Oh J Mascis. Is there any song you cannot make your own, no matter how strongly identified the original is with its creator?
It is a well-known truism that cover albums tend to be a sign of artistic stagnation. There are exceptions, of course, but not many.
I don't care: I'd be delighted with a new cover album every month, just J running down whatever song catches his fancy, his laconic drawl accompanied by his lacerating guitar. Do me like that, J. Do me just like that.
Let us be very clear about something: this is not better than the original. Eddie Hazel's original solo is one of the most incendiary yet heartfelt and nakedly emotional pieces of music—not just guitar solos—ever committed to tape. The legend has it that Funkadelic mastermind George Clinton told Hazel—a mere pup at 21 years old—to play as though he'd just learned his mother had died...and then learned she hadn't actually. Whether or not that story's apocryphal is almost beyond the point, because that is exactly what Hazel's solo sounds like.
This cannot surpass Hazel's original, because it's not possible to. But it is an amazing tribute, paying homage to Hazel while very clearly allowing J Mascis's own personality shine through: but in the process making it obvious just how big an influence Hazel had on Mascis's style.
If I owned a business, I would make this the hold music. (This shows pretty definitively why I don't own a business.)
In addition to Watt's admirably restrained bass, it's a neat touch to have Funkadelic's Bernie Worrell on keys.
I know I know I know. I'm not supposed to like Edie Brickell. She's an easy touchstone of all that's clichéd about her decade. She's a ripoff of Rickie Lee Jones (who was herself originally accused of borrowing a bit too heavily from Joni Mitchell). Her lyrics—"philosophy is the talk on a cereal box/religion is the smile on a dog"—could arguably verge on what's the word I'm looking for oh yes absolutely mortifying. Her mouth could swallow Toledo.
I'll grant you all of it. Still, she wrote catchy melodies and may have been not entirely displeasing to the eye and what can I say? I'm shallow.
But also honest enough to admit that if she looked like this guy I wouldn't have given her the time of day, and that'd have been a shame. 'cuz even though I suspect there's at least a little bit of irony in his choice of cover here, it doesn't matter, because it works anyway.
