I stayed clear of the conversation about cover songs last week — not because the topic bores me, but because even after racking my brain, I couldn’t think of enough examples worth mentioning. Not enough good covers, at least.If you…

Off the Beat, from my alma mater, covered a number of songs well, but they had a woman who was a dead-on ringer for Jewel. Their covers of Who Will Save Your Soul and Foolish Games are absolutely phenomenal due to Miss Deutermann.

The Brown Derbies are probably the finest college a capella group going. I recommend everything they’ve ever done except for In the House of Stone and Light and Superstition. Other than that, get it allllll.

Back to instruments, I’m going to have to agree with Greg Swann at Presence of Mind and say Mindy Smith’s cover of Dolly Parton’s Jolene is about as good a cover as there ever was.

On the funny side, Lounge against the Machine and Me First and the Gimmie Gimmies are hilarious.

- Josh

Oh wait, we’re talking about good covers, not the worse thing to ever happen to music. Sorry.

Sting covering Elton John’s “Come Down In Time”

Bono covering Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love”

Anne Sofie Van Otter covering ABBA’a “Like a Stranger Passing through My Room”

U2 covering Lou Reed’s “Satelite of Love”

Cassandra Wilson’s cover of Bob Dylan’s “Shelter from the Storm”

Dynamite Hack’s cover of NWA’s “Boyz ‘N the Hood.”

Here’s a good one I haven’t seen mentioned yet:

Bill Murray’s rendition of Roxy Music’s “More Than This,” from the “Lost in Translation” soundtrack.

I like the cover of this song by The Eagles off On The Border.

Man, what’s all this stuff about cover songs? And how come no one’s mentioned the most classic cover of all time — William Shatner’s version of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds?”

Locust’s cover of Depeche Mode’s “Master and Servant” (off For the Masses) is a delicious little lounge-style duet.

Their unfortunate propensity for left-wing politics notwithstanding, punk rock bands have delivered some absolutely brilliant covers of rock and roll, country, blues, folk and even top 40 classics.

There are just too many to list, but among my personal favorites are:

- The Ramones’ covers of Bobby Freeman’s “Do You Wanna Dance?” and “Let’s Dance” (don’t know the original artist, but it was the food fight scene in Animal House)
- The Donnas’ covers of the Beach Boys’ “At the Drive In” and the Crystals’ “Da Doo Ron Ron”
- Black Flag’s cover of the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie” (next to “Yesterday”, perhaps the most covered song in history)
- Green Day’s cover of The Who’s “My Generation”
- The Dropkick Murphys’ cover of “Finnegan’s Wake”
- Social Distortion’s covers of the Stones’ “Under My Thumb” and Kitty Wells’ “Makin’ Believe”
- Joan Jett’s cover of “Love is all Around” (the theme from the Mary Tyler Moore Show)
- Gang Green’s cover of Till Tuesday’s “Voices Carry”
- Anything by Me First and the Gimme Gimmes (they’re actually a punk band that does *nothing but* covers), but especially their covers of Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young” and Cat Stevens’ “Wild World”.

“Gilded Goldbergs” Robin Holloway’s transcription of the Goldberg Variations of J.S. Bach, performed by the Micallef-Inanga Piano Duo, qualifies as a cover because of the change in character which it gets.

Radley Balko and his readers have been coming up with lists of the best-ever cover versions of songs. I don’t