Kick by INXS
1987
Buy the album on Amazon
Kick by Beck’s Record Club
2010
Download the album
Lance recently posted a full length cover version of this for #CoverFriday. Courtney Barnett’s version was respectable and a cool effort, but honestly didn’t do much for me. I finally finished listening to most of the rest of it this past weekend, and was watching it on YouTube, and then noticed the Beck’s Record Club full album cover version in the related videos. I liked it enough that I was considering just featuring it, but then decided it may be overkill to still do the real Kick later, so here we are. I also just learned on the Slicing Up Eyeballs Facebook page that the album was released yesterday in 1987, so the timing is fortuitous.
First up, the original. This came out when I was in middle school (if I’m doing my math right). I’m not even sure if I knew about it right away – this was when I was still getting into music that wasn’t just in my mom’s record collection or my sister’s tape collection. I’m not also sure if I knew about it because of MTV or radio play, but I associate it with my childhood best friend Josh’s sister. She was a few years older than him, so they of course had all sorts of problems getting along, but she also liked some cool music that he and I got into because of her (pretty positive she also introduced us to Depeche Mode). Whatever the history, this album became and remains one of my favorites. Plus, how cool was Michael Hutchence? (Answer: So cool). Nostalgia or not, this is essentially a perfect album. There’s not a single song I consider filler – it’s more like a greatest hits album, and kind of is just that for me because I never got into any of their other albums as much as this one. I picked up a couple others, and my friend also had some, and overall a few other songs caught me (primarily “Suicide Blonde” and “Heaven Sent”), but this album was their pinnacle of perfection for me.
For all those good reasons, the song is also a staple at karaoke. If they had the entire album available, i think Lance and I would have no problem trading back on the forth on the full experience in the correct order. As it is, we’ll often do a medley of the songs they do have.
Now for the cover version. Like I said, the Courtney Barnett version didn’t really get me, but this is a cover version I can get behind. This is a few years old, but it was new to me. Nothing can top the original, but there really are some interesting interpretations of the songs here, with the musicians making the songs their own. Not all of them work, and a lot of them are rough (the connected and executed the entire thing in just 12 hours) but they’re unique enough that I can get behind the effort. I don’t know if Beck is still doing this, but at least back then he was apparently just getting random musicians together and recording full album covers. This one features musicians from Liars, St. Vincent, and Os Mutantes (I don’t know any of those bands). You can download the full thing here:
http://www.beck.com/recordclub/index.php/category/inxs
1. Guns in the Sky
Original: A great start to the album. Da da da. Could you spare a dime? it’s a load of shit.
Cover: The first few moments sound like it’s going to be pretentious and awful, but then it gets started and has a pretty great beat. A decent start to the album.
2. New Sensation
Original: A bit “of its time”, aka bordering slightly on 80’s cheese, but saved by coolness.
Cover: Feels like a different song. Cool interpretation.
3. Devil Inside
Original: Sexy and cool. This isn’t always available at karaoke, but it’s fun to sing when it is.
Cover: Interesting, but not really successful.
4. Need You Tonight
Original: A Chrance karaoke staple. And that’s being generous to the “Chr” part of that. This is one that Lance grabbed first, or maybe we would trade off the first few times before settling into what we do now – I can’t really remember – but he knows how much we both love this song, so it’s broken down as follows: he sings the majority of the song, and I do backups where appropriate as well as all the responses in the call and response chorus sections. It totally works (and/or I don’t care if it doesn’t – I’m grabbing that second mic every time). Probably the only good thing of he and I living in different cities now is that I get the chance to do this full song at karaoke. I did it once with a different group of coworkers once, and they said it felt like I had just made love to each of them. I’m not sure they meant it as a compliment.
Cover: I didn’t know St. Vincent at all before this, but I really dig her voice on this album, especially the ones like this where she’s on lead, and giving it a silky, jazzy vibe. But…is there a sniglet for something driving you crazy that’s completely trivial? Because whatever that word is would describe how it completely irks me to hear her say “Can’t take it all” instead of “Can’t think at all” when asked “What do you think?”. Now, let me digress for a moment – I wrote the previous two sentences, and then went online for validation that it’s “Can’t think at all”. Surprisingly, many lyric sites seem to think it’s “can’t take it all” as well (which is of course probably how Beck and the crew got that). Lance backs me up on “can’t think at all”, and come on people, it just makes more sense as an answer, so let this serve as the official judgment of this matter being closed!
5. Mediate
Original: It pains me a little to hear “Need You Tonight” on shuffle or at karaoke, because this song should always be played seamlessly with it. One day when Lance and I own our Chrance karaoke bar, we are going to have this song attached to “Need You Tonight”, and we are going to have the accompanying cue cards. Such a rad song and rad video.
Cover: It would be easy to put down the cover for not using the real words, but it actually cracks me up a bit. “My boner aches/Let’s make a cake/Or rape an ape” made me laugh out loud the first time I heard it, so it gets a pass.
6. Loved One
Original: More sexy. More cool. I love this song.
Cover: I was a fan of Beck for a bit, but have gotten over him. I do still like his voice sometimes though, so this is a decent version.
7. Wild Life
Original: Not in my top picks from the album, but whenever it comes on it’s still super hooky and sing-along-able.
Cover: A bit cloying.
8. Never Tear Us Apart
Original: On so many mix tapes for girls… Sung with such sincerity (and air-saxophoned by Lance likewise) on so many karaoke nights…
Cover: Probably my favourite cover on this album. Not actually as much of a departure from the original as a lot of the other songs, but her voice totally works, and I’m glad they kept the strings.
9. Mystify
Original/Cover: Middle of the road for me on both version.
10. Kick
Cover: Sounds very much like a standard Beck song. That’s not really a good thing in this case.
11. Calling All Nations
Original: I sometimes forget about this song when thinking of the album, but it’s so great every time I’m reminded of it.
Cover: Apparently I love all the St. Vincent vocal tracks. This is a great departure from the original. If this was on the radio, I would have to be really listening to even recognize the lyrics.
12. Tiny Daggers
Original: Kind of like “Wild Life” for me. On the lower end of the track albums, but totally fun when it comes on.
Cover: Nope. I haven’t actually been able to listen to this full track (that is to say, I don’t want to).
I remember borrowing this tape from Meredith Herr in middle school, it would’ve been 7th grade. I totally dubbed it on my SR2000 (Sears-brand, I believe) dual deck stereo. I don’t think I ever bought the actual album until I decided to pick it up on iTunes a few years ago, after having just settled with one of their many compilations for years.