What a beautiful feeling!
Happy Monday to you all! If you aren’t fully awake yet and ready to take on another exciting week, you certainly will be by the time mixmaster Scratchy gets done blowing your eardrums out with the next exciting reconditioned song in The Nest’s Top 30 Cover Songs of All Time countdown! The Sponkies are so excited… here they come now singing Pony Pony!
#16. “Crimson and Clover” – Joan Jett and the Blackhearts
Tommy James and his Shondells were a late 60’s sensation who made music with a psychedelic kick that even the common people could get down to without having to be totally strung out on LSD. For whatever strange reason, that also made him the father of the 80’s cover song. No fewer than three Tommy James originals became big hits two decades after the last bum acid trip. Billy Idol took “Mony Mony” and turned it into one of the best party songs of the entire decade. Tiffany made a short-lived career out of her cover of “I Think We’re Alone Now.” And then there was “Crimson and Clover“…
Yeah! Let’s kick this song’s groovy ass!!!
Recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Joan Jett split off from the Runaways in the early 80’s and got her own band, The Blackhearts together. She struck it huge when her song “I Love Rock and Roll” became a smash #1 hit in 1982. But Joan also had a bad reputation for making covers of under the radar classic songs, and a few of those Blackhearted remakes even saw some moderate pop success. At the same time Joan had everyone loving rocky road rock and roll, she also reached #7 on the charts with her much more powerful take on “Crimson and Clover”…
With all due respect to William Broad and Miss Tiffany, this is my favorite of the Tommy James “60’s Preservation Society” trio, and the one I chose to be represented in the countdown. Joan and the boys do everything so much better in their version, laced with their trademark mix of early metal and glam sounds. The lone exception would be the trippy sounding vocals towards the end of the original version. The Nest still scores that checkbox a victory for Tommy James…
So totally mod, man!
It may seem like we’re dragging the line with this countdown, but can you believe it’s now officially halfway finished! Yes, 15 classic covers down, and now only 15 more weeks to go… and the songs will just keep getting worser better and worser better! Tune in next Monday to see who will lead off the second half of the greatest blog countdown in the history of musical shittiness!
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
I absolutely LOVE Joan Jett. Such a talented musician and an inspiration to a whole generation of up and coming female artists. Excellent pick, good sir!
Thank you! Joan rocked better than a lot of the guys of the same era did… even if she was the queen of the cheesy video!
But did you know that I Love Rock and Roll was itself a cover? Ha!
You also know that I absolutely idolize Joan and I love her version of C&C (a whole album of covers, I think it was called The Hit List, might be my favourite lp of hers), but for some inexplicable reason, she doesn’t do the wah-wah voice effects at the end of the song, which is the best part. I think she also re-did Crystal Blue Persuasion.
Just to add the obligatory ha! aside: For some unknown (at the time) reason, Hanky Panky popped into my head Saturday morning and I spent at least an hour singing the entire two lines of song….
Also, a ha on draggin’ the line!
When the family did its grand tour of Illinois for all of the bowling tournament trips we took in the early 90’s, we had three tapes to listen to in the van… Weird Al, Ray Stephens, and Tommy James. One of these things is not like the other…
I think that’s the only reason I know so many TJ songs… or maybe even knew that all of those 80’s songs I liked so much were first done by him. But you’ve got to be shitting me that i Love Rock and Roll was also a cover…. tell me that’s not a Glitter song too!!!
Ha! No Glitter….although it was some hit in England that she probably heard about during her Glitter phase.
I can’t overstate the lack of wah-wah voice. It’s not quite on the par of Ike & Tina not toinin’ and boinin’ in Proud Mary, but still…..
I am forever grateful for having been out of the country for most of the 1980s. There’s so much for me to rediscover … classic songs, television series. Even cars. It’s a treasure trove of “stuff I missed” and time as not dimmed its magnificence! Thank you for continually helping in my re-education efforts!
I can assure you that given the content of much of the rest of this countdown, you will quickly become an expert on the 80’s! Well, maybe the shitty part of the decade, but an expert nonetheless!
I don’t remember this one either. Of course, I do have memory issues and I lived under a rural rock where we only had three TV channels and radio reception was pretty spotty. My dad thought Prince was “devil music” so he would have had a stroke if he’d caught me watching Joan Jett behead roses with her teeth! 🙂
My guess is most of the radio stations near you were also preaching that Prince is the devil. Of course, the joke’s on them because he really IS the devil! I’m not as enamored with him as the rest of my 80’s brethren are…
Tommy etc always sounded ( to me) like they were holding their noses while singing.
Lurve hurts! best… rendition…ever! You are actually quite good at this. 😀
Ha! It does sound like Tommy’s got some nasal issues!
I can not wait to see what you think of next week’s song! 😀
Yeah, Joanie wins this faceoff, Bill, despite TJ’s take on trippiness at the end. Good week!
Sometimes cover songs can feel like guilty pleasures, but nobody seems to hate themselves for loving Joan’s versions.
Joan is a woman who rocks like she knew all along women are supposed to rock not just as good as men, but better than men. And all of us men love her for it. 🙂