An Aural Fan Boy Moment. . .
Last night, I finally got my grubby hands on Dar WIlliams and Ani Difranco's cover of "Comfortably Numb" and I have to say, it's one of the best covers I've heard bouncing around music circles. It's on her most recent album My Better Self .
A basic explanation first. "Comfortably Numb" comes in a part of The Wall in which the main character has been stripped down to a complete and utter mess. His manager finds him in his hotel room and they summon the Dr. Feelsgood to get Pink ready for the Show. The song is Pink's rebirth into millitant dictator-like character that proceeds fall to a shambles before "The Trial" at the end of the album.
In the Williams/DiFranco version, their vocals interplay wonderfully that adds to the confusion of the song, though it looses something in the transformative nature of the solo by Gilmour in the original. It seems as though the "doctor" character is pleading more with Pink in this version rather than slapping him around for the Show, but it's that dueting with Williams and Difranco that is just chilling with two voices playing off each other to create the character.
This is contrasted with the Scissor Sisters' version from their self titled album. In that version, they turned it into a dance pop song that was very strange, yet still quite numbing in the way that dance-pop can only be. It still has that differencein the duet, but the Pink character is the one who seems fairly lucid (and a member of the BeeGees, apparently). The Doctor, however is the one coming in waves.
In the original, Pink Floyd, who's to say is more lucid, the outside world or the inner realm in turmoil that's portrayed in the song. Neither version really has that cathartic moment when the lead guitarist steps forward and unleashes the "Comfortably Numb" solo, the solo that when heard drives fanboys to a fervernt froth that makes him want to beat the people of MTV to a bloody pulp becasue the cut it short at Live 8.
If you want to hear each version, just click on the artists names, I've made them all available for download. Give them a listen, see if you agree.
A basic explanation first. "Comfortably Numb" comes in a part of The Wall in which the main character has been stripped down to a complete and utter mess. His manager finds him in his hotel room and they summon the Dr. Feelsgood to get Pink ready for the Show. The song is Pink's rebirth into millitant dictator-like character that proceeds fall to a shambles before "The Trial" at the end of the album.
In the Williams/DiFranco version, their vocals interplay wonderfully that adds to the confusion of the song, though it looses something in the transformative nature of the solo by Gilmour in the original. It seems as though the "doctor" character is pleading more with Pink in this version rather than slapping him around for the Show, but it's that dueting with Williams and Difranco that is just chilling with two voices playing off each other to create the character.
This is contrasted with the Scissor Sisters' version from their self titled album. In that version, they turned it into a dance pop song that was very strange, yet still quite numbing in the way that dance-pop can only be. It still has that differencein the duet, but the Pink character is the one who seems fairly lucid (and a member of the BeeGees, apparently). The Doctor, however is the one coming in waves.
In the original, Pink Floyd, who's to say is more lucid, the outside world or the inner realm in turmoil that's portrayed in the song. Neither version really has that cathartic moment when the lead guitarist steps forward and unleashes the "Comfortably Numb" solo, the solo that when heard drives fanboys to a fervernt froth that makes him want to beat the people of MTV to a bloody pulp becasue the cut it short at Live 8.
If you want to hear each version, just click on the artists names, I've made them all available for download. Give them a listen, see if you agree.
posted by Unknown at
10:09 AM
1 Comments:
Oh god, Scissor Sisters' version leaves me twitching. o.o I don't quiteknow what they were after in that version, cause it's just not a good thing. o.o
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Anonymous, at 11:11 AM
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