Canadian Cover Content #11: Hard Core Logo, Cover Podcasts & Crash Test Dummies

Some belated Canadian cover happenings...

On August 14th in Toronto, there's a whole tribute night devoted to Canadian cult rock film Hard Core Logo with a screening of the film, a Q&A with director Bruce McDonald, punk bands covering the fictional band, lots of prizes, and "unannounceable but very special SPECIAL GUESTS". Hmmmm... Joe Dick himself perhaps? Mr. Hugh Dillon is currently enjoying success on Flashpoint, a big hit both in Canada and the US, which is cool because it's clearly filmed in Toronto and Canadianisms have a way of sneaking into the episodes (a Timmy's run anyone?). How surreal would a reunion of the original Hard Core Logo line-up be with Joe Dick, Billy Tallent (Callum Keith Rennie), John Oxenberger, and Pipefitter performing? Uh, technically impossible if you've seen the movie and actually kinda strange considering the 1996 film was about a very reluctant reunion tour, but I'd pay to see that anyway. For Torontonians or hardcore Hard Core Logo fans, details on the Tribute Night are here. Only $12!

Hard Core Logo - Rock 'n' Roll is Fat and Ugly
54•40 - Rock 'n' Roll is Fat and Ugly [originally by Hard Core Logo]


Last week CBC Radio 3's Grant Lawrence devoted an entire podcast to Canadian artists covering Canadian artists. It can be downloaded here in various formats. What's cool is that for several covers he chats with both the coverer and the coveree (as put by Danny Michel & Emm Gryner in a similar themed episode of Under the Covers). We get The Be Good Tanyas covering Geoff Berner, Kathleen Edwards covering Jim Bryson, Cuff the Duke covering the Rheostatics, and much more.
**UPDATE: Also check out this week's Part II - The Originals of the songs featured last week.

Speaking of Danny & Emm's Under the Covers, last week's episode was about "Covers You Didn't Know Were Covers". One that greatly surprised me was finding out Kim Carnes' eighties hit Bette Davis Eyes was not the original... it was co-written and recorded in 1974 by Jackie DeShannon. It has a radically different tone-- almost country & western with chorus girls. Sounds like a weird cover, but it's the original! Between this, Tainted Love, and There's Always Something There to Remind Me, how many more 80's one-hit wonders are actually cover songs?? There's no doubt that all covers of Bette Davis Eyes are of Kim Carnes' version. My favourite is an acoustic cover featuring the deep baritone vocals of Crash Test Dummies' frontman Brad Roberts, from his solo live disc Crash Test Dude. A couple years ago I was slow in ordering the Crash Test Dude CD/video combo from Maple Music then it went out of stock forever. I always kinda regretted that, though eventually it ended up on iTunes and eMusic. The album also contains a handful of unlikely covers: La Grange, Da Do Ron Ron, Trident Gum Theme(?), Unbreak My Heart and Baby One More Time.

Brad Roberts - Bette Davis Eyes [originally by Jackie DeShannon]
Ever wonder what Brad Roberts is up to these days? He's a guitar/songwriting instructor at the Paul Green School of Rock Music (!), which likely was the inspiration for the film School of Rock and was featured in the documentary Rock School. Incidentally, a School of Rock 2 was announced a couple weeks ago with Jack Black, writer Mike White, and director Richard Linklater all returning.

Brad Roberts - Superman's Song
I'm of the mind that one can't technically cover oneself, so here's Brad Roberts revisiting the Crash Test Dummies' first hit, Superman's Song, a plaintive ode to Superman released a year before the big S actually "died".

Brad Roberts - One of Us [originally released by Joan Osborne]
Here's something curious I just learned while writing up this post. Direct from the Crash Test Dummies FAQ: "the song's writer, Eric Bazilian, had written the song with Brad Roberts' bass baritone in mind. When the two met, Brad recorded the song just by himself with an acoustic guitar. When news of the song first broke, it was expected to appear on the Armageddon soundtrack. It did not, and so far, the song has only been made available to the public in a leaked MP3 that found its way onto file-sharing networks." Wow, so could this be considered almost the original One of Us...?

