our band could be your band?

	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I
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2	There's nothing unusual about musicians playing songs by their peers. But in between punk and the mid 90s, there was something sort of interesting about the way so many bands used covers to stake out a whole audience and canon and set of shared references around what was still called "alternative" music. By the end of the 80s, as that whole realm gathered up into a thriving thing, there were a lot of those covers. It's hard to capture, from today's perspective, how much they presented as a kind of shared secret, badges for a club.
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4	These are just some examples; it's thrown together and not meant to be comprehensive! I can think of dozens more covers of lots of these acts, but this a sampling, not a reference database. It should represent the main types, though:
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6	• Bands covering acts from the 70s to suggest a sort of alternative canon — not just obvious touchstones like the Velvet Underground and the Ramones, but things like Big Star and Sparks and Nick Drake that were largely forgotten.	• American indie-rockers covering more stylish UK acts of the 80s (Cure / Smiths / Bunnymen types), connecting the punker side of the audience with the more stylish college-rock side.	• Bands covering peers or collaborators from their own scenes, sort of commemorating shared space. Also just insular in-jokes and parodies and loads of songs, both mocking and praising, ABOUT other bands.			• Covers used as markers of taste, communicating basically the same thing it'd communicate to pull the coolest seven-inch from your record collection and show it to someone who'll be impressed that it exists.	• But probably most importantly, bands covering much-loved recent songs by indie peers, as if trying to suggest that while other people have their "Free Bird" and "Knocking on Heaven's Door" and "With a Little Help from My Friends," in indie-world this Dinosaur Jr. track from last year is our "Free Bird," this Beat Happening song is our "Stairway to Heaven." (Not to mention: "holy shit, the 90s have come and suddenly we're selling records to a bunch of impressionable teens; check out our favorite records too!")
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8	A lot of things here were only really findable on YouTube, so here's a spreadsheet, with the years of release linked to a video. If you want something more easily listenable, here's a Spotify playlist where I'd been looking at some of these: https://open.spotify.com/user/128222475/playlist/1AJr9a0pzubITjQO7RwdnH?si=Ig5fRT3sSgG4IxulF6LmdQ
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10	Things with a black box to the left are the ones that genuinely feel like acts covering immediate contemporaries and peers, not just "influences" — i.e., in most cases, the song came out while they were already a band. Email grammarlog@gmail.com with complaints.
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12			links		links
13	Jesus and Mary Chain	"Head On"	1989	→	1991	Pixies	*	Definitely the prime example of a flagship band covering a very recent hit by another flagship band. And not as a B-side, or anything -- as a single, with a video, that’d play on the same 120 Minutes that was still playing the original.
14	Cure	"Just Like Heaven"	1987	→	1989	Dinosaur Jr	*	This is perceived as a piss-take, like Dinosaur Jr were too punk for the Cure, but J Mascis is the same guy who'd later cover Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians very tender "Circle" (1988).
15	Magnetic Fields	"100,000 Fireflies"	1991	→	1993	Superchunk	*	If this was at all helpful when they signed Mag Fields to Merge, it was worth it, cuz I assume they made a BUNDLE a decade later.
16	Mudhoney	"Touch Me I'm Sick"	1988	→	1988	Sonic Youth		On split single with Mudhoney covering "Halloween" (below).
17	Sebadoh / Sentridoh	"Brand New Love"	1987	→	1991	Superchunk
18	Sebadoh / Sentridoh	"The Freed Pig"	1991	→	1994	Breeders	*	It's almost as if this were written for "Last Splash"-era Breeders all along?
19	Vaselines	"Molly's Lips"	1988	→	1990	Nirvana	*	Probably better known from later BBC session version on "Incesticide," but released as of '90.
20	Black Flag	"Wasted"	1979	→	1985	Camper Van Beethoven
21	Black Flag	"Damaged I" / "Damaged II"	1981	→	1989	Tad / Pussy Galore
22	Treepeople	"Funnelhead"	1992	→	1994	Archers of Loaf		Doug Martsch is going to figure into a lot of these.
23	Beat Happening	"Foggy Eyes"	1985	→	1991	Seaweed		The Sub Pop mainstay that time forgot.
24		"Cast a Shadow"	1989	→	1991	Yo La Tengo
25					1993	Cub	*	Pretty sure it's Neko Case on drums here.
26					1993	BMX Bandits
27		"Indian Summer"	1987	→	1992	Eugenius / Captain America		Eugenius = Eugene Kelly of the Vaselines (with members of BMX Bandits and Teenage Fanclub).
28		"Indian Summer"	1987	→	1993	Luna		Dean Wareham described "Indian Summer" as "indie rock's 'Knocking on Heaven's Door' — everyone's done it."
29	Pavement	"Box Elder"	1989	→	1989	Wedding Present		Pretty sure that at the time the Wedding Present covered this, Pavement's entire output consisted of one seven-inch.
