Rhino’s Got You Covered: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Culture Club, Brian Briggs, and David “Fathead” Newman

It’s Wednesday, so it must be time to take another dip into the Rhino catalog and trot out a new quartet of cover songs that you may or may not have heard before. Let’s get started, shall we?

•    Red Hot Chili Peppers, “A Teenager in Love” (2012): When the Red Hot Chili Peppers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, they decided to commemorate the occasion by releasing an EP consisting of six songs by previous Hall of Fame inductees who’d influenced the band in some way. All of the covers had already appeared elsewhere, however, including this Dion and the Belmont tune, which first popped up as a B-side on the band’s 2002 single “By the Way.”

•    Culture Club, “Starman” (1999): This Bowie cover first turned up as the penultimate track on the group’s late ‘90s reunion album, DON’T MIND IF I DO. These days, however, you can find it on a Parlophone compilation entitled COVER TO COVER: THE SONGS OF DAVID BOWIE, where it sits nestled between The Dandy Warhols’ “Jean Genie” and Duran Duran’s “Fame.”

•    Brian Briggs, “Crosstown Traffic” (1982): The man who recorded under the moniker “Brian Briggs” was actually John Holbrook, longtime mixer and sound engineer for Bearsville Records who, prior to that, worked on both The Who's TOMMY and The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s ELECTRIC LADYLAND. Given the latter credit, this cover seems perfectly apt, wouldn’t you say?

•    David “Fathead” Newman, “Amazing Grace” (1977): And so we come to the end of this week’s installment, which gives us an excuse to offer up one of the great farewell tunes of all time. Thankfully, in this case, it’s not a final farewell. We’ll see you next week!