The Beatles are back in the news with new mixes of all their albums (cds) and the Rock Band video game. This is probably the most exciting Beatles week since the release of the Anthology cds back in the 90's.I've been thinking about all the recent covers of Beatles songs and albums, from Jim James of My Morning Jacket doing a tribute to George Harrison songs to The Smithereens releasing 2 cds worth of Beatles songs; so for today's mix it's all about Beatle covers.
The Smithereens have played tribute to The Beatles on 2 full cds: 2007's Meet The Smithereens and 2008's B-Sides The Beatles. Both cd's are excellent and a review can be found here.
Jim James, leader of My Morning Jacket, under the pseudonym of Yim Yames has recently released a great little EP simply called Tribute To; the tribute is to the late great George Harrison. Buy it here.
In 2005 This Bird Has Flown, a 40th Anniversary Tribute to the Beatles Rubber Soul was released. The tribute featured primarily indy or lesser known artists. One of the artists includes Rhett Miller whom I have been raving about lately.
Steve Earle played a sort of bluegrass version of the above Beatles song on his great 1995 acoustic outing Train A Comin'.
The 2001 Sean Penn movie "I Am Sam" featured an all Beatle cover soundtrack. The excellent soundtrack included Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder doing his best Lennon.
The musical film "Across the Universe" featured all Bealtes songs was released in 2007. The film had some fine moments, but overall was just ok; The highlight was seeing Bono play Dr. Robert and sing I Am the Walrus.
The great Ray Charles covered the Beatles on his 1968 album A Portrait of Ray.
Even Elvis Presley covered the Beatles. Here he does George's Something.
Another really bad musical film that inlcuded all Beatles music was 1978's "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". The film featured the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton, along with many others. One of the songs featured Aerosmith.
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