J Mascis of the rock band Dinosaur Jr. and Mike Watt of punk rock band Minutemen and alternative rock band fIREHOUSE came together last Friday to cover each other’s old songs. The covers are featured on a new split 7” made by the music label Red Parakeet Records. Mascis covered fIREHOUSE’s 1991 song “Formal Introduction,” and Watt covered Dinosaur Jr.’s 1991 song “The Little Baby.”
The new “Formal Introduction” by Mascis is much slower and far more haunting than the original. It’s marked by the electric guitar and Mascis’s more echoed and distant deep vocals. The cover is also notably shorter than the original song and focuses only on the first verse, with slightly altered lyrics. The original is “I sing the metal heavy/I fuck the US army/And they fuck me/I can’t retreat until I do ‘em complete” while the Mascis in the cover sings, “I sing the metal heavy/At least in union there is strength/And they fuck me/I can’t complete.”
Watt’s cover of “The Little Baby” features more pronounced vocals that can clearly be heard over the instrumental as opposed to the original, where the two blurred. Also, rather than the intense screaming of parts of the lyrics, Watt opts for a firm, angered and animated tone.
This Mascis and Watt team-up comes as the third installment of a larger cover series that Red Parakeet Records is doing, as reported by Pitchfork. The two previous split 7” featured Watt with Papa M from the rock band Slint and Watt with Tim Kerr of the punk rock band Big Boys.
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