1) I like to know who I'm chatting with : are you the same Loophole that posted back in days then changed its pseudo then went back to the old one ? If you are him, then welcome back, we missed you.
Yep. I disappeared for at least a year, maybe more. I decided to go back to the first name because "Paul" is too common.
I don't think the original is always better. Just usually. The more I think about it, that's probably because one great song often results in hundreds of covers (which can't all be good). So it's a numbers thing.
What I'm most interested in right now are covers that are better than (or equally good and different from) the original. Mr. Tambourine Man is a great example. I'm not going to say that it's better than Dylan's recording, but the Byrds' recording adds a lot to the song.
What prompted me was finding a list online of 33 covers that are better than the original. I disagreed with almost all of them. In particular, they said The Higwaymen's version of "Pancho & Lefty" was better than Townes Van Zandt's and that U2's version of "Helter Skelter" was better than The Beatles.
Although I hated the list, I like the idea of covers that are better than originals.
