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Articles by Patrick Robbins
(Almost) Full Albums: The Millennium’s “Begin”
Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments! When a Cover Me writer tackles the Full Albums category, he or she is really committing. Not only are they writing about a dozen or more songs (instead of the usual one, three, or five), they have to make sure there are actually covers of all the songs on the album.
The N.Y. FAIR Act will cut electric bills
Even without a heat wave like this week, times are tough for New York’s utility customers. New Yorkers pay some of the highest electricity prices in the country, and these high prices have real consequences. Last year, Con Edison disconnected more than 88,000 households for nonpayment, and according to an AARP study released in March, one in five older New Yorkers has taken on debt or borrowed money in order to afford utility bills.
Full Albums: ‘The Modern Lovers’
Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments! A happy birthday to Jonathan Richman, who turns 75 years young today. We’re celebrating with a Full Album post of The Modern Lovers, his magnum opus, which is itself celebrating its golden anniversary this year. Of course, it’s actually older than that; most of the songs were four- or five-year-old demos.
Good, Better, Best: "Need You Tonight" (INXS)
Some covers are more equal than others. Good, Better, Best looks at three covers and decides who takes home the gold, the silver, and the bronze. As booty call songs go, INXS’s “Need You Tonight” is as hot, sweaty, and ’80s as it gets. Never rhyming once, Michael Hutchence seduces with words, breaths, and dance moves that I guarantee young men practiced in front of their MTV screens.
Lower utility bills by uniting customers
Life in New York is expensive, and everyone is talking about it. The issue of affordability shaped this year’s mayor’s race and will likely be at the core of next year’s race for governor. Fights over bus fares and housing costs are front page news. The next big frontier? Electricity bills. Across New York, customers of Con Ed and other electric utilities have experienced a spike in energy bills, with more increases on the horizon.
That's a Cover?: "The Twist" (Chubby Checker / Hank Ballard)
That’s A Cover? explores cover songs that you may have thought were originals. Hank Ballard and the Midnighters have a solid claim to shaping rock ‘n’ roll music; their song “Work With Me Annie” was a number one R&B hit in 1954. The bawdy lyrics (“Annie, please don’t cheat / Give me all my meat”) led to the song being banned on many radio stations, and a disgusted Dick Clark refused to play it on American Bandstand.
Good, Better, Best: "Send In the Clowns" (Part 2)
Some covers are more equal than others. Good, Better, Best looks at three covers and decides who takes home the gold, the silver, and the bronze. More than once, Stephen Sondheim said, "I have a puzzle mind." He loved cryptic crossword puzzles, designing a few dozen for New York magazine in the late '60s. He used to run murder-mystery games, and cowrote (with Anthony Perkins) a movie about one that turned real, 1973's The Last of Sheila.
Five Good Covers: "Joey" (Concrete Blonde)
Johnette Napolitano knew she had something good, but she wasn't ready to finish it. She had a boyfriend, Wall of Voodoo guitarist Marc Moreland, whose alcoholism made their relationship a trying one. She and her band, Concrete Blonde, had recorded a rough demo and "right away everybody reacted to it," she later said.
Covers of Every Song on Steely Dan's 'Katy Lied'
Usually an artist's popularity wanes after fifty years go by. But nothing about Steely Dan counts as usual. Even in the seventies, their impossibly smooth sound, their obscure yet hyperliterate lyrics, and their focus on the studio in lieu of performing made them stick out like sore thumbs. But Walter Becker, Donald Fagen, and company du jour knew what they wanted, and now, a quarter of the way through the 21st century, it turns out to be what people want, need, can't get enough of.
They Say It's Your Birthday: Aaron Neville
Aaron Neville is 84 years old today and definitively retired. In a 2023 interview he explained that "my asthma doesn't let me hold the notes like I used to. Like Linda [Ronstadt, also retired against her will by illness] says, I don't want to cheat the fans. For them to be looking for this and not getting it. I tell them I've got a lot of records already recorded so they can still listen to my voice." Well, thank heaven for that.
Five Good Covers: "Crazy Train" (Ozzy Osbourne)
It's hard to remember where 1980 Ozzy Osbourne was (even if you're not Ozzy Osbourne). When he released his first solo album, Blizzard of Ozz, expectations could not have been much lower. His last few albums with Black Sabbath saw him flabby and uninspired, vocally and otherwise. He was drinking and drugging at a literally unbelievable rate (the discovery that he's a genetic mutant was still years away), and Black Sabbath had just cause to fire him. But he still knew how to put together a band.
(Back) In the Spotlight: The Feelies
In the Spotlight showcases a cross-section of an artist's cover work. View past installments , then post suggestions for future picks in the comments! I volunteered to write this piece a few years ago, but never got around to it. When I offered to actually finish it, our features editor reminded me that he had written a Spotlight piece on The Feelies back in February. But he was game to let me write this, if there was no overlap. Remarkably, no overlap was actually planned.
