Welcome to Spotiforgotten. Here I will cover great music that is sadly unavailable to stream on Spotify (or Apple, which has a nearly identical library).
Cover songs can be a tricky art to master. One needs not only originality in their own sound, but also in their tastes and selections of the numbers that they choose to showcase. I’m hard-pressed to find a finer example of both than in Carolina Destructo Rock Gods, Antiseen, and their collection of cover songs (and a few originals): “Hell.” Released in 1995 and reissued in 2001, this album runs the gamut of influences. Clayton and co. cover such genres as country (Ernest Tubb “Thanks A Lot”, Hank Williams “I Saw The Light”), rockabilly (Jumping Gene Simmons “Haunted House”, Elvis Presley “Mean Woman Blues”), punk (two tracks by the Ramones and Skrewdriver “I Don’t Like You”), classic rock (BTO “Taking Care of Business”, Bob Dylan “Positively 4th St”), soul (Curtis Mayfield “Don’t Worry If There’s A Hell Below, We’re All Gonna Go”) and even some Afrofuturist avant-garde jazz (Sun Ra “Space is the Place”). Their version of Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer” is, in my not-so-humble opinion, the best version of the song. Mix in some of their originals taken from various singles and a few live tracks and you’ve got a dynamite record from start-to-finish.
An album full of this many covers probably makes for a royal pain in the ass for licensing, so I can sort of understand its absence. This also means that any Antiseen playlist made from Spotify’s library will be grossly incomplete. Do what I did: Upload your CD to Apple, then add the songs to your playlist from your own library. You will be the only one who can hear the complete tracks, but who gives a shit?
