Bad Cover Version is going retro-90s today!  In addition to purchasing a plaid skirt and blue cords and even trying on a dress made of flannel (I put it back!  I realized I looked like I was wearing a lumberjack’s nightgown, if lumberjacks wore nightgowns), I heard something that reminded me of this cover.

The Lemonheads’ singer, Evan Dando, was the indie-rock pretty boy of the early 1990s.  He dated Winona Ryder.  He dated, but supposedly and infamously did not sleep with, Juliana Hatfield.  Kathleen Hanna wrote a weird zine about his fame.  He appeared in People magazine’s list of the 50 most beautiful people.

And then he became a crack addict.  Good-bye slacker sexpot fame!

The following cover of “Mrs. Robinson” was released in tandem with the video release of The Graduate.  Supposedly, the band hated it and didn’t want it to be released.  But why then shoot a video?  Why record it in the first place?   If they hated it, I completely understand.  I hate, hate, hated this version when it came out.

… On the other hand, I just listened to it, and I don’t find it as offensive as I once did.  Am I just nostalgic for the early 1990s?  Or have I heard it so many times that I have succumbed to its sound?

It was almost immediately after last week’s intro to Bad Cover Version’s Bad Cover Versions that I completely randomly asked myself, “What are Depeche Mode doing these days?”  So, I toddled over to their website, where I saw that … wait… what?

Coldplay has done a “cover” of Depeche Mode’s video for “Enjoy the Silence.”  You know, the one where Dave Gahan wears a big, long, furry king’s mantle and crown, and walks about the countryside looking windswept and pretentious?  It’s supposed to be one of their videos that is “artsy,” directed by Anton Corbijn (who has photographed a lot of people, but perhaps none so iconically as Depeche Mode and U2).

Coldplay’s video is for “Viva La Vida,” one of their many songs suggestive of putting U2 in a blender with an orchestra and adding a little bit of the spirit–though not sound–of Dave Matthews.  They’re just slimy enough that you know Chris Martin is doing it not because he believes Coldplay are good, but because he knows that they will appeal to an audience that is relatively underserved but has lots of cash: those upwardly mobile, middle-class kids who have yet to develop real taste but know that taste exists, and so they play it safe with milquetoast music.

Copying Depeche Mode’s video–or, more precisely, Anton Corbijn’s visual style–is a move from the same dance.  Anton Corbijn’s photography is at once accessible and artistic, often featuring extraordinarily well known bands in very remote places.  And, as we all know, landscapes are “artistic.”

His series of videos for Depeche Mode were oftentimes a little bit weird in plot, but by no means visually assaulting.  Often filmed in grainy black and white, or alternately in bright, bleeding, oversaturated color, his videos for Depeche Mode often featured the band interacting with very sexy women (e.g. “Personal Jesus”).

In “Enjoy the Silence,” though, Corbijn made lead singer Dave Gahan the visual focus against the Swiss Alps, with shots of the whole band posing seductively randomly thrown in (Oh, and there were shots of that omnipresent Violator rose, too).  Supposedly, the video’s storyline alludes to The Little Prince.  But mostly it’s just a guy dressed as a king, walking around with a deck chair, who, according to Corbijn, was a man with everything in the world and just wanted a place to sit.

All of which brings me to Coldplay’s video.  The title and lyrics of the song “Viva La Vida” lend themselves easily to the kingly theme.  But, wait a minute: one thing that made the Depeche Mode video at least a little interesting was that it was completely random.  Dave Gahan is a king, wandering around with a deck chair?  OK, that’s kind of fun.  But with Coldplay, we have things spelled out for us, because we’re stupid and middlebrow and not that clever (or so Chris Martin thinks of us).

Also, Coldplay’s video puts the king in the city, looking lonely, and in town models, looking large, instead of in the windswept mountains.  Oh, and instead of carrying a chair, he’s got a painting.  Lacking the interest of “What the hell is he doing out in the Swiss Alps with a lawn chair?”, the video is pretty lame.  Also, if I were Corbijn, I’d also be up in arms about how poorly edited the whole thing is in comparison to the original.  Corbijn, though, actually directed the video, making it somehow a bit of an in-joke that I just don’t get.

Anyway, here’s the Coldplay version:

And Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence”:

NOTE: “ROCK HISTORY, WHAT I LEAVE OUT” RETURNS TOMORROW!  I just ran into a bit of a deadline here today in my real life.

Today was a busy day.  And it looks like all Fridays are going to be that way from now on.  Thus, the introduction of a new series on the blog: Bad Cover Version’s Bad Cover Versions!  It will feature, rather obviously, some of the worst rip-offs, remakes, and regurgitations of fine pop tunes.

Bad Cover Version’s Bad Cover Versions #1: Pat Boone’s “Ain’t That a Shame” (1955)

Boone is one of the worst offenders in pop history; he may have, ironically, helped integrate music.  Back in 1955, Pat Boone scored a big hit covering Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That a Shame,” which had gone to #1 on the R&B charts.  Of course, songs that had gone to #1 on the R&B charts probably hadn’t done so on the pop charts, which largly played white music to white audiences.

According to rock music history apocrypha, Boone’s producers had to push the uptight, stuffy Columbia University alum into singing the song, with its grammatically incorrect title.  The result was a forced, uptight, restrained, overly reverbed, swingless version that had neither rhythm nor blues.  In short, it was perfect for a white, middle-class audience.

The song went to #1 in the pop charts, thus justifiably pissing off Fats Domino’s co-writer Dave Bartholemew for all eternity.  Boone would continue, throughout the 1950s, to shamelessly record songs that black artists had made popular with black audiences, including Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” and “Long Tall Sally,” and the Orioles’ “It’s Too Soon To Know.”  And he wasn’t doing it out of homage, but out of opportunity:  Boone would typically record the song a few weeks after the black artists reached the chart.  Sometimes, as in the case of “Tutti Frutti,” the songs would be on the charts at the same time.

Boone’s bowlderized versions had immediate and great success, but they are, thankfully, not the versions that we as a culture remember.  When Alan Freed (yes, of the payola scandal) began playing original artists instead of Pat Boone versions, teenagers began to demand the originals, if just to piss off their parents, who were much more likely to look kindly upon that nice Boone boy and less kindly upon that cross-dressing weirdo, Little Richard.  While Boone’s opportunism did earn him a good deal of cash, he was, as they say, on the wrong side of history.

Future suggestions for Bad Cover Version’s Bad Cover Versions?  Email ekkeenan at gmail dot com!  Or send me a tweet on Twitter.