"Help Me Make It Through the Night" (Kris Kristofferson)
Kris Kristofferson's resume may be one of the most remarkable documents of 20th century music. With his passing earlier this week at the age of 88, it was de rigueur for all In Memoriam pieces to bring it up. The man was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, a Golden Gloves boxer, and a prizewinning short story writer. He was a US Army veteran, a helicopter pilot, and an award-winning actor. He could quote William Blake from memory, and he could rip Toby Keith a blistered new one.
In the Spotlight: Seal
In the Spotlight showcases a cross-section of an artist's cover work. View past installments , then post suggestions for future picks in the comments! Seal Henry Olusegun Olumide Adeola Samuel's list of awards and accolades go on nearly as long as his full name. He's won Grammy Awards for Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance - all for "Kiss From a Rose," his 1994 smash - and been nominated twelve more times. He's sold twenty million records.
Five Good Covers: "Sixteen Tons" (Merle Travis / Tennessee Ernie Ford)
Merle Travis may have brought "Sixteen Tons" into the world, but it was Tennessee Ernie Ford who made it immortal. The song's arrangement - clarinets didn't often get the spotlight, but one sure did here - was spare and distinctive. Ford's bass baritone and his finger-snapping, both casual and menacing, hooked listeners in both the pop and country worlds, taking the song to number one on both charts.
Cover Classics: Robyn Hitchcock's 'Robyn Sings'
If Robyn Hitchcock sees Bob Dylan's songs as family, then 2002's Robyn Sings was him organizing a great family reunion. It was a two-CD collection of live Dylan covers; the second CD recreated the famed "Royal Albert Hall" concert. It's got a bootleg sound and one clown who thinks it's funny to yell "Judas!" after every song, but it gets the job done. The real treasure, though, is on the first disc, which is what we'll focus on here today.
Public-Private Partnerships Hurt the Clean Energy Transition
This summer is shattering world records for heat. The climate crisis is already here, and the need for a global shift away from fossil fuels is beyond urgent. The electric grid is a key factor in this shift: addressing the climate crisis means electrifying all our energy, then making sure that this energy is coming from renewable sources. Unfortunately, the decarbonization of our electricity sector has been uneven.
Public Renewables in the US
We propose a new Federal Public Power Program that would create a public option for renewable energy across the United States that can catalyze decarbonization and embed environmental justice in a new energy system. It offers an opportunity to counter the monopolized, fossil-fueled, and profit-driven status quo of today. In its place, a publicly owned and community-controlled system can emerge that grounds renewables in frameworks of rights and accessibility.
In Memoriam: Burt Bacharach
Burt Bacharach, who along with his writing partner Hal David embodied the sophisticated pop sounds of the 1960s, died of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles on February 8. He was 94 years old. It would be easier to come up with a list of musical accomplishments Bacharach didn't achieve. He wrote the music for more than six dozen US Top 40 hits.
Five Good Covers: "See No Evil" (Television)
Five Good Covers presents five cross-genre reinterpretations of an oft-covered song. January 2023 was not a good month for guitar heroes. Not three weeks after Jeff Beck passed away, Tom Verlaine followed him to the great gig in the sky. Both were hailed from all corners of the music world and valued for their contributions to their instrument.
In Memoriam: Christine McVie
In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by. Editor’s Note: Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac died on Wednesday after a brief illness. She was 79. In her honor, we’re resurrecting a post from a decade ago, lightly reworked for the sad circumstances. Christine McVie was the Mona Lisa of ’70s rock music.
Full Albums: Janis Joplin's 'Pearl'
The album Pearl saw Janis Joplin working with a strong set of songs, a tight band in Full Tilt Boogie, and a simpatico producer in Paul Rothchild. She may not have known she was making a masterpiece, but there was no disguising how well the sessions were going. They came to the most abrupt end possible, however, on October 4th, 1970, when Joplin died of a heroin overdose at the age of 27.
In the Spotlight: Garland Jeffreys
In the Spotlight showcases a cross-section of an artist’s cover work. View past installments, then post suggestions for future picks in the comments! For an artist who never cracked the top 50 in the U.S., Garland Jeffreys has left quite a footprint. A friend of Lou Reed’s when they were students at Syracuse University, Jeffreys went on to perform on John Cale’s solo debut Vintage Violence before striking out on his own.
"Cecilia" (Simon & Garfunkel)
Eddie Simon started it. He was with his brother Paul at the house on Blue Jay Way where George Harrison had been inspired to write the song of that name. Now Art Garfunkel had rented it for a few months, and there were a few festive evenings there in the summer of '69. One night, Eddie started banging out a rhythm on a piano bench, and it proved so infectious that everyone there joined in, banging along with whatever they could find. They taped the track, and Paul kept returning to its ebullience.
Covering the Hits: "Party Doll" (Buddy Knox)
“Covering the Hits” looks at covers of a randomly-selected #1 hit from the past sixty-odd years. “I really don’t remember writing ‘Party Doll,” said Buddy Knox of Happy, Texas. “But I did, out on the farm, behind a haystack.” It was 1948, and Knox was fifteen at the time. Eight years later, he became the first artist of the rock ‘n’ roll era to write his own number one song. It took a lot of people, famous and not, to get it that far.
The Three Best Covers of "Lover, You Should've Come Over"
Some covers are more equal than others. Good, Better, Best looks at three covers and decides who takes home the gold, the silver, and the bronze. It's hard to comprehend that Jeff Buckley should be 51 years old today. He's forever frozen in our mind's eye, no older than 30 (still, a couple years older than his father Tim got to be), at the peak of his beauty and talent.
This Witch Wrote My Book!
August 11th was a huge day in my life. I was at Think Coffee on Fourth Avenue. I had just finished, at age 27, my very first novel. I told the barista, who gave me a high five. This was nice of him, given that this probably happens at said coffee shop way more often than we’d like to think. I had been working on it for two-and-a-half years, showing it to no one, periodically reading it aloud to only two people?—?my partner and my ex.
Full Albums: Sly and the Family Stone's 'Greatest Hits'
Sly and the Family Stone hadn't recorded anything new in a year, and the record label wanted to keep Sly's name in the public consciousness - and if they could make a little money in the bargain, so much the better. So they put together Sly and the Family Stone's Greatest Hits. If not a cynical cash grab, it was at least within smelling distance.
Full Albums: John Lennon's 'Imagine'
John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, Lennon's first solo album, got many rave reviews and deserved them all, but there are people who aren't comfortable witnessing someone baring his soul, and Lennon wanted to reach them too. So he made sure his next album, Imagine, sweetened his message, even as he kept it intact. "Plastic Ono with chocolate coating," he later called it.
Fever Pitch: This Crucial Moment In The Fight To Stop Fossil Fuel Infrastructure
“Something gravely important had gone missing. Something related to reverence—to holding on to the ineffable wonder of what already is, caring for what little remains, being cognizant of how quickly we’re losing it.
They Say It's Your Birthday: Randy Newman
They Say It’s Your Birthday celebrates an artist’s special day with other people singing his or her songs. Let others do the work for a while. Happy birthday! The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 saw New Orleans receiving 15 inches of rain in 18 hours, with parts of it under four feet of water. Forty-seven years later, Randy Newman released “Louisiana 1927,” a lament about the devastation the disaster caused and the government’s callous response.
Five Good Covers: To Ramona (Bob Dylan)
Bob Dylan scholars have determined that "To Ramona" is a song about Joan Baez; Dylan's warning her that the folk protest movement will draw her in deep, but he recognizes that she doesn't necessarily have a problem with that, and much as he loves and wants her, he has to let her think for herself, both for her sake and for his. That's a pretty specific interpretation, yet the song resounds in the hearts of thousands, millions, as a love song they can relate to their own lives, in their own ways.
Full Albums: The Ramones' 'End of the Century'
Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments! It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Phil Spector was supposed to be the gateway to getting the Ramones the airwaves they wanted so badly. Why, with his Wall of Sound production technique and their love of ’60s AM pop covers, theirs was going to be a meeting of the minds that would bear the most amazing fruit.
Full Albums: The Ramones' 'Road to Ruin'
The Ramones knew they were playing some of the best rock 'n' roll in the world, and by 1978, they were starting to grow aggravated about how few shared that knowledge. So, taking the if-Mohammad-won't-come-to-the-mountain approach, they started making small concessions, in the hopes that these little changes would be the all they needed to get radio airplay.
Full Albums: The Ramones' 'Leave Home'
Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments! The Ramones‘ second album, Leave Home, didn’t have the element of surprise that their first had, but that’s about the only difference between the two. Once again, fourteen songs accounted for a half hour of humor, menace, and sweetness, a surprising combination that worked perfectly well when delivered at full force.
'Ramones' - Cover Me
Full Albums features covers of every track off a classic album. Got an idea for a future pick? Leave a note in the comments! Nineteen years ago this week – on August 6, 1996, to be precise – the Ramones played their 2,263rd and final concert. Today, while both the band and all its founding members are no more, their music not only survives, but thrives, both in the musicians it’s influenced and in its original form.
They Say It's Your Birthday: Brian Wilson
It's a good time to be Brian Wilson. Earlier this spring, he released No Pier Pressure, his first album of new material in seven years. He is currently touring with Rodriguez, of Searching for Sugar Man (finally-)fame. Love & Mercy, the biopic featuring Paul Dano and John Cusack as different-era Brians, has been getting rave reviews. He's not Mike Love. And today is his birthday.
