Naive Medley: This Must Be the Coverville Tribute to Talking Heads

This time, it’s a band that sadly, has never had an official tribute album. The Talking Heads were together from 1974 to 1987, and released 9 studio albums, including the fantastic Remain In Light and Little Creatures. So, I decided that the next Coverville: Open Stage project should honor this great band, and listeners from all over the world stepped up to record their versions of Talking Heads classics.

As I did last time, I present ALL the submissions for this project, along with information about the performers. And not only are the songs included in a pair of podcasts, I’ve gathered them all as a complete zip archive (115MB) along with a cover art tribute to the Talking Heads Greatest Hits album, as before, designed by Shelby Miller.

You won’t have a tangible CD to hold in your hands, but this is the digital age, baby! Music these days is distributed as much on plastic discs as it is in ones and zeroes. So download the songs below, copy them to your portable music player, listen to them on your computer, or if you feel inclined, put them in your favorite order, burn them to a CD and put it in a jewel case emblazoned with the magnificent artwork provided by Mr. Miller.

And now, the music:

1. Road To Nowhere- Theresa Miller

Theresa Miller is a singer and songwriter living in the Boston area. In addition to spending time with her family and working as an e-Learning and Web Developer, she frequently performs at several venues south of Boston. She has also appears at open mics and local talent shows, one of which is regularly broadcast in New England.

2. Creatures Of Love – Criss Cross

Chris Cross aka Christoph Drösser is a journalist, book author and musician based in Hamburg, Germany. His a cappella quintet, No Strings Attached (http://www.nostringsattached.de) won the Coverville Idol contest in 2006 with a cover of the Bangles’ “Walk Like An Egyptian”.”

3. Once In A Lifetime – Brian Grosz

Founder of the free-download label, Lapdance Academy Records, and former contributor to Coverville with The Priestess and The Fool, Brian Grosz thoroughly enjoys manhandling musical instruments and uncovering new ways to develop vocal polyps. In early 2010, Grosz will be releasing a pair of Leadbelly covers on Lapdance Academy and will begin work on his next LP of original material. His 2007 full-length release, Bedlam Nights, is available on his bandcamp page.

For more info, visit www.briangrosz.com.

4. Heaven – Geoff Overmyer & Natasha Rusterholz

Geoff is a part time (although not sure which part) producer, arranger and writer mainly for fun and frustration. This piece was performed by Geoff’s imaginary orchestra, the Bongo Orkest with Natasha featured on vocals. Otherwise Geoff works in the broadcast industry in Newcastle NSW Australia.

Natasha is a radio producer, singer, belly dancer with a beautiful voice and beautiful new baby who lives in the Blue Mountains in NSW.

geoffobongo@gmail.com

5. Naive Melody (This Must be The Place) – John Dissed

After years of various collaborations with vocalists, guitarist John Dissed began singing and recording his own songs in the fall of 2007. As a guitarist, Dissed spent the latter half of the ’00s performing throughout the Southwest with Los Angeles female-fronted punks, Bull Lee. In January, 2008, John announced that he would unveil a new solo acoustic track per week for the entire year. Alternating between originals and covers by such artists as David Bowie, The Clash, Johnny Thunders, The Ramones, Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty, the songs were announced via Myspace Bulletins and Blog entries. The original songs comprise five solo EPs on the DIY Bull Lee Records label, distributed by CD Baby, iTunes and the other major online digital music retailers. The covers can be downloaded for free when you sign up for his email list at JohnDissed.com.

This goes out to my friends and newlyweds, BC and Jennifer whose love for the song inspired me to choose it. I read that the “Naïve Melody” portion of the title came from the repeated guitar figure in the original, so first I transformed that into the opening acoustic arpeggio. The figure loops from the opening to the end and served as the foundation. The one-note piano part in the outro is as naïve a melody as there can be.

6. (Nothing But) Flowers – etgilles

In 2006 a musical partnership was formed by Seattle based singer etgilles and Sweden’s singer/songwriter/musician Johan Olofsson. The duo released their debut CD Johan’s Boat, a collection of ten original songs written by Olofsson that showcased etgilles’ emotive vocals over Johan Olofsson’s retro synth dance pop orchestrations and introspective ballads. etgilles and Olofsson’s sophomore release is slated for 2011.

7. Swamp – James Ghofulpo

James Ghofulpo is a multi-instrumentalist from Erie, PA. He plays guitar, bass, keyboards, and various other stringed instruments.

8. Psycho Killer – Dave Verdick

With extensive performance experience and a strong education in musical theory, including classical and jazz, Dave offers a variety of creative offerings for the avid music listener.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy…

Dave’s Music/Services

9. Life During Wartime – Geoffrey Madden

Geoffrey Madden has been making music of doubtful quality since the late 70’s and early 80s in Brisbane bands such as Blackhead and the Pimples and The Masonic Wombat Conspiracy, who were a bit like TMBG except without the talent. A promising musical career and certain poverty was interrupted by a family and career and now he is only allowed out to play his 12 string electric guitar at Church and sometimes makes dodgy covers at home. He has children who are actually talented and can play music properly, but he just spends far too much time making backings on Band in a Box for songs from Church (which he blogs at www.sixmaddens.org).

