One thing I've noticed in searching for music to include in the Nooze Roundups lately has been the startling number of people who record YouTube videos of themselves sitting in front of a computer playing covers of their favorite songs. I think it's a cool phenomenon; everyone loves cover songs, and occasionally you stumble upon a really nifty cover of one of your favorite tunes. This is especially handy when there is no available video of the actual artist performing the song, as was the case with my recent posting of the Tom Waits song Old Shoes and the Cake song Ruby Sees All.
Since today's artist-of-choice is John Prine, for whom there really is no subsitute, I thought I'd post the link I wish I'd used a few weeks back when I posted his classic Paradise accompanied by a treacly slideshow someone made. If only I had known about this (I'd embed it, but the feature has been disabled by the user). I couldn't find any video of Prine himself doing the song, and here's Fretkillr with his amazing voice and incredible harmonica skills doing a killr version. There's something striking about the dramatic angle he's filmed his guitar from, too. You never see his face, and yet he's constructed an entire musical identity for himself. Who knows who Fretkillr is? All we know is that he loves to play the guitar and sing, and his affection for these songs is sometimes even more exciting to discover than a lackluster performance by the actual artist. Plus, if you're an amateur strummer like myself, you can learn how to play some of your favorite songs (he's got a whole series of classic folk numbers up there). Here's his rendition of Dylan's Don't Think Twice, It's Alright...beautiful stuff.
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