Does anybody have any favorite tribute records worth recommending? (I'm talking about records where various artists cover the songs of a songwriter or band, such as "The Bridge" tribute to Neil Young, etc.)
There are a ton of these things made and they're usually pretty interesting but ultimately disappointing, or at least inconsistent.
I'm just wondering if you know of any really good ones. One of my favorites is the "Tulare Dust" tribute to Merle Haggard (its pretty twangy).
1. I Found Out - Red Hot Chili Peppers
2. I Don't Wanna Be A Soldier - Mad Season
3. Steel And Glass - Candlebox
4. Imagine - Blues Traveler
5. Working Class Hero - Screaming Trees
6. Power To The People - The Minus 5
7. How Do You Sleep? - The Magnificent Bastards
8. Nobody Told Me - Flaming Lips
9. Well, Well, Well - Super 8
10. Cold Turkey - Cheap Trick
11. Jealous Guy - Collective Soul
12. Isolation - Sponge
13. Instant Karma! - Toad The Wet Sprocket
14. Grow Old With Me - Mary Chapin Carpenter
15. Mind Games - George Clinton
- "Listen to What the Man Said: Popular Artists Pay Tribute to the Music of Paul McCartney" (2001): great album, features covers by the cream of power-pop artists like The Merrymakers, Linus of Hollywood,World Party, Sloan, Matthew Sweet, Owsley, Robyn Hitcock, Finn Brothers.
- " Sensory Lullabies: The Ultimate Tribute to Jellyfish" (2007) : great album too, all the songs Jellyfish has ever recorded (38 songs : the 2 studio albums + B faces) are here, played by new promising power-pop artists.
I kind of like "I shall be unreleased: The songs of Bob Dylan" (Rhino 1991) - not in the strict sense a Tribute album, as it just collects existing, but hard-to-get, recordings of Dylan songs that are (or were at the time) not put out by Bob himself.
Same goes for "The songs of Bob Dylan" (Start Records 1989).
A real gem, "Dusty Old Fairgrounds" by Blue Ash, is actually on both those compilations. I've been keeping a lookout for Blue Ash ever since.
In comparison, the 1993 "30th Anniversary Concert Celebration" with all the big guns doing Dylan, is a pretty lame affair, although it is kind of fun to hear how Lou Reed can make bloody well anything sound as if it was by Lou himself.
If you're interested in a Dylan tribute, you gotta pick up "Dylan Country." It collects Dylan covers by country artists over a 35 year period. It has some stuff you've probably heard before (The Byrds doing "You Ain't Going Nowhere") but it definitely also has some gems. Buck Owens' cover of "Love Minus Zero/No Limit," made me cry the first time I heard it. Really. I think you'd really enjoy alot on here Loophole. The best thing about it is it was pieced together from random covers over a long period of time, so it's not a traditional tribute album, and the songs benefit from that. Here's a link: http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=&sql=10:0jfexqqaldhe
