{"id":6981,"date":"2010-03-06T14:24:16","date_gmt":"2010-03-06T19:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=6981"},"modified":"2019-05-01T10:12:37","modified_gmt":"2019-05-01T14:12:37","slug":"whats-in-a-song-fever-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2010\/03\/whats-in-a-song-fever-2\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s in a Song: Fever<\/em> (2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

[This is the second of two posts about the popular song “Fever.” Part 1 was a couple days ago, here<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

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<\/a>‘ cover. If you just state the obvious — Oooh, pretty girls!<\/em> — you’re headed for disappointment to then conclude: “I bet they’ll<\/em> do it justice!”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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<\/em> flirtation.<\/p>\n

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

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

\"\"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:<\/p>\n\n

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<\/em> 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?<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n\n

Finally, two of the… the strangest<\/em> covers I came across (not counting the ones in which the song is unrecognizable).<\/p>\n

First, let me introduce you to a German group called The Beatles\u00f8ns (note the slash through the “o”). Here’s how the English-language version of their site characterizes their music<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Balkan, Irish, Country, Cajun, Flamenco, Chanson, and Rock’n’Roll — it’s good to have you as musical styles…<\/p>\n

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 Beatles\u00f8ns have been doing for 13 years now — TRASHPOLKA.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Their MySpace page<\/a> adds:<\/p>\n

The Beatles\u00f8ns’ sound is difficult to describe — imagine the Ramones supporting Debby Harry or Joan Jett singing along with Johnny Cash.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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):<\/p>\n\n

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:<\/p>\n