I like it when a cover makes everyone rethink their creative process, let alone the original. Señor Coconut y su Conjunto's cover of "Autobahn" by Kraftwerk. Yes, that's cumbia merengue version of the Krautrock classic. However it's also techno: the first Coconut album was mostly made with synths. Coconut added his cohorts for the live show. If you want to hear more, don't ride the white horse. The Soup Dragons' cover of "I'm Free" is a luxurious revisit of the Rolling Stones. You can feel yourself learn back in your heels. Speaking of the Rolling Stones: The Sundays' cover of "Wild Horses". When I first heard this in college, it made me realize how well country songs turn into soft rock without melting into schmaltz. Hmm, schmaltz would actually do the melting, as it's chicken fat. I need to work on that metaphor. One more Stones... oddity. R.E.M.'s "Wolves, Lower" is really the main riff from "Paint It, Black" sped up. By the way, here is R.E.M. covering the latter live on West German TV. You can tell it's 1985 because Stipe's hair is bleached then dyed with mustard. Too bad he's too drunk to recall more than the first verse. I have an entire album of REM covering songs during early tours. I'd probably have to digitize their destruction of "I've Got You, Babe" for sport. I found a version of their take on Mission of Burma's "Academy Fight Song". I have a slightly better live version on a 7" from issue 40 of Bucketful of Brains -- again, on the stack to be digitized. We're probably all heard of Surprise Your Pig: A Tribute to R.E.M.. This gives us Vic Chestnutt's fascinating spin on "It's the End of the World as" blah blah blah. Great Big Sea have a lot of fun with that song (and you can understand all of the words at long last thanks to those sociable Newfies), but the late Mr Chestnutt plays far harder core. Oh yeah, another brain fryer: The Dismemberment Plan's cover of this. I don't want to give away what the Plan is covering. Just control-click to open in another tab and don't look. It may take a while and be worth it. Worthththth. It. I need to close with something solid, something that just... skip the intro: Dread Zeppelin's version of "Stir It Up", complete with fast food order. Bob Marley would, umm... Man, I got real, real gone doing this. Not quite Butthole Surfers covering "Hurdy Gurdy Man", but it'll do.