in place of Pocahontas and John Smith.

Here are The Pointer Sisters, and Springsteen’s “Fire”:

[Below, click Play button to begin. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left -- a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:31 long.]

Lyrics:

Fire
(by Bruce Springsteen; performance by The Pointer Sisters)

I’m ridin’ in your car,
You turn on the radio.
You’re pullin’ me close,
I just say no.
I say, “I don’t like it.”
But you know I’m a liar.
‘Cause when we kiss,
Ooo-ooo, fire!

Late at night,
You’re takin’ me home.
You say you wanna stay.
I say, “I wanna be alone.”
I say, “I don’t love you.”
But you know I’m a liar.
‘Cause when we kiss,
Ooo-ooo, fire!

You had a hold on me,
Right from the start.
A grip so tight,
I couldn’t tear it apart.
My nerves are jumpin’,
Actin’ like a fool.
Well, your kisses they burn,
But my heart stays cool.

Well, Romeo and Juliet,
Samson and Delilah,
Baby, you can bet,
A love they couldn’t deny.
My words say, “Split,”
But my words they lie.
‘Cause when we kiss,
Ooo-ooo, fire…

___________________________

* Wondering why Maiani has a photo of President Obama and family on his MySpace page? He — Maiani — is the inventor of a form of music notation, called EZ/Muzik, which is used to teach someone to play the piano as quickly as possible. On the grand piano in that photo is a copy of an EZ/Music book.