Crash Test Dummies - The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead [originally by XTC]
I remember buying the Dumb and Dumber soundtrack specifically for this song, finding out it was a cover many years later. This is the first Crash Test Dummies single to feature the band's only female member Ellen Reid taking over lead vocal duties from Brad Roberts who sings back-up. The Dummies also recorded another XTC cover All You Pretty Girls for the XTC tribute album A Testimonial Dinner.

Jaymz Bee & The Royal Jelly Orchestra - Superman's Song (feat. Melleny Melody) [originally by Crash Test Dummies]
An unlikely lounge cover from Jaymz Bee & the RJO's Cocktail: Shakin' and Stirred album of Canadian covers.

Weird Al Yankovic - Headline News [parody of Crash Test Dummies' Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm]
I remember reading an interview years ago with the Crash Test Dummies and they were asked how they felt about Weird Al parodying their song. Of course, they were excited and honoured, going so far as to be Weird Al's back-up band on a MuchMusic Video Awards performance of the parody. The parody makes now dated references to headlines at the time (Tonya Harding, Lorena Bobbitt, and that guy who got caned in Singapore), though Weird Al changes it up in live shows with current headlines. When I caught his show last summer he sung about Britney's shaved head incident and Paris Hilton. The original has the very dubious distinction of being one of Blender's 50 Worst Songs Ever (#31), VH1's 50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs Ever (#15), and called by the Rolling Stone's blog as one of the 20 Most Annoying Songs Ever (#15). Yikes, I don't think it's that bad.

Covers of a different sort:

Bacchus and Ariadne [originally by Titian] ;)



(note: I only made one of these...)

Flashpoint:Papa Mars and Joe Dick team up to fight crime!

Last week in the comments, I briefly mentioned that Hugh Dillon, lead singer of the Headstones (who covered Tweeter and the Monkey Man once upon a time), was co-starring in a cop drama this fall on CTV called Flashpoint opposite Enrico Colantoni (Veronica's dad on Veronica Mars). The show, originally titled Sniper, focuses on an elite tactical police team that handles hostage negotiations, bomb threats, and other fun stuff. It made some ripples a couple weeks ago when CBS picked up the Canadian show for this summer's programming in spite of the on-going Writer's Strike. But the strike's all over now, so no worries. Whether he was serious or not, Boyhowdy suggested a blog post on the matter and I was more than up for the challenge. So today I present music tenuously associated to Hugh Dillon and Enrico Colantoni!

First off, Toronto-born actor Enrico Colantoni. I basically know him only as Keith Mars on Veronica Mars and Mathesar in Galaxy Quest, though a quick perusal of his IMDb credits would point to his 7 seasons of Just Shoot Me as Elliot DiMauro as his biggest role. I have to admit having never seen Just Shoot Me, though if it lasted 7 seasons it must have been alright, eh? And in a crazy bit of planets aligning, it turns out today is in fact his birthday(!). Happy Birthday, Enrico!

Enrico Colantoni - I Finally Got the Police Report on the Dean's Suicide!
I didn't exactly find an Enrico Colantoni cover song around or even any song for that matter. But while finishing off season 3 of Veronica Mars on the weekend and thinking about this post, I stumbled upon this musical moment that made me laugh.

Kristen Bell - One Way or Another [originally by Blondie]
Veronica Mars herself performs this truncated karaoke version in Season 1. Does this count as a cover song? Well, as my film prof liked to say all the time, close enough for government purposes.

The Dandy Warhols - We Used To Be Friends [Kenn Richards Remix]
The theme song for Veronica Mars was this Dandy Warhols song, which was later remixed for Season 3. Dandy Warhols lead singer Courtney Taylor-Taylor cameoed on the show performing karaoke to Love Hurts. Britt Daniel of Spoon also showed up in another episode singing Elvis Costello's Veronica at the karaoke club. One of the more peculiar aspects of Veronica Mars was spotting the most random and unlikely guest stars... Kevin Smith, Joss Whedon, 2 of the 3 kids from Home Improvement (Zachary Ty Bryan and Jonathan Taylor Thomas looking creepily like Christian Slater), Arrested Development's Michael Cera and Alia Shawkat (in the same episode!), Dan Castellaneta, Rider Strong (formerly of Boy Meets World), Lucy Lawless, Patty Hearst, and probably many, many more.

