When is a cover song better than the original? Only you can decide. This week Crooked Fingers takes on Prince’s “When You Were Mine.” MAGNET’s Edward Fairchild pulls the pin. Take cover!
For the 2002 Reservoir Songs EP, Crooked Fingers recorded a handful of cover tunes, including this song by Prince. The band has recently announced plans for another round, this time featuring songs by Merle Haggard, Moby Grape, the Kinks and others. Reservoir Songs Volume II is currently seeking production support via indie-friendly project-funding site Kickstarter. A pledge of $6 will net you a high-quality digital download of the EP, and higher pledges offer fans the option for limited-edition screen-printed artwork and autographed test pressings. But the real prizes would be for those fans willing to spend $1,000 or more: A grand will get you the album, plus a Crooked Fingers recording of the cover song of your choice to be offered as a digital-download bonus track (some restrictions apply), and a pledge of $2,500 gets you the EP plus a private concert for you and all your friends.
The Cover:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=270nz2Fe59E
The Original:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LglBZESVcCI [poll id=”83″]
6 replies on “Take Cover! Crooked Fingers Vs. Prince”
The first time I heard Eric Bachmann play “When U Were Mine” was with an early incarnation of CF at the now closed Little Bros. The band played the first three songs from the floor with no mics. After he announced that the next song was to be a Prince song, someone sarcastically shouted out “Yeah!” Bachmann was not amused and responded, “No, really. It’s a good song.” That performance was absolutely beautiful.
A girl once put the Cyndi Lauper cover of this song on a breakup mixtape, and it broke my heart. Hearing Eric Bachmann’s version reopened that wound.
A cover can’t really supplant the original – by definition, the original has to be greater than any derivative. But the Crooked Fingers version is a very close second.
(can we get a better version up on here?)
Man, if I had some money, I’d give 10,000 and have Eric do another two EPs. That man has never had a musical fuck up. Every Archers, Barry Black, and CF album is great.
Wow. This is a very different arrangement from the CF version on Reservoir Songs. No bridge, and a little faster, too. I think the album version is a little better than this live one, but I always love to hear him mix things up.
I know I didn’t vote. I love Prince’s and I love Eric’s. I love the cello (or bowed bass) and banjo combo on the album version. I love the achingly slow take, making it appropriately sad. I also love the up tempo, synth riff in Prince’s making it almost a different song. Is he excited about lover her more and the usic in Prince’s version suggests? Or lamenting the loss as Eric’s does?
BOTH!
I love the Crooked Fingers take. It doesn’t sound like a cover. I saw CF before the Reservoir Songs EP came out and they did a version of ‘Born to Run’ that blew my mind! Other great covers, Lemonheads take on ‘Different Drum’. Yo La Tengo on Jackson Browne’s ‘Somebody’s Baby’. Dinosaur Jr on Teenage Fanclub’s ‘Everything Flows’ (and OF COURSE ‘Just Like Heaven’).
It’s “just like a train” not “just like a dream.”
I heard a folk duo do this in a Dupont Circle coffeehouse in D.C. in 1987. Roughly the same idea as CF’s. Still prefer Prince’s but its’ all good.