Matty Groves, Covers and Copyright
I admitted in a comment yesterday that I don’t really understand my general dislike of cover versions. I don’t object to them at all, just the opposite in fact: generally I am really interested to hear them, and I like the fact that songs exist in that sort of malleable state, unfixed by any one ‘correct’ interpretation. The problem is not in principle, just practise; I simply tend not to like them very much, and I don’t know why.
To make matters even less logical, I love people playing folk songs, and of course the whole folk tradition is one of repeating and reinterpreting songs and phrases, tunes and riffs which have gone before. It’s one of the fundamental assumptions of the whole medium in fact: that each generation add their own layer to the existing ones, and in turn make their contribution to the richness of the art form.
In fact, if anything makes a mockery of the current abuse of copyright law by media corporations it is folk music. The idea that you need to incentivise people to create is just laughable. In fact the converse is true, as the art from every repressive regime in the world shows, no matter how much you discourage people from being creative you just can’t bloody stop them. I’m not arguing against people making money from their art, but the copyright law at the moment is increasingly becoming a straitjacket to creativity, the need for which is proven a lie by folk, which is essentially a big long chain of mashups, samples, rehashing and reworking.
Before anyone jumps to the wrong conclusion, incidentally, I am not suggesting for a second that copyright law should be abandoned. That would, I think, be silly. But it does need to be drastically rewritten so that it supports rather than strangles the artform it claims to protect and actually serves the genuine interests of the artists rather than those of the industries which exploit them.
Mashups and samples, for example, are so prohibitively expensive and legally complicated that a great many people have simply ceased to go anywhere near them. Cafes and bars have become increasingly reluctant to support live music because of license-peddlers extorting money from them in case anyone plays a cover of someone else’s song. This kind of oppressive atmosphere should disgust anyone with even a fragment of creative instinct. It’s almost a pathetic as that preening, self-congratulatory buffoon Damien Hirst suing a schoolkid for using an image of one of his sculptures in a collage. If Hirst were first and foremost an artist rather than a celebrity-based commercial enterprise it would never have occurred to him to do anything so craven. That’s how art fucking works, you prick: re-hashing, re-cycling and re-interpreting.
So what brings on this little rant? Well it was triggered by a song called Matty Groves which I mentioned yesterday when reviewing the Alela Diane and Alina Hardin EP. I’ve heard a few versions of that song now, all with subtly different lyrics, from the one on Alela & Alina, to Fairport Convention, to James Yorkston & the Big Eyes Family Players, although that last version goes by the name of Little Musgrave. It’s fascinating not only to hear all these interpretations, but also to guess at the family tree of the song itself by how far the lyrics have diverged in the respective versions.
Fairport Convention – Matty Groves
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James Yorkston & the Big Eyes Family Players – Little Musgrave
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There’s another song, however, which really piqued my interest, called Lady Margaret. It’s by the sadly now-defunct 18th Day of May and while it is not obviously a version of Matty Groves, there are enough similarities to get you scratching your head a little. The rhythm and riff could tenuously be described as similar, but that’s the same for a lot of songs, and nothing I would want to hang my hat on. Instead it’s the actual lyrics, which a particularly familiar bit of phrasing, which made me raise my eyebrows:
“How do you like the bed, she said/ How do you like the sheets/ And how do you like that pretty fair maid/ Lying in your arms so sweet”.
The 18th Day of May – Lady Margaret
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Compare this to Matty Groves, when Lord Donald (or whoever, it keeps changing) comes home to find his missus canoodling with the protagonist:
“How do you like my feather bed, he said/ And how to you like my sheets?/ How do you like my lady/ Who lies in your arms asleep?”
Now, given that’s as similar as the songs get I assume that this was simply a fairly common form for a rhyming couplet back then and this is more a case of both songs borrowing from a similar template – but at some point someone somewhere has lifted that phrase pretty much wholesale from someone else’s song. And that’s trivial enough a conclusion, until you start to wonder whether or not that would be allowed to happen today.
I don’t know the answer to that, of course, but I have my doubts. More worrying is the amount of self-censorship which might well prevent that particular connection between two songs ever seeing the light of day. I think about songs like REM’s brilliant Hope, based on the melody to Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne. Now, REM are on a massive label and can finaigle the kind of deal necessary to get that kind of thing sorted. Tiny bands might do it anyway, hoping to fly under the radar. But if people are now not using samples because of the extortionate fees and arcane legal obstructions involved then how long before that kind of musical borrowing gets binned before it is even born because a small indie label or self-releasing band simply don’t have the power, time or money to handle the legal implications?
