Cover Lay Down

There's another new cover blog on the block: Cover Lay Down. His niche is folk cover songs, folks. Already the first post and planned future posts will cover (no pun intended) artists and songs that would not likely find their way to my blog simply because of my relative unfamiliarity with the genre. The inaugural post deals with a Richard Shindell cover album (See? Already an in-depth article on someone I've never heard of!) with covers of Springsteen, Dar Williams, REM, and more. If you scroll down to his intro post, I was positively delighted to read about my "incredible ability to compile cross-genre coverlists the likes of which I've never seen". WOO! I should make a banner and hang it on my blog permanently like a thumb's up from Ebert.


As per my unofficial welcome policy, here's a cover from Toy Story.
Riders in the Sky - You've Got a Friend in Me [originally by Randy Newman]

...and a folk cover for you too:
Brewer & Shipley - All Along the Watchtower [originally by Bob Dylan]
From the folks that brought you the wonderful One Toke Over the Line, a cover of the oft-covered Bob Dylan classic. It's been covered so many times, I'm surprised at how much this one stood out. Different, but I like it.

Bob Walkenhorst - One Toke Over the Line (live) [originally by Brewer & Shipley]
I fell in love with this song as a kid even though it was way before my time and references to "tokes" sailed clear over my short head. I remember my dad used to buy these Solid Gold cassette tapes from gas stations and these would provide the soundtrack to long camping roadtrips. The Solid Gold series (probably one of those Time-Life compilation series) covered the gamut of music from the 50's through the 70's. Now that I really think about it, those cassettes left a huge mark on my impressionable mind. That was literally my first exposure to the Beach Boys, Jerry Lee Lewis, Mamas & the Papas, Roy Orbison, Big Bopper, The Guess Who, Eagles, Buddy Holly.... I could go on and on. It was a real lesson in music history, even if I didn't realize it at the time. Brewer & Shipley's One Toke Over the Line stands out as a song I rushed to rediscover once file-sharing became prevalent.


It's great to have a new face on the cover block since I will be MIA for the next month. In fact, I leave tomorrow for China! I'll be gone for 5 weeks and when I return I'll be making my big move to Vancouver. You may have noticed a dearth of posts in the past couple weeks as I've prepared for this big trip to visit the mother country for the first time. I'll get the opportunity to explore some of my heritage with my grandmother, check out my dad's birth village, and have many other exciting adventures in spite of the fact that I myself speak no Chinese whatsoever (except for counting to 10 in Cantonese).

In the meantime, my blog will not go completely silent. Fong Songs will temporarily turn into a travel blog, assuming I have internet access. To get your cover fix, I've also given Kurtis from over at Covering the Mouse the Heigh Ho to fulfil whatever non-Disney cover desires he so chooses. Speaking of which, it's Jungle Book week over there right now and there'll be a guest post from me coming up on Thursday, by which point I should be reaching Hong Kong! In some blogger griping news, when I added Kurtis as a contributor it wiped off my profile link from the sidebar and due to to the "convenient" automated process of the blog layout, I couldn't add it back in. I actually had to use the Internet Time Machine to find some old source code to slip back into the template. Yet more Beta Blogger Blues... my god, it's been 10 months and it's still incompatible with Macs.

Have a good October, folks! See you in November.

P.S. I didn't win Led Zeppelin tickets. :(
The Hold Steady - Hey Hey What Can I Do? [originally by Led Zeppelin]
Hey Hey, what can I do to get face value tickets? And Hey Hey, what can I do to make this guy sing in time with the music? The Hold Steady must be an acquired taste. The last minute of this song makes me want to rip my ears off. But... you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the facts of life. Or in Zeppelin's words: Good times, bad times, you know I've had my share... Good times are on their way.