Cover Wars: Skin It Back Edition

Skin It Back is a track off the 1974 Little Feat album Feats Don’t Fail Me Now. It also has the distinction of being the first Little Feat song where the songwriting credits are solely that of guitarist Paul Barrère.

This is the second Little Feat song selected for CW. Longtime readers might remember that Mule was the winner of the Spanish Moon Cover Wars.

Let’s get down to business and look at this week competitors…

The Bridge: Leading off this week is the only band that also appeared in the Spanish Moon Cover Wars and there is some excellent guitar work in this one. Source: 8-17-2005

READ ON for the lowdown on the rest of this week’s contestants…

Bonus Video Of The Bridge [longer and looks like additional guest horn players]:

Note: There is a Part II to that video as well.

Day By The River: This now retired jamband was also featured in the You Enjoy Myself edition of Cover Wars. There is something very 1999 sounding about this recording, but I can’t exactly put it into words. There is an open-ended jam tacked on to the end that segues into another tune, hence the fadeout. Source: 3-11-1999

Phish: Unlike the other Little Feat songs in Phish’s repertoire (Time Loves A Hero & On Your Way Down), Skin It Back has been missing in action since the late ’80s. Well, that’s not entirely true - it was soundchecked and broadcast out to the fans within radio frequency as they were headed into the IT Festival in  2003. There’s only a few recordings out there of Phish playing Skin It Back, and this is definitely the best one. Source: 7-25-1988

String Cheese Incident: SCI played this one three times in 2002 and then it disappeared and hasn’t been heard from since. Bill Nershi provides the middle guitar solo on an acoustic, only time you’ll hear that this week. Another fadeout on this one, as they are working themselves into the jazz standard Blue Bossa. Source: 10-11-2002

Tishamingo: This band I had never heard of destroys this tune at a great tempo. This is a good recording too (it’s had some post-production work). The cover is concise but very good. Source: 8-6-2005

Widespread Panic: Bands like Gov’t Mule, Widespread Panic and Phish need to cut the shit and just allow their fans to put recordings up on the Live Music Archive already - it would really make my job a whole lot easier writing this every week. But alas, I can’t find a torrent I can connect to from one of the three shows where WSP played this cover back in 2002, so all you get is this crappy YouTube video.  Source: 10/31/2002

Checking in on last week’s Moonage Daydream contest, Of Montreal has claimed victory narrowly edging out The White Stripes.

Skin It Back, Who Did It Best?(surveys)

Here’s a video of Little Feat too: