Over half of all songs composed in this world are about love. But love… is not only bright and sunny. This volume explores some darker, barbaric aspects of love — closely related to insanity, death, or filled with some strange fetishes. Be a cat or a dog, make yourself a sandwich and enjoy the chill running down your spine from this whole lotta love.
Unnkerr Swéghléoðras: Part 2 — The Dark Book of Love
We are all familiar with Jefferson Airplane‘s psychedelic rendition of Alice in Wonderland: White Rabbit. And there are many interesting covers of it around—almost as many as for Beatles‘ Yesterday. In this post, I’ve picked a list of most interesting ones, loosely ordered from the 60’s to today, 16 videos to take up all of your free time. So get ready for an ultimate psychedelic ride.
For starters, here is an alternate TV version of White Rabbit performed by Jefferson Airplane, with a pleasing background of psychedelic colours and Grace Slick looking pretty as ever.
And, well, the Woodstock version deserves to be included too. The voice here is simply too magnificent.
Technically, the JA version is not the original one, since The Great Society had already been touring with White Rabbit, but they never released any studio albums. Grace Slick was part of their team though, and she’s singing in this live version too, which is perhaps the most psychedelic one.
A french White Rabbit cover, titled La Justice. I wonder how accurate the translation of the lyrics is, at least certain key words like “logic” and “proportion” are there. The quality of the recording could have been better, but I find that the french language fits this song really well.
A not so gentle 10-minute long acid punk version by The Last Word, which claims the title of the creepiest version with ease.
A decent cover by another 80’s punk band Mo-Dettes.
A somewhat crude version by a 90’s band Shrine from their album Psycha—but they’ve added a personal touch to it.
A 90’s house remix version. Usually not my type of music, but I found myself enjoying this one.
Now what’s this style of music, I don’t even know. Blue Man Group, something electronic, yet experimental and done with enthusiasm. Has lots of new components added to the song, and they work.
This one by Shakespears Sister sounded like rubbish first, but it ended up pretty interesting. Moreover, I’ve never seen this particular animation, which I thought was really nice.
A perhaps somewhat musically lacking, yet a very distinct version by Enon.
A recent 2009 live cover by Grace Potter and The Nocturnals. Nothing extraordinarily different from the JA version, but an accurate replica.
Here’s another link to their studio version.
This one is a surprisingly well made web cam recording of the song. Couldn’t have guessed it’d be this good.
And finally something completely different to release all the built-up tension. Hope you enjoyed the ride!
So Grooveshark was shut down two weeks ago on Friday, forever. Together with its playlists, databases and broadcasts. I still haven’t completely gotten over it. Yet my knowledge and passion for music remains—so I thought I might employ a similar tactic to Rich Aftersabbath and release my own one hour mixes of songs from different artists. Rich has done a great job of compiling rare heavy psych, yet it doesn’t always need to be rare, heavy or psych, does it?
This first release is called Distant Melodies and consists solely of progressive material. For now, the medium I’m using is Youtube, perhaps later I’ll change to something better. I’ve tried to choose best quality I could find. Enjoy!
Unnkerr Swéghléoðras: Part 2 — The Dark Book of Love