I would put money on that already having happened plenty of times already. Hell, I’d be nervous about trying to release a record on our label with a cover on it, never mind a sample or some sort of borrowed riffage, and that kind of thing is actively harming culture and artists, not protecting them. It barely even benefits the cartels behind this racketeering except in one sense: control. In my own industry (medical device design) and a great many others copyright law is being exploited in a nasty form of land-grab, by which people use it simply to throttle creativity and thus prevent competition, consolidating their control. And that is absolutely, definitely not what copyright law was conceived to do.
R.E.M. – Hope
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i’d forgotten how good Hope and the album up was……going to dig it out tonight!
Up’s got some great tunes on it, Walk Unafraid, Why Not Smile, Lotus..
There’s a fair bit of noodling on there too, though, for me.
If someone was to take one my own ideas and make it their own I’d be flattered.
I fucking love Up. Perhaps their most underrated album.
No Daniel, you be being exploited by Communists.
Not if I sued them, afters!
good post. rem are shit.
Dear god almighty, that’s heresy!
you could say that about a lot of bands Michael!
i do
rather i should say ‘i could say that about a lot of bands!, Michael’
you do
nah i do quite enjoy the earlier stuff but it seems like theyve just been pumping out anything for the last decade. i didnt mean to provoke such an outburst!
Well I think I pretty much packed in listening to them with any real affection after Up and New Adventures in HiFi. Accelerate was pretty good though, but there was about fifteen years of shit inbetween, agreed.
That’s the bit I really like about this blog, all that effort and all anyone does is decide when REM became shit…..brilliant a real music blog.
just for the record I quite like Pretty Persuasion
I like cover versions when the coverer is being at least as inventive as the original author. I guess would like copyright to reflect that, rather than the assumption that a song is composed of five sequential notes and verse chorus verse chorus.
I remember some of my lectures on the psychology of creativity back in the day. As I recall, imposing limits on creativity tends to result in more creative products, so perhaps copyright is one of the ways we encourage people to be creative. The Folk tradition tends to flourish in environments where there are further barriers limiting your ability to express yourself, but where repeating (and probably altering) others’ work is relatively difficult to police. Copyright as we know it may simply determine the form creativity will tend to take.
Matthew, stop making me think. I have always recoiled from covers but, I’m not sure why. And how much I approve or disapprove of the band in general. Which is actually true of all songs. But I suppose there is no reason to dislike a song just because it’s a cover. Although, I will maintain my hatred for cover albums.
Also, Electrolite and E-bow letter from Adventures in Hi-Fi were ace. And most stuff before that REM were fantastic for.
If you lot don’t stop you’ll have me spouting my opinion about Up, Reveal and Around The Sun again, for what must be about the fourth time on here. (I think REM recorded one good album between 1998 and 2004, the trouble being they spread that one good album out over three LPs – with an awful lot of filler in between.)
Reveal’s got a few rewarding moments on it, I’ve Been High and Chorus And The Ring certainly amongst them; and even Around The Sun included the gorgeous Electron Blue.
Oh, and tut tut, Michael. Tut tut indeed.
I disagree in lumping Up into that group. It’s a really good album start to finish. Not that there aren’t better and worse songs, but it works very well as a whole album.
I really, really like New Adventures in Hi Fi, but I know I’m sort of in the minority on that one. I haven’t minded the new stuff, but at best it’s all basically a retread of past glories.
I like covers in theory too, but so many are pure shit in practice. And that just ends up making me unusually angry when they do end up bad.
New Adventures in HiFi is a winner, and another highly underrated record.
I love covers, but it’s rare to find one that lives up to the original.
I like New Adventures In Hi-Fi a lot. It’s a great record. Early REM kicks ass too.
New Adventures in Hi-Fi is amongst their best if you ask me, a bit of a slow-burner, perhaps, but an incredibly inventive and rewarding listen if you’ve got time to settle into a long listen. A good one for train journeys..
New Adventures in HiFi……love it!
i think up is the last album i liked but that was like 1996 or something was it not?
98 i think, i’ve liked all the albums that have come out since up…..but none of them can be classed as anywhere near classic….i guess that sums it up really
Up was 1998. It has some great moments, but written and recorded as it was amongst the fall-out from Bill Berry’s departure, I don’t think it’s a particularly strong album overall.
The band themselves admit there were tensions, they felt confused and came close to splitting up during the sessions.