30	Pavement	"Here"	1992	→	1995	Tindersticks	*
31	Butterglory	"Waiting on the Guns"	1994		1995	Wedding Present		Tons of good Wedding Present covers not reflected here, from Orange Juice ("Felicity") to Girls at Our Best ("Getting Nowhere Fast").
32	Smudge	"Down About It"	1994	→	1993	Lemonheads	*	Co-written between the two; Lemonheads got theirs released first, but Smudge's still feels "original" for some reason.
33	Dinosaur Jr	"Severed Lips"	1985	→	1991	Blake Babies		The end of Blake Babies could not keep Hatfield from covering Dinosaur Jr. annually
34	Dinosaur Jr	"Raisans"	1987	→	1992	Juliana Hatfield
35	New Radiant Storm King	"Happy for the First Time in Weeks"	1993	→	1994	Small Factory	*	Small Factory also had a pretty good song about enjoying the music of Versus.
36	New Radiant Storm King	"The Opposing Engineer (Sleeps Alone)"	1993	→	1995	Guided by Voices
37	Guided by Voices	"Shocker in Gloomtown"	1993	→	1994	Breeders		Dayton, OH stuff. With Guided by Voices peeking into the video. (Also notice a visual joke re: number of strings needed on Kelley's guitar.)
38	Sonic Youth	"Death Valley 69"	1984	→	1988	Flaming Lips
39		"I Love Her All the Time"	1985	→	1986	Camper Van Beethoven
40		"Halloween"	1985	→	1988	Mudhoney
41	Daniel Johnston	"Rocketship"	1983	→	1987	Dead Milkmen	*	Obviously covering Daniel Johnston would become even more of A Thing for indie acts than covering Beat Happening, but the Milkmen got there early. On the joke-songs-about-others tip they’ll always have “Instant Club Hit,” a swipe at “art f*gs” who enjoy such terrible things as dancing, interesting haircuts, stylish UK bands, and sex
42		"Speeding Motorcycle"	1983	→	1990	Yo La Tengo
43		"Speeding Motorcycle"	1983	→	1991	Pastels	*	This version is kinda notably great?
44		"Walking the Cow"	1983	→	1991	fIREHOSE	*	Same here; something about covering Johnston makes people bust out their chops.
45		"Some Things Last a Long Time"	1990	→	1995	Built to Spill
46		"Tell Me Now"	1991	→	1993	Cub	*
47	Built to Spill	"Twin Falls"	1994	→	1996	Ben Folds Five	*
48	Sonic Youth	"Kotton Krown"	1987	→	1991	Everything But the Girl
49	Meat Puppets	"Lost"	1984	→	1985	Minutemen
50	Meat Puppets	"Whirlpool"	1991	→	1993	They Might Be Giants	*	On the songs-about-other-acts front there is something lastingly hilarious about TMBG doing the 1987 single “We’re the Replacements,” with its refrain of “Hey where’s Tommy / Someone find Tommy”
51	Ed's Redeeming Qualities	"Drivin' on 9"	1988	→	1988 / 1993	Breeders	*	Best-known Breeders version was on "Last Splash" in '93, but they'd recorded a demo years earlier while doing "Pod."
52	Velocity Girl	"Crazy Town"	1992	→	1994	Glo-Worm	*	As sung by Pam Berry, who was previously in Black Tambourine with half of Velocity Girl. College Park MD scene.
53	Field Mice	"Let's Kiss and Make Up"	1989	→	1990	Saint Etienne	*	Before Sarah Cracknell joined Etienne.
54	Smiths	"Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want"	1984	→	1995	Halo Benders	*	Any band with Doug Martsch in it will inevitably cover the Smiths; Built to Spill does it live. (Including contemporary UK covers of them would make this all a mess, but Billy Bragg was doing “Jeane” by ‘84.) Also: shoutout to Halo Benders for being the best band ever to get pulled over on TV on "Real Stories of the Highway Patrol."
55		"Bigmouth Strikes Again"	1986	→	1992	Treepeople
56		"Ask"	1986	→	1994	Gigolo Aunts		On the songs-about-others front, Morrissey was the subject of various moderately homophobic joke tracks by American bands, serving as a running joke for Mojo Nixon, who’s memorably namechecked in “Punk Rock Girl” by the Dead Milkmen, who got their own jokes about the Smiths and “Depeche Commode” into “Instant Club Hit...” (For the precise opposite of a homophobic Morrissey joke, see Pansy Division's "Homo Christmas")
57	Sugarcubes	"Hit"	1991	→	1993	Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine		This band’s collected covers are ... something
58	Housemartins	"Happy Hour"	1986	→	1989	Griswalds
59	Butthole Surfers	"Sweat Loaf"	1987	→	1993	Jad Fair and Daniel Johnston		"Sweet Loafed" in the cover version.
60	New Order	"Ceremony"	1981	→	1989	Galaxie 500	*
61		"Your Silent Face"	1983	→	1994	Velocity Girl
62		"Bizarre Love Triangle"	1986	→	1987	Even As We Speak
63	R.E.M.	"Radio Free Europe"	1981	→	1984	Replacements		Cheating slightly: from a live bootleg. They also did Robyn Hitchcock's "Ye Sleeping Knights of Jesus."
