Giardiniera with White Beans
I just left out the ham, because I wasn’t about to serve two pork products in one meal, but if you made this with ham it would probably be a pretty nice main course.
Cuban-style pulled-pork sandwiches
I used this Cuban pulled-pork tacos recipe for the “ropa vieja” -style pork. I used about one-and-a-half times the meat called for in the recipe, but I doubled all the ingredients in the mojo sauce, because I didn’t have the 8 hours to marinate the meat and I needed to compensate. So I marinated for like 2 hours, and then instead of removing all the sauce I left about 1/3 in and cooked the pork in that. While it was cooking I boiled the remaining 2/3rds of the mojo and then dressed the pork again at the very end after I had pulled it. I don’t know if it would’ve tasted differently if it had marinated longer and cooked without sauce. That tamarind/orange juice/salt combo is gold.
Oh but so then instead of making stupid tacos we put the pork on ciabatta slices with swiss cheese and pickled jalapenos. The pickled jalapenos and cheese were my attempt to recreate a Cuban sandwich I had in Seattle. Swiss cheese because I have this vague idea that Cubans like to put Swiss on sandwiches?
Bob Dylan wrote and recorded “I’ll Keep It With Mine” in 1965. Like all Bob Dylan songs except “I Want You” and “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” it gives you the rickets if you listen to it.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Nico recorded her ageless robot version in 1967 for “Chelsea Girls.” Like all Nico covers, this is now the “iconic” version of the song among those of us who are young and pathologically hip, due to her peripheral involvement in the Velvet Underground and also the fact that she is a pretty dead lady who brushed her teeth with heroin, probably, and had a small but iconic role in La Dolce Vita.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles recorded a version in the early 80’s that is the Nico version except Susanna Hoffs is singing it. Here is how you can tell if someone is basing their cover on the Nico version: they will pronounce the word “spirit” with a German accent. This version is really good, though, if you don’t mind admitting you have feelings and are not cool.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Marianne Faithfull recorded a version in 1987 that is obviously based on the Bob Dylan version instead of the Nico version, for which she receives props. And by being Marianne Faithfull and singing the song like she is the subject of an ancient terrorist training video you somehow found in the VHS section of the Salvation Army and someone is holding a machine gun to her head just outside the frame, she makes the Bob Dylan version retroactively cooler.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Bettie Serveert recorded a version in the 90s for the movie “I Shot Andy Warhol,” which I’ve probably referenced before because the entire soundtrack is covers and also because my frames of reference narrow with every passing year. INTERESTINGLY, this is the first version of this song I ever heard.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Dean & Britta just recorded a version of this song for the album of songs they released as a soundtrack to Andy Warhol’s screen tests. It sounds like Britta Philips’ voice is being heavily and unnecessarily autotuned in this song, maybe because it’s technically a remix? But a remix of what? Is the non-remix version lost to time?
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
One of the earliest recordings of the song, and my all-time favorite of all time, is the Mississippi John Hurt version (Stack O’ Lee) recorded in 1928, which is also one of the most straightforward tellings of the story, and contains the basic skeleton of all subsequent versions. While subsequent versions turn Stagger Lee into either an anti-authoritarian hero or some kind of archetype of black masculinity (or both), John Hurt’s version focuses on the senselessness of the killing and Lee Shelton’s immorality.
Lloyd Price performed one of the most recognizable versions of the song. I don’t know where this recording is from:
Ike and Tina Turner basically performing the Lloyd Price version:
A whiteboy version of the song performed by Jerry Reed in 1975:
A rambling and dirty RL Burnside performance of Stagger Lee, which is the obvious inspiration for the version Samuel L. Jackson performs in Black Snake Moan:
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds have a version from Murder Ballads that is also pretty dirty and focuses much more on Stagger Lee as an anti-hero, adding some bullshit about fighting over a woman. A good rendition of this song needs to make more of the fact that the killing was pointlessly based on one man knocking another’s hat off.
The Clash song, Wrong ‘Em Boyo (off of London Calling) is actually a cover by a Jamaican band called The Rulers, which is itself a variation of the Stagger Lee song.
Xiu Xiu’s Apistat Commander is one of those songs that you never actually listened to for like two years because it takes so long to kick in that you always instinctually skip it, and then one day you’re standing at an intersection and you’re too lazy to fish out your iPod and press forward so you listen to the whole song for the first time, maybe with the volume a little too high, and you realize finally that the song contains this perfect moment where, like, the sun suddenly bursts out of a cloudy sky but only for 30 seconds before there’s like this terrible, Hepatitis-infected rainstorm that lasts for the rest of your life.
Apistat Commander, covered by Sunset Rubdown. This is what the song would sound like if it were a really good rock song made by a band that didn’t print t-shirts with the phrase “Fun is for assholes” on them.
And now for my most ambitious maneuver to date: The entire Velvet Underground debut album, The Velvet Underground & Nico (a.k.a. the Andy Warhol album), as rendered in cover form. This is made slightly less ambitious by the fact that I stole most of these files from some dude who already did this, and simply replaced the songs I didn’t like. I’m not including links to the originals, because if you don’t have this album already you’re a dick, but you can become less of a dick today for the low low price of clicking here.
1. Sunday Morning, covered live by Belle and Sebastian. Sung, unfortunately, by the one nobody likes.
9. I’ll Be Your Mirror, covered, inevitably, as a country song by Clem Snide.
10. The Black Angel’s Death Song. This is maybe my favorite Velvet Underground song, so I’m including the original, because even if you’re so much of a dick that you ignored my link above you should at least listen to this song and think, “Ah, now I understand why this is his favorite Velvet Underground song. It makes perfect sense, and also I hate him.” Covered by Bettie Serveert (remember them?) on an album of VU covers. Unfortunately this is the only one I can find, so it’s not a great cover.
Not pictured: A mid to late 90’s appearance of Evan Dando on (I think) MTV’s 120 minutes, where he plays a few lines of Femme Fatale and goes, “It’s the Velvets, kids. The Velvets!” and I was like “Damn, girl” [mimes spending the next week trying to find a band called The Velvets].
Really, the only reason I did this was to introduce you to Messer Chups. Enjoy spending the rest of your day plumbing the youtubian depths of this one, you fuckers.
Johnny Mathis originally recorded Wild is the Wind for a 1957 movie of the same name, so his version is all sad and schmaltzy and Hollywood. Then Nina Simone took it and made it like when heroin makes all your teeth fall out. Then David Bowie took it and made it like when Dennis takes his shirt off on It’s Always Sunny in Philadephia. Then Cat Power took it and made it my favorite Cat Power cover, all bummed out on red wine. Fucking devastating. And then Bat for Lashes took it and, like, prissied it back up:
Recent Comments