Sgt. Pepper’s by Big Daddy " Cover Me
Cover Classics takes a closer look at all-cover albums of the past, their genesis, and their legacy. In 1992, the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was celebrating its silver anniversary. Some claimed the silver had tarnished, that Pepper wasn’t even in the top-five of Beatles albums (but don’t tell Rolling Stone that); however, this was overlooked for the sake of celebration, as musician after musician paid tribute to Messers L, M, H & S.
Cover Classics: Big Daddy's 'Cruisin' Through the Rhino Years'
Cover Classics takes a closer look at all-cover albums of the past, their genesis, and their legacy. Weird Al Yankovic got a lot of attention this summer (and deservedly so) for releasing a new album that made it to number one on the charts, but he’s not the only novelty master from the ’80s to be doing well for himself lately.
Twenty Things YOU Can Do To Address the Climate Crisis!
Getting your mind around climate change is hard. Confronting it requires us to deal with the ways that coal, oil, and gas have shaped nearly every aspect of our world, from our built environments to our economic systems — even our ideologies and patterns of thought. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t concrete actions each of us can take, right now. Here are 20 examples of things YOU can do (some details are US-specific). 1.
Five Good Covers: Three Is A Magic Number (Schoolhouse Rock)
Between Superfriends and Scooby-Doo, Schoolhouse Rock taught '70s children their parts of speech, times tables, historical events, and more. Those lessons were set to catchy tunes that stuck like flypaper in a honey jar, still well known today to people who saw them forty years ago. The most memorable of the word-based songs was probably "Conjunction Junction," while "I'm Just a Bill" takes the prize for the history set.
Cover Classics: Caroline Now! The Songs of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys
The Beach Boys have one of the most interesting fan bases in the history of rock music. Not only are they one of the most popular bands, they also have one of the biggest cult followings, and with few exceptions, each side has little patience for what the other side adores. For every fan who cranks up "Surfin' USA" on their car radio, there's another fan sitting in a darkened den, studying the nuances of "H.E.L.P. Is On The Way," Brian Wilson's paean to vegetarianism.
They Say It's Your Birthday: Ian Brown
They Say It’s Your Birthday celebrates an artist’s special day with other people singing his or her songs. Let others do the work for a while. Happy birthday! 2013 is a good time to be Ian Brown. He and his Stone Roses bandmates are currently are doing shows in Dubai, Indonesia, and the land Down Under. They’re headlining the Coachella festival this spring, with a documentary and a possible studio album to follow.
Five Good Covers: Horse With No Name (America)
A song about a kid who thinks he's taken acid. - Randy Newman You're in the desert. You've got nothing else to do. NAME THE FREAKIN' HORSE. - Richard Jeni If an 8-track, shag-carpeted Frisbee could sing, it would be America.
Under the Radar: Rumer
Under the Radar shines a light on lesser-known cover artists. If you’re not listening to these folks, you should. Catch up on past installments here. Rumer is one of those performers who works for years to become an overnight success; she won Mojo’s 2011 Best Breakthrough Act award more than a decade after she started performing. One listen to her and you’ll wonder what took the world so long.
Covers of Matthew Sweet for His Birthday
Matthew Sweet turns 48 today. In a few weeks his signature album Girlfriend will be old enough to legally drink, but in a more important way, it will never grow old; Sweet's masterpiece of love and loss is infinitely timeless, and we're grateful for it permanently placing him in the power-pop pantheon.
Five Good Covers: I Want You To Want Me (Cheap Trick)
When Cheap Trick were getting ready to record In Color, their second album, they had a backlog of great material to choose from. One song had just missed the cut on their first album (which was a shame, as it blistered), and now they were ready to bring it to the world.
They Say It's Your Birthday: Christine McVie
They Say It’s Your Birthday celebrates an artist’s special day with other people singing his or her songs. Let others do the work for a while. Happy birthday! Christine McVie is the Mona Lisa of ’70s rock music.
In The Spotlight: Nick Drake
In the Spotlight showcases a cross-section of an artist’s cover work. View past installments, then post suggestions for future picks in the comments! Where would Nick Drake be if he was still alive to celebrate his 64th birthday today? Would he be looking back fondly on his dozens of albums? Would he be a Syd Barrett-like recluse who never recorded another album after the release of Pink Moon? Would he be an elder statesman of folk, whose blessing would be sought by tens of thousands?
In the Spotlight: The Wedding Present
In the Spotlight showcases a cross-section of an artist's cover work. View past installments , then post suggestions for future picks in the comments! The boy Gedge has written some of the best love songs of the Rock 'n' Roll Era.
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