64		"Don't Go Back to Rockville"	1984	→	1992	10,000 Maniacs		There's a whole collaborative R.E.M. / 10K Maniacs / Billy Bragg axis that could be gotten into here, they're all over one another's stuff.
65		"Camera"	1984	→	1994	Pavement	*
66		"The One I Love"	1987	→	1989	Butthole Surfers		As released on "Double Live."
67	Television	"See No Evil"	1977	→	1988	R.E.M.	*	R.E.M.'s on-album cover of Wire's "Strange" in 87 felt almost too obvious an example of this to include, but ... it's a good example.
68	Pylon	“Crazy”	1981		1985	R.E.M.
69	Mission of Burma	"Academy Fight Song"	1980	→	1989	R.E.M.
70		"That's When I Reach for My Revolver"	1981	→	1992	Catherine Wheel
71		"That's When I Reach for My Revolver"	1981	→	1996	Moby
72	Ministry	"Stigmata"	1988	→	1991	Fatima Mansions		Doesn't this feel like the oddest track to record a faithful cover of?
73	Echo and the Bunnymen	"The Killing Moon"	1983	→	1997	Pavement		Long gaps on these Bunnymen covers, but both feel like good examples of paying respects to bigger-haired UK acts as core "this is what we came up on" background.
74	Echo and the Bunnymen	"Seven Seas"	1984	→	1995	Velocity Girl	*
75	Liz Phair	"Flower"	1991 / 1993	→	1995	Pansy Division	*	Feels notable in this context that a big part of Pansy Division's repertoire could be fun gay-sex covers of recent indie favorites (e.g., covering Husker Du and Beat Happening on the "Nine Inch Males" EP).
76	Miaow	"When It All Comes Down"	1987	→	1991	Unrest	*	Nobody could cover a Factory Records single you definitely don't own and haven't heard like Unrest.
77	Pale Saints	"Sight of You"	1989	→	1990	Ride		This is from the same year an NME writer labeled this "the scene that celebrates itself."
78	Lois	"Valentine"	1992	→	1993	Small Factory
79	Scrawl	"Rot"	1990	→	1994	Afghan Whigs
80	Suzanne Vega	"Luka"	1987	→	1989	Lemonheads		Another one assumed to be some kind of piss-take, but consider the subsequent output of Evan Dando.
81	Young Marble Giants	"Credit in the Straight World"	1980		1994	Hole		I think Young Marble Giants' "Collosal Youth" was reissued on CD in 1993, and then rapidly became a thing loads of people did covers from.
82	Young Marble Giants	"N.I.T.A."	1980		1995	Versus
83	Sparks	"This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us"	1974	→	1987	Siouxsie and the Banshees	*
84	Big Star	Kanga Roo	1978	→	1984	This Mortal Coil		There could be any of two dozen Big Star-related things here.
85	Go-Betweens	"Cattle and Cane"	1983	→	1992	Wedding Present	*
86	Apartments	"Mr. Somewhere"	1985	→	1991	This Mortal Coil	*	Apartments were Brisbane peers of the Go-Betweens, but went to New York instead of London and never got as far.
87	Wire	"12XU"	1977	→	1982	Minor Threat		Later just about everyone would do "Outdoor Miner."
88	La's	"There She Goes"	1990	→	1993	Boo Radleys
89	La's	"There She Goes"	1990	→	1993	Superconductor		Canadian band featuring A.C. Newman.
90	Andy Preiboy	"Tomorrow Wendy"	1990	→	1990	Concrete Blonde	*	Preiboy (formerly of Wall of Voodoo) has Johnette Napolitano from Concrete Blonde do a guest vocal on his song, and then somehow Concrete Blonde gets a popular version released before his is even available.
91	Hüsker Dü	"Don't Want to Know If You Are Lonely"	1986	→	1992	Catherine Wheel	*
92	Depeche Mode	"Never Let Me Down Again"	1987	→	1994	Smashing Pumpkins
93	Psychedelic Furs	"Heaven"	1984	→	1990	Buffalo Tom
94	Replacements	"Androgynous"	1984	→	1991	Crash Test Dummies
95	My Dad Is Dead	"Water's Edge"	1988	→	1992	Tsunami
96	Nirvana	"Smells Like Teen Spirit"	1991		1992	Tori Amos
97	Joy Division	"Love Will Tear Us Apart"	1980	→	1987	Frank Sidebottom		"Frank's Indie Medley"
98	The Fall	"How I Wrote the Elastic Man"	1980
99	Camper Van Beethoven	"Take the Skinheads Bowling"	1986
100	The Smiths	"Bigmouth Strikes Again"	1986