running to stand still

I've been meaning to write an entry about my frustration with cover songs, after listening (again, I'll admit) to the Indigo Girls' cover the Dire Straits hit "Romeo and Juliet", which, besides being of incredible sentimental value to me, is also one of my favorite songs. And listening to the cover makes me mad, because the whole business of covering a song is inherently fraught with potential landmines. For example:

- When covering a song (like Fuel covering "Daniel", perhaps) is a band paying homage to an inspirational artist, or are they simply too lazy to write their own music?

-What changes when a female artist sings a song written by a man (for example, when Jann Arden covered "You Don't Know Me", which included the line "I watch you walk away, beside the lucky guy". The original song was about a woman, but Arden is allegedly gay. I'll leave that one up to you)

- In what circumstances is it okay to change the lyrics? In the Indigo Girls version of "Romeo and Juliet", the lead singer (I can't be bothered to look up her name) screams out "I can't do anything, but I'd do anything for you", instead of, "I can't do everything, but I'd do anything for you". Picky, I know. But it pisses the hell out of me.

- Also, who gives people the right to be idiots? Case in point: Ryan Adams recorded a cover of "Wonderwall" for an episode of "The OC" a couple of weeks ago. The next day in chapters, two teenagers (or in Steve's words, prostitots) were discussing how "beautiful" the song was. One girl went so far as to claim that "he's SUCH a good singer!" Fine. But the song was written by Oasis. In my humble opinion, if you're not old enough to remember WTSMG?, you're probably not old enough to be watching the shit that takes place on "The OC", but I digress.

That being said, at a show in San Jose, U2 pulled out a cover of "Hello", another Oasis hit, and I got really faint and tingly when I found out. Am I biased? Not necessarily. Over the course of the Vertigo tour thus far, they've also pulled out covers of the Who (I can see for miles), The Beatles (Blackbird), The Stones (Ruby Tuesday), David Bowie (Young Americans) and even Marvin Gaye (sexual healing). This is amazing.

My post, initially was going to be an inspired sermon on my born again Bono-ism. Whatever I was looking for, I found. For some reason, running through tour pictures, reading set lists and reminiscing has put me in an extremely good mood, all inspired by the fact that I wrote "it's a beautiful day" on the Lonestar driveway in sidewalk chalk today (it was). Dear Bono - I'm back. Dear Steve - I'm sorry.