Covers: Ghost Riders in the Sky

The song that expresses an American version of the Wild Hunt story has been covered more than half a hundred times (for half a hundred years).

What is interesting about the Ghost Riders version of the Hunt, is that the American idea of the story is quite optimistic and life-asserting, while the classic European versions describe the Hunt as something presaging suffering, catastrophes and deaths. Though the original lyrics are credited to Stan Jones, he said that "he had been told the story when he was 12 years old by an old cowboy friend". That is, the story is likely to be something more than just a personal view of the author, and can be considered to belong to American folklore of that (or former) times.

Duane Eddy and Dennis Solee, Ghost Riders in the Sky.

Covers: The Man Who Sold the World, Nirvana

Nirvana just have given a second life to this old Dawid Bowie's song.

What is interesting about this performance, is that though the thing is supposed to be done unplugged (i.e. with no output effects except amplification), Kurt brazenly uses guitar processor for his solo part. However, the processed guitar gives a fascinating sound to the song, so I tend to forgive him ;).

Another interesting thing is that The Man was one of the first songs we've played at school parties with my first band. That were really сrazy times... Our equipment consisted of ex-acoustic guitar with a self-made built-in distortion effect, a bass obtained from another 7-string acoustic guitar by placing bass strings in place of 1, 3, 5 and 7th strings, and the drums made from casseroles and their covers. Nobody was aware of the exact lyrics, as there was no Internet and our English was not that good to understand Kurt's mumbling clearly. But, you know, we sounded great for ourselves (and I think not bad for others as well, as we were invited to more than one party ;)).

Covers: Dust in the Wind, Scorpions

In my opinion, most of the covers cannot compete with the original performances. Still there are some exceptions. An outstanding arrangement of a good old Kansas song, primarily thanks to Adriana’s cello and the keyboards.