Cover Of The Day-Crazy/To Love Somebody

I'm still in a Ray Lamontagne mood. Actually, I had gotten out of it; the sun was starting to prove it's existence again, temperatures were climbing from miserable to bad, and I stepped outside of my house long enough to do some physical activity. I was starting to break out The Beach Boys, and as soon as I uploaded Pet Sounds, I woke up to snow this morning, spiraling me back into my cold grounded folk funk.

I had a little bit of a flub in my review last week. I had heard Ray before and not given him the light of day. It wasn't until I saw him in concert that I really connected. I lost my concert virginity to Ray, in the dark corner of The Bijou Theatre's box seats. It's kinda like losing your regular virginity to... eh, I has don't know, Anne Hathaway....and Frieda Pinto....and Zooey Deschanel. F T W. Anyway, somewhere in the show, Lamontagne played his version of the Gnarls Barkley's hit "Crazy". Ray manages to take a mediocre song, overplayed on the radio, MTV, and my eighth grade dance, and injects it with a soul. The new backbone gives the song a beautiful sense of remorse, focusing on nostalgic days of old friends and love, instead of the zany gibberish Barkley intended the song to fall into.

As I mentioned in my review of Lamontagne's Trouble (See the article directly below this one), the man is a deplorable public speaker. He walked up to the mic before his last song, and said something along the lines of

"Thanks everyone for, uh, coming out to, uh the show tonight.(Ten second pause/guitar fiddle) It's been great( More pause) I'm going to play one of my favorite songs . It's by the Bee Gees."

Then Ray played the song that inspired me to hunt down covers ever since. Ray's version of "To Love Somebody" inspired me to pick up a guitar. I learned to play because of his version of the song. I remember thinking, "That is so simple, and so easy to learn, but holy wow is so powerful." I was knocked back by it. I don't have the greatest version of it, although the great Damien Rice plays with him. Ray started a lot, musically, for me. He bridged me to think on my own, and appreciate what I want to appreciate. I owe him a lot. Here, as usual, are the originals, followed by the covers.

"Crazy"

Also, for kicks and giggles, here is the amazing SNL sketch, "The Barry Gibb Talk Show". Please enjoy it as much as I did.