Covers that are better than the original

This could be controversial I know, but sometimes - just sometimes - someone does a cover of a song and raises it above whatever previous heights it had achieved. More often than not though, a really good cover is a song that wasn't very famous in it's original incarnation.

So, here goes...

Cyndi Lauper's version of Prince's 'When you were mine':

The Kill's version of The Velvet Underground's 'Pale blue eyes':

Jimi Hendrix's era defining version of Bob Dylan's (quite frankly boring) 'All along the watch-tower'. So seminal, that Dylan started playing Hendrix's version at concerts:

The White Stripes - 'I just don't know what to do with myself', first performed by Dusty Springfield:

Angus and Julia Stone's quiet version of 'You're the one that I want', sung by Olivia Newton John in Grease.

I REALLY want to put the McGarrigle's version of Loudon Wainwright's 'The Swimming Song' in this list but it's nowhere to be found.

The Dark Knight Rises official trailer.

So here it is finally, after several youtube fakes and much speculation. There is very little to it, only a glimpse of Tom Hardy as Bane gives you a taste for what's to come. Still it's good to know it's ready and on the way and probably won't be in 3D.

On The Road Movie.

Some months ago I blogged about the upcoming film adaptation of Jack Kerouac's On The Road. Here are some images and a great promotional poster for the film.

Hilarious Honda Hipsters.

Hipster bashing has been everywhere of late. Since "Being A Dickhead Is Cool" hit our viral senses a year ago, hating hipsters is well...hip. The word 'dickhead' has even entered the lexicon of our everyday speak as a new term for hipsters. Some brilliant people who do Honda's advertising realised this and have made this wonderful ad. It's wry and funny and there isn't too much hate in it. Just poking some gentle fun.

Things: A story for our time

George Perec's 'Things: A Story of the Sixties' is a tale of consumerism and the pursuit of happiness in Paris of the nineteen-sixties. Perec's first novel, which won him the Prix Renaudot in 1965, became the cult novel of a generation. It follows young market researchers Jerome and Sylvie, as they desperately try to acquire the 'right' things. Hunting through flea markets and country auctions for 'a cashmere twinset woven by a blind Orkney crofter', 'glasses that asked to be drunk from'. Dashing across Paris to the window of some obscure, select boutique to see 'one of those tiny, astonishingly flat cases in slightly grainy black leather...which seem the very quintessence of lightning visits to New York or London'. They would have liked to be rich, 'their lives would have been an art of living.' They felt they would have known how to spend their money in the right way, buying the right things. Their enjoyment of life is driving by ownership of these material 'things'. The search for them is depicted as half mad, frantic. A desperate race that will only leave them unsatisfied and bitter.

There's so much in this book that is resonant with life today, particularly over the last acquisitive decade. So much of it reminds me of the atmosphere, real or imagined, of living in London in the latter part of the noughties, on the brink of the economic collapse, and of the heady days of unstoppable possession in Ireland's boom.

It is almost a painful read, sad and ridiculous and so very true.

Find it in Vintage Classics in Hodges Figgis, Dawson St, Dublin.

The best service station in Ireland?

[Insert picture here. I thought I took one, but it didn't save somehow. Boo.]

There's this cafe I've wanted to go to for ages, but always put it off. There always seemed to be better places. Because this place is in a garage. In Rathnew. Anyone who knows Rathnew knows that it's not exactly somewhere you'd dally longer than was absolutely necessary. Finally though, I went, and MY GOD, it was excellent. It has to be the best roadside/service station/motorway/garage cafe (whatever you want to call it) in the country. It's attached to an 'applegreen' (how very petroleum re-branding 2.0) and is called 'a cafe' (all lower case, naturally). It's all somehow natural, yet slick interior-decor-wise. A mixture of wood and black...lots of chalkboards, and piles of freshly baked pastries and muffins. All day full Irish breakfast. Couches to sit on. And really good flat whites. Really good. It would have got flat white of the day if I hadn't gone to Third Floor Espresso later on and had one. But that's in a different league. So if you're ever venturing south out of Dublin and need fuel, or a coffee hit on the road, take the Rathnew/Wicklow exit off the N11 and get into this place.* It's worth it.


*Presumably, this being a country-wide fuel shop, these cafes are all over the place. But are they as good? And do they have barista kings like Rathnew does?