10. (Nothing But) Flowers – Zpruder Point

Zapruder Point (a.k.a. Dan Zapruder Phillips) has been recording and performing in Chicago for over a decade — usually alone with an electric guitar, but sometimes joined by friends. If you like Morrissey, the Decemberists, Granddaddy and Death Cab for Cutie, you’ll find a common thread in Dan’s melodic arrangements and plaintive vocal trails. But to balance out the prettiness, you’ll also hear echoes of Billy Bragg, Guided by Voices, the Feelies and Britpop in general. Zapruder Point’s latest collection is a full-band E.P. called Heads Together.

11. Burning Down The House – Arrica Rose

Arrica Rose has loved and played music all her life – musicals, punk-rock, big band, vinyl, piano, guitar, mandolin, 4-track recorders, miniature casio keyboards, toy pianos and so on. She went to more movies than your average human though and secretly wished to live within the celluloid on screen and so she attended film school at USC because she was given a scholarship to do so. She wound up scoring short films during her time there which led to eventually deciding that music is what she enjoyed most in life. Writing, recording, and putting together a backing band fondly referred to as The Dot Dot Dots ensued. Arrica Rose’s music has since been featured on iTunes in the US and Europe, done some charting on iTunes as well as indie/college radio, appeared on television shows, and the Nike Women website for good measure. Rose grew up listening to big band, folk, 1960’s french pop, Love Songs on the Coast, and obscure indie-rock and has a long list of musical heros. Some refer to her music as Indie-Folk-Pop but call it what you will we hope you enjoy it.

12. Naive Melody (This Must be The Place) – Mark Goodfellow

A dentist from Huntington Beach, CA and a closet musician who dabbles with Logic Pro. Not planning to quit my day job. I have about 7 albums worth of mostly original stuff, with a dozen or so covers of artists ranging from Pink Floyd to Jonathon Coulton to the Makepeace Brothers to Bonnie Raitt. I do it strictly for fun.

13. Crosseyed and Painless – Randy Peterman

In the 4th grade Randy Peterman was introduced to “Weird Al” Yankovic. Having “Weird Al” as a musical influence is like having every pop band that has ever had a one hit wonder as an influence and at the same time it means being a chameleon. Randy’s vision for covering songs is to do genre mixing where he mixes the genre of film scores, anthems and soundtracks with rock and roll. Usually the song-babies are born with three heads and a penchant for sit-coms that are canceled halfway through the first season but sometimes they’re gems.

14. The Big Country – Magic Love Bag

After a nearly 25 year hiatus, the boys of Magic Love Bag are back to piss off squares, frighten small children and cut a swath of much needed destruction through the overgrown field of stale,saccharin modern pop music. Remembered as much, by their small cult of fans, for their wild, over the top stage performances as for their music, perpetual adolescents Dave, KC, Randy, Scott and Bob have returned to separate the cool wheat from the lame chaff. Take a long, hard look in the mirror and decide if you have the stones to hang with “The Bag”.

The band members are as follows:

Dave Rutter

KC Staples

Randy Kimbley

Bob Robertson

Scott Bailey

15. Don’t Worry About The Government – Jim Bouchard

Jim Bouchard is a musician living in Boston, MA, whose closest brush with fame is his brothers Albert and Joe Bouchard who were original members of The Blue Oyster Cult. Jim lurked in their shadows for years until the early 1990s when he had a brief fling as a guitar strumming solo folksinger. Jim then played banjo in a string band called Toots Rambles, followed by a stint playing steel guitar in the roots-rock band Fire In The Boathouse, keyboards and guitar in power-pop band Union Label, and later as part of a songwriting duo, The Fritters. He is currently playing ukulele in a band called The Beauty Way, and plans to keep going until he drops…

Websites:

http://www.thefritters.com

http://jimbouchard.bandcamp.com/

16. Heaven – Alan and Floyd Brock

Alan and Floyd Brock, a father and son team also from the band ToasT (www.mrpeabody.org), collaborated on this song via post office. The Brocks host a collection of instruments and knowledge in the playing styles of rock, bluegrass, country, electronic, and humor (subjective, of course). Floyd lives in Boston, Massachusetts and Alan lives in southeastern New Hampshire. Both have hobbies including staying out of trouble and trying not to get caught, Together, Alan and Floyd have a combined experience of 65 years playing and performing music, however, they are far from retired.

17. Cities – Jacob Haller

Jacob Haller is a Providence, RI-based musician whose songs (on such diverse topics as love, relationships, substance abuse, robots, and kittens) have been described as fresh, catchy, and quirky. He’s been nominated for ‘best singer/songwriter’ in the Providence Phoenix and Motif Magazine and has been compared to Leon Redbone, Greg Brown, Paul Geremia, Randy Newman, and They Might Be Giants. His website is at http://music.jwgh.org/ .

18. Psycho Killer – Dustin

Dustin was originally the drummer for the Southern New Jersey Band “VC” in the mid 1990’s. He gave up music to raise a family and is currently living in Rhode Island and working as a telecom technician. Husband and and father of 2, Dustin now plays nights and weekends in his basement just to forget about work. All instruments and vocals done by Dustin himself.

19. Wild Life – Chance

Chance is an independent solo artist based in Los Angeles, CA.

After leading the nationally signed act, Portable (Two nationally released CDs; National Tours, including Woodstock ’99), Chance began releasing his solo work in late 2004.

Fiercely independent, Chance writes, records, performs, produces and mixes most of his music in his apartment studio and has gained a worldwide reputation for his non-linear approach to the “Chance brand” of music.

http://mynameischance.com