I think that lack of focus is written all over Up and the subsequent two albums. It’s the sound of a band adrift, in free-fall.
it strikes me they didn’t really get hold of themselves again, regroup and refocus until Accelerate.
up is great………we all say it is….so we’re all right…..you’re wrong
Up has some truly great moments. Truly great.
But is it really great overall?
Great as in Lifes Rich Pageant, Reckoning, Automatic For The People or Document great?
Really?
i’m no expert on the REM of the 80′s…..A.F.T.P is awesome!
but i think Up is great….great songs great thinking and a great reaction to a shite time for the band
Up is brilliant. Fact.
My point is that when you use words like “Great” and “Brilliant” in relation to REM albums, you have to consider the company you’re elevating that album to.
If, like Chutters, you usually listen to the Sugababes and Newton Faulkner; then, in comparison, it is of course a “great” album.
But Up, while still being a good album and including some great songs, isn’t amongst the pantheon of REM’s best.
In my opinion, at least nine of the band’s fourteen studio albums are better than Up.
Bonkers!
I’d put up very close to their best 80s albums. Tense, innovative, brave and with plenty of classic songs.
Right! Let’s have it! You. Outside. Now.
R.E.M. discography:
Murmur (1983)
Reckoning (1984)
Fables of the Reconstruction (1985)
Lifes Rich Pageant (1986)
Document (1987)
Green (1988)
Out of Time (1991)
Automatic for the People (1992)
Monster (1994)
New Adventures in Hi-Fi (1996)
Up (1998)
Reveal (2001)
Around the Sun (2004)
Accelerate (2008)
Here’s my opinion, pick the bones out of that!
=1. Reckoning, Lifes Rich Pageant, Document, Automatic for the People
=5. Murmur, Green, New Adventures in Hi-Fi
=8. Out of Time, Accelerate
=10. Monster, Up
=12. Fables of the Reconstruction, Reveal
14. Around The Sun
I largely agree, but might shunt Automatic down to that second tier, and move Up up into it as well. And I’d swap Fables and Reckoning, because I think Fables is bloody brilliant. In fact I might put it up top.
=1. Life’s Rich Pageant, Fables, Document
=4. HiFi, Up, Murmur, Automatic
=7. Green, Accelerate, Out of Time, Reckoning
=11. Reveal, Monster
485. Around the Sun
The title of Lifes Rich Pageant doesn’t have the apostrophe.
I win!
Not to pick nits, but is shunting Automatic down a level a response to the dull hit singles (Everybody Hurts, Drive, Man On The Moon and so on..)?
It took me ages to get past those tracks and realise that songs like Try Not To Breathe, Sweetness Follows, Monty Got A Raw Deal and Find the River are amongst the band’s best.
they are far from dull…..just over played
Man on the moon is an awesome song
Dylan, I think it might be, actually. Although I agree with Chutters that their problem is more massive over-playing that excessive shitness, and Man on the Moon is indeed brilliant.
But in general you’re right, Everybody Hurts and Drive really put me off the album in general, and so does Nightswimming which at the time I loved, but in retrospect just seems a little bit over-cooked. The rest of it is fucking brilliant though – I agree completely on all of the four you mention there. And perhaps Star Me Kitten too.
And you don’t get to win an argument just because a band has poor punctuation.
Up and Monster are the best. Fact.
To be fair, Man On The Moon is fantastic live.
When they play it live, they seem to attach the big hairy set of balls the album track desperately needs.
Anyone who likes covers may want to check out the 10 volume Television Personalities tribute series as there are literally thousands of ways to reinterpret a song and it’s very interesting to see the directions you can take with a cover.
I personally am a big fan of covers as it is always interesting to see what can be done with someone else’s work, even though I have to admit it doesn’t always work. Bands like the Manic Street Preachers, however are a great example of a band who can pull of some great covers (Rolling Stones, Primal Scream, The Clash) as is Phil Wilson and some of his more recent projects (doing Belle & Sebastian, The Scars and even Kraftwerk) that have all been released on smaller labels. Nick Heyward did some great Beatles covers many years back, on the b-side of one of his Ep’s, that are worth searching for as is the Jetset tribute and the Go-Betweens tributes that came out in more recent days. In Spain you can find a great Nikki Sudden tribute and just out in the US a tribute to The Shambles, who are a band that have themselves recorded many great covers from The Jam to the Undertones to the TVP’s, and I guess that’s a good place to stop as I can go on forever. Cool article – Thanks!
Wally
Wait, so no one likes Monster anymore? I always thought that was a weird and interesting album.
I haven’t listened to it for ages, to be fair, so I might be totally wrong, but no, it’s not a favourite.