Under the covers

Over at the Guardian's Readers Recommend section, it's unlikely cover versions.

These are mine - any comments or contributions?

Spare Snare - Independent Women. I loved Spare Snare and this was the first jangly indie band does R+B cover I'd heard.

Th' Faith Healers - S.O.S. It rocks. It's on the Peel Sessions CD.

REM doing Pylon's Superman - much better than the original. Their cover of Wire's There's Something Strange Going On Tonight (can't remember the title) really works with their twitchy opacity of the time.

Despite being slightly screechy, I adore Joan Baez's version of Hard Rain.

Faith No More's Easy, Pale Fountains, We Have All The Time In The World.

Altered Images doing Jeepster?

Wedding Present's Come Up And See Me

Tindersticks covered an early Manics track on a split 10" but I can't remember which track. On the other side, the Manics did the theme from M*A*S*H - both brilliant.

Frente's version of New Order's Bizarre Love Triangle is heartbreaking.

The Boo Radleys' cover of True Faith (Boo Faith) is noisepop genius.

Rheinallt H. Rowlands did a synthpop Welsh language cover of New Dawn Fades which has to be heard to be believed. It's called Gwawr Newydd yn Cilio and it's brilliant.

Much as I love Thompson's Waltzing's for Dreamers, June Tabor does a lovely version.

Damon and Naomi deconstruct While My Guitar Gently Weeps quite spookily and in the same melancholic vein, Low's cover of I Started a Joke is so sad as is Last Night I Dreamed That Somebody Loved Me. Then you can add Galaxie 500 doing several Smiths tracks, though their best cover is of the Rutles' Cheese and Onions or their version of Ceremony (mmm… even more miserable).

St. Etienne's Only Love Can Break Your Heart works so well because it moves post-hippy melancholy into the Ecstasy generation. Juliana Hatfield's version's OK too.

I know it's really sad, and I hate the original, but The Delgados do a really good Mr Blue Sky. They make up for it with a wet California Uber Alles cover.

The Well-Oiled Sisters, I Walk the Line - lesbian country classic!

Kirsty MacColl - You Just Haven't Earned It Yet Baby and A New England.

Picture Center's cover of Incense (West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band) reeks of patchouli - it's ace. Mojo Nixon's sarcastic Girlfriend In A Coma always makes me laugh, and The Gourds' bluegrass version of Snoop's Gin'n'Juice is brilliant before you go out for the night.

Pulp - Bad Cover Version?

The Residents did a version of Paint It Black that could stand a listen.

Trespassers William did a cool version of Ride's Vapour Trail.

Didn't either the Sisters of Mercy or someone similar do Gimme Gimme Gimme as part of their live set?

For the Irish - The Stunning's cover of Subterranean Homesick Blues. Fun, though entirely unnecessary.

Another wasted Friday

That's enough for today. I've been in the office for several hours and got very little done other than deal with e-mail from yesterday's day off. I've wasted a large amount of time contributing to the Guardian's Readers Recommend list (unemployment today - I didn't have many tracks) and despatched notes to various people (if you were expecting e-mail from me today, it's because I try to put substantial time aside for substantial responses).

I'm just feeling a little weary after yesterday's highs and lows. I skipped swimming this morning due to exhaustion, and I'm not in the mood to read the two inches of papers I've printed out for this PGCE essay on curriculum design. I'll do some tomorrow. I also need to find some way to prepare for Sunday's fencing competition. I haven't fenced regularly for a few months due to work, and haven't competed for a year or so - coaching slows you down. Still it's always fun to humiliate yourself in front of your coaches and old foes. I'm considerably lighter and fitter than a year ago though, so maybe that will make up for some of the rustiness.

So tonight - a few drinks in the usual haunts, with the tragic exception of the Little Civic, cruelly snatched from Wolverhampton's social scene. No longer will I be accosted by drunk strangers with the words 'you failed my essay' while I'm trying to organise my feet for the tricky break in The Only One I Know. Happy days…

What are you all doing this weekend? Staying in Wolves?

Another colossal, brilliant, waste of time

Welcome to The 'Spill - the overflow from the Guardian's Readers Recommend. Obsessives live there. I'm coming home!

A Friday Friday conundrum this time

It's so late! Sorry everybody, I've had a load of work to do, and I got caught up in the Guardian's Readers Recommend shenanigans - see if you can work out who I am, as I've picked a different username for reasons that now escape me. I'm around page 7.

So anyway, I was wallowing up and down in the pool with all the grace of an escaped bouncy castle, and wondered why I was doing this - the answer, of course, is so that I can slave away for some of you for an extra few years rather than gratefully accepting the massive heart-attack which was pencilled in for about 2015. So today's question is:

What do you do unwillingly, because they're good for you, or because others expect it of you?

(Were it not swimming, I could put 'turn up for work', though actually when things are going well, it's brilliant). I also go to Mass at Christmas with the family simply for a quiet life, and (this may amaze you), I often shut up when internally I'm screaming with fury and have something very offensive to say. My PGCE colleagues called me Mr Angry, which seems most unfair.