Rhino’s Got You Covered: Belly, The Bobs, The Moog Cookbook, and John Prine

It’s Wednesday, so it must be time to take another dip into the Rhino catalog and trot out a new quartet of cover songs that you may or may not have heard before. Let’s get started, shall we?

•    Belly, “It’s Not Unusual” (1994): The ‘90s were filled with a plethora of films about college kids, and while the films themselves weren’t necessarily earth-shattering in their brilliance, they did result in a number of fantastic soundtracks. In this instance, the film was With Honors, and the soundtrack included tunes by Duran Duran, Madonna, The Cult, Candlebox, Kristin Hersh, Pretenders, Grant Lee Buffalo, Mudhoney, Babble, Lyle Lovett, Lindsey Buckingham, and – yes, we’re finally getting around to it – Belly covering this Tom Jones classic.

•    The Bobs, “Psycho Killer” (1989): Although this acapella group had already established itself several albums earlier, it was their SING THE SONGS OF... LP that really caught the ears of slightly-left-of-mainstream listeners. In addition to this Talking Heads tune, they also covered songs by Jimi Hendrix, Johnny  Cash, Led Zeppelin, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, The Beatles, The Rascals, and others.

•    The Moog Cookbook, “Sweet Home Alabama” (1997): The band Jellyfish was so adored by its fans that when the band broke up, those fans pretty much vowed to follow the various members on whatever flights of musical fancy they decided to embark upon. Or maybe it was just your humble author who did that. Either way, more than a few people were surprised when Roger Joseph Manning, Jr. teamed up with Brian Kehew to form The Moog Cookbook, a duo that basically just covered other people’s songs on Moog synthesizer. It’s good, clean, and completely kooky fun.

•    John Prine, “You Never Can Tell” (1975): Like yourself, most likely, we’re still not really over the death of John Prine, which is why we decided we’d wrap things up by including one of the cover songs he recorded in his career. Yes, he was predominantly known for his songwriting acumen, but he clearly had a ball covering this Chuck Berry song, so here’s hoping it leaves you with a smile on your face.