COVER WARS TWO: CALIFONE’S ROLLING STONES TRIBUTE CONCERT vs. COUNTING CROWS COVERING SPRINGSTEEN (round two)

For those of you who don’t know, Califone are an incredibly interesting experimental Americana band. Check this out, from their latest album, Roots and Crowns, on Thrill Jockey records:

Spider’s House

Anyhoo, in 2004 the band got together and did a short set of Stones songs. Yesterday, we posted round one of this week’s cover wars. Round two begins with this great Califone set. The really cool thing about it is that instead of covering the tunes everyone else covers, they chose an Exile-heavy set list and really rocked out. I love this show. Quality is pretty good, too. Hope you dig it. No zip file this time because there’s only seven tracks.

Street Fighting Man

Ventilator blues

Turd on the Run

No Expectations

Rocks Off

Miss you

Bitch

So, who has done a Springsteen tribute show? Well, I don’t have a whole show, but I do have two songs. Adam Duritz makes two manly mournful songs into two plaintive whines. But if you’re gonna listen to whining, it might as well be Counting Crows, one of my all-time favorite mainstream rock bands.

Atlantic City

Thunder Road-Counting Crows

And the winner is . . . The Crows do a great job, but there’s only two songs here. Califone are truly ambitious, and it’s pretty ballsy for a small-time band to take on the world’s biggest rock band. Hmmmm. I’m tempted to call it a draw, but that’s the pussy way out. So, I’m giving round two to . . . Califone. And, therefore, The Rolling Stones win it.