The Dandy Warhols - The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald [originally by Gordon Lightfoot]
Since I'm heavy on the CanCon today, here's a Dandy Warhols cover of the classic Gordon Lightfoot ballad. According to wikipedia, Courtney Taylor-Taylor's cousin was in fact a crew member on the ill-fated SS Edmund Fitzgerald. This particular version is from Come on Feel the Dandy Warhols, a collection of b-sides and covers, and a different version of this cover was recorded for The Black Album.

Hugh Dillon was the lead singer of the Headstones, a Canadian hard rock band active from the late 1980's to 2003. In the mid-90's he began to take on some film roles, most notably the lead in Bruce McDonald's cult rock film Hard Core Logo. Some other credits include three episodes of Degrassi: The Next Generation, the third Ginger Snaps film, the Assault on Precinct 13 remake, and a Genie-nominated role in the Trailer Park Boys movie.

The Headstones - Smile and Wave
The Headstones - Cubically Contained
The Headstones' third album Smile and Wave is chock-full of great rock tracks and they had a radio hit if I remember correctly with Cubically Contained.

The Headstones - Tweeter and the Monkey Man [originally by the Traveling Wilburys]
For a long time, one of the only covers of the Traveling Wilburys around. With Jenny Lewis' cover a couple years ago, the total has risen to about... four, maybe.

The Hugh Dillon Redemption Choir - Streets of Bakersfield [originally by Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam]
Following the break up of the Headstones, Hugh Dillon's next band was The Hugh Dillon Redemption Choir and this cover was offered to fans on his website one year as a X-Mas bonus.

You may not realize this, but one of the trademarks of Canadian cinema is the depressing and/or downbeat ending. Also: roadtrips. And that's Hard Core Logo in a nutshell, a Canadian rock & roll mockumentary (rock mock doc?) directed by Bruce McDonald in the vein of This is Spinal Tap, but only superficially. That is, there are some darkly funny moments, but you wouldn't call this a comedy. Based on a book by Michael Turner, it follows the fictional once-influential punk band Hard Core Logo as they embark on a last gasp reunion tour. Punk rock hijinks ensue. Like Chungking Express, Hero, and Iron Monkey, this film carries the questionable distinction of being "Presented by Quentin Tarantino" (i.e. "I had nothing to do with this movie, but I liked it and my name is Quentin Tarantino"). Hugh Dillon carries the film as the charismatic, self-destructive Hard Core Logo lead singer Joe Dick.


Hard Core Logo - Edmonton Block Heater
The Pursuit of Happiness - Edmonton Block Heater [originally by Hard Core Logo]
The Pursuit of Happiness - Edmonton Block Heater (Live) [originally by Hard Core Logo]
Every Edmontonian knows the importance of a block heater. This winter was particularly brutal with some -40ish temperatures at times, but we seem to take it in stride. For instance, when I went to L.A. I was miserably cold at times, muttering to myself at bus stops with the other shivering and wet patrons. And even though it was a good 30 degrees Celsius colder when I got home, at least I could bulk up in a huge puffy jacket, put on some big gloves, pull on my Oilers touque, and make epic treks to the post office or library like an arctic explorer. Embrace the bitter cold and it becomes your friend. The Hard Core Logo soundtrack was actually a "tribute" to Hard Core Logo featuring Canadian artists such as 54-40, the Odds, Kinnie Starr, the Headstones, and more performing the real songs of the fictional band. This tribute CD was also available with the Hard Core Logo special edition DVD. The Pursuit of Happiness is a rock band (lead singer from Edmonton) who had a hit song I'm an Adult Now in the 80's and endeared themselves to hockey fans everywhere with Wayne Gretzky Rocks. They recorded the Hard Core Logo cover for the tribute album and the live cut is from one of their Best-of compilations. Curiously, there's actually a band called Edmonton Block Heater from, uh, Vancouver whose name is inspired by Hard Core Logo song even though they're not a punk band.

Billy Talent - Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldnt've)? [originally by the Buzzcocks]
Canadian rock band Billy Talent gets their name from Hard Core Logo's guitarist Billy Tallent (different spelling), played in the film by Callum Keith Rennie. This cover was released with their 2nd album, Billy Talent II, but only on iTunes.

Don't forget I'm giving away some FREE STUFF that you can enter to win here (scroll to the bottom). So far, there are 4 entries and 2 prizes... you do the math! One week left.