Rhino’s Got You Covered: The Dillards, DEVO, Fleet Foxes, and Bonnie Tyler
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?
• The Dillards, “I’ve Just Seen a Face” (1968): It’s not inconceivable that you only know this band from their appearance on The Andy Griffith Show, but it’s just as possible that you don’t know that you know them from those appearances, since they were called The Darlings on the show. This Beatles cover hails from their fourth album, WHEATSTRAW SUITE, and if you’ve never heard the LP, this one-liner from the All-Music Guide ought to sell you on remedying that situation: “In many ways, this is a finer rural/rock fusion album than Sweetheart of the Rodeo, the first Flying Burrito Brothers album, or the Beau Brummels' efforts during this same period, and an indispensable part of any collection of '60s music.”
• DEVO, “Working in the Coal Mine” (1981): Lee Dorsey took this track and turned it into a top-10 hit, which is decidedly impressive, but DEVO made solid chart headway with the song, too: thanks to its appearance on the soundtrack to Heavy Metal, it made it to #43 on the Billboard Hot 100.
• Fleet Foxes, “In the Morning” (2018): If there’s any question as to whether or not the Fleet Foxes are big Bee Gees fans, it should be answered by the fact that they covered this song, which was originally recorded by the brothers Gibb in 1965. Yes, they subsequently re-recorded it, but the 1970 version was entitled “Morning of My Life,” so the fact that the Foxes used its original title... That’s hardcore.
• Bonnie Tyler, “Making Love (Out of Nothing at All)” (1995): If it surprises you that Tyler would tackle an Air Supply song, then you must not realize that both this song and her biggest hit, “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” were penned by the same person. In other words, the woman knows her way around a Jim Steinman track.
