they paved paradise...

ok. today i just have to rant. and there is no counter-point that will be acceptable to me. i'm annoyed, and this has been brewing in my mind for some time, but today it all came to a head. today, as i took the last two midols out of the cabinet, i heard adam duritz of the counting crows whining out the joni mitchell classic "big yellow taxi". i immediately felt violently ill. i wanted to vomit. i wanted to cry. i wanted to hunt him down and ask "for the love of god, why??". why is it that certain people feel the need to cover songs that have already sufficiently been performed?? this is a mystery to me. in this specific instance, he has taken a song that was unnecessary to re-make and then sings it badly. very badly. and i demand to know -- why?

in today's world, i feel there is no need to be subjected to this kind of selfish behavior. people have rights and i have the right not to turn on the radio and hear this kind of garbage. (as a side note, i'm not even going to get into a counting crows-specific rant, because i need to remained focused on the real issue here.) why do we have to hear the dixie chicks sing "landslide", when everyone still has the obviously superior original stevie nicks version on their play lists? why do we have to endure eddie vedder singing the 1964 classic "last kiss"? it makes no sense. no sense at all. and it drives me completely insane. in virtually every case where a popular song has been 'covered' by any current act, it quite frankly sucks. it is said that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. i would hazard a guess that people could do without this type of twisted flattery. the only way i will even reconsider is if you can name five songs that have been covered where the more recent version is better than the original. unless you can do this, i'm going to continue on my own personal jihad against the re-make.

so my plea is this: write something new, sing it well and just make this issue go away. because, i'm out of midol and it won't be pretty.