Disappointment, thy name is Mark E Smith

So, we were watching BBC4's disco retrospective, and "Lost In Music" by Sister Sledge came on, and I told her that the cover by The Fall was better. She resorted to Wikipedia before She'd believe me that such a cover existed, and even then She said it couldn't be better then the original. Piqued, I went and YouTubed the cover.

And discovered, to my surprise, that she was right. The Fall's cover sucks. I had always thought it was brilliant, and it turns out that it's awful - tired, plodding, with Mark E Smith phoning his vocals in. It's nowhere near as good as the version in my head. And then I realized that I'd never actually heard The Fall's cover version. I had known that The Fall had done a cover version, but the version in my head was what I'd imagined that it would sound like, not what it really sounded like. Turns out my imagination is better at being The Fall than they are.

If we're talking covers though, Half Man Half Biscuit's cover of "Song To The Siren", however, is properly excellent; not just better than the original, but better than all the other covers. (Although not as funny as Bryan Ferry's version, which had me in helpless giggles after thirty seconds, and which I had to turn off after one minute because I could hardly breathe.)