‘57 Chevys and Loud Guitars
A response to the “99 Covers I Have Heard, In Every One A Red Balloon” Writing Prompt
This one requires a bit of backstory.
A few days ago, I wrote my contribution to Pierce McIntyre’s Transportation Writing Prompt over at Plethora Of Pop. As my first language is German I decided to make this the focus of my piece and I wrote about 13 songs about various kinds of vehicles, ways of travel and types of roads in that language.
One of my examples was “57er Chevy” by Ostbahn Kurti & Die Chefpartie. Ostbahn Kurti was the stage name of Willi Resetarits, a well-known Austrian musician, activist and radio host. He passed away earlier this year and was one of the most important artists of what has become known as “Austropop”, a loose genre description that’s probably not all that useful in capturing a specific sound but that at least vaguely gestures towards something like “music in German, often in a specific Austrian dialect, but absolutely not “Schlager” or “folk music”. Make of this label what you will, but it certainly was a thing.
“57er Chevy” is a song sung in Viennese dialect and basically lists what the singer loves — 57 Chevys and “laude Gitarrn” (loud guitars). The track’s “message,” if you want to go down that road, is about unapologetically being yourself, regardless of whether others like it or not — basically “that’s me, that’s what I like. Take it or leave it”. It’s clearly not the first time a song has explored that theme, and we could easily see an old car and rock’n’roll as just representations of freedom, but the vibe of the song is more specific than that. When listening to it, I don’t just yearn for freedom from the judgment of others who might not agree with my lifestyle, I yearn specifically for being outside and listening to loud rock music. This state of mind can be evoked by various means, one of them being a live show. And if that specific song is played at said live show — then we have really come full circle.
I saw Ostbahn Kurti & Die Chefpartie live in 2003 in Vienna as part of their farewell tour (turned out they would come back later, but at the time Resetarits had planned to retire the “Ostbahn Kurti” character and focus on other projects). This was back in my teenage years and I was easily the youngest audience member by probably decades. I had the time of my life.
At this point you might wonder what any of this has to do with cover songs. And this is where we start going down the rabbit hole. As part of editing my article about transportation songs, I looked up songwriting credits and discovered three English-speaking lyricists being credited for the song. Now it is not inconceivable that people who predominately work in one language would have an occasional foray into another one, but it struck me as odd enough to keep digging — that’s when I realized: 57er Chevy is a cover song!
This blew my mind.
The song had been part of my life for the last almost twenty years — and I had no idea it was a cover! The thought never even entered my head.
And it gets even weirder. It wasn’t even a cover of some obscure artist nobody ever heard of, it was a Clapton song!
The track is called “I’ve Got a Rock’n’Roll Heart” and was first released in 1983 on “Money And Cigarettes”.
Of course, I had to check out what I had been missing immediately.
During the last few days, I listened to this song over and over again — studio version, live versions, separately and in the context of the entire album.
And I have to admit — I’m not a fan.
I find Ostbahn Kurti’s version energetic, vibrant, and engaging whereas the Clapton song seems bland and unimaginative. One makes me get up and move immediately (or at least bop my head), whereas the other remained — in all its iterations — nothing more than a curiosity to me, fascinating to me because of the backstory, but unable to connect to me on an emotional level.
I’ll probably never be able to tell whether that’s really the original song’s “fault” or whether the cover just had such a head start for me that any competitor will always lose by default. Perhaps it’s a bit of both. Perhaps I will listen to the original a few more times over the next weeks and discover something new and exciting that makes me completely change my mind. But until then, the cover remains my favorite by a long shot.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to listen to some loud guitars.
Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed this story! This is a response to Christopher Robin’s writing prompt about our favorite cover songs:
To check out my 13 songs about transportation in German, click here:
