A note for note rehashing of a song is pretty much never interesting (see Great White’s version of “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” from Unplugged). Of course, that doesn’t mean that a cover where the artist makes the song his/her own is a wonderful thing either. Sometimes it is like when Jane’s Addiction did “Sympathy” or when Voi Vod did “Astronomy Domine,” but other times it’s a disaster. In the late 60s, Elvis covered the Beatles’ “Yesterday.” Now, I didn’t have high hopes for this one anyway, but I also didn’t expect it to devolve into something so pathetic it was comical. About 1:20 into his version, where Paul McCartney sang, “I said, ‘Something wrong?’ Now I long for yesterday,” Elvis puts his indelible stamp on it by singing, “I mustasaida…” I mustasaida?!?!? What is that? What was he thinking? Linda suggested it was the bacon fat or the painkillers. Probably. I didn’t even keep listening. I just rewound back and listened to that couple of seconds over and over…and over. Laughed like there was no tomorrow. I made an MP3 of those few seconds over and over for several minutes. I use it to bug my wife. I laugh some more. At that point, “Yesterday” was undeniably Elvis’, but that certainly wasn’t a good thing.
