I’ve been passionately (er, obsessively) sharing The A.V. Club’s YouTube channel with everyone and anyone lately – specifically, their great A.V. Undercover series. It may be old news to many, given that the most recent videos were posted seven months ago, but I was just recently turned on to the series by a pal (thank you, Dani France!).
Sometime in between hours spent being alternately impressed by (Punch Brothers) and amused by (GWAR) the featured performers with my husband, and sharing video links to various friends’ Facebook walls, I remembered “duh, I AM THE EDITOR OF A MUSIC BLOG AND CAN THEREFORE SHARE THIS WITH EVERYONE AT ONCE.” Woops.
Justin Townes Earle doing his best Springsteen.
The A.V. Undercover series features amazingly talented musicians like Trampled by Turtles and Shearwater doing rad covers. In most of the videos, they are covering other cool, but generally more famous, artists; however, roughly one quarter of the covers are popular hits of the 1980s. As each clip’s intro explains, the A.V. Club collects a list of songs based on their readers votes, and then invites artists in to cover their song of choice in “the little round room.” There’s nary a bad cover to be found in either the 2011 or 2012 playlists, but several of the renditions are especially awe-inspiring. I’ve included a few of my esteemed choices below, but I definitely suggest you get yourself over to the A.V. Club’s YouTube channelto pick and share your own favorites.
