Thursday 23 June 2011

Great Cover #6 Drive-By Truckers - People Who Died

For the last show stopping encore of a Drive-By Truckers show Patterson Hood will often downs his guitar, grip the mic tight in hand and frantically spit out the first verse of the Jim Caroll song People Who Died - 'Teddy sniffing glue he was 12 years old, fell from the roof on East Two-nine. Cathy was 11 when she pulled the plug, on 26 reds and a bottle of wine. Bobby got leukaemia 14 years old., he looked like 65 when he died. He was a friend of mine.'
The band then come in on the chorus, and the song charges along with more verses about friends who’ve died, choruses that get louder and louder and duelling guitar solos. It speeds up and up until it crashes down into a heap. Then just as you think its about to end it goes back into it at an even faster speed. They’re never released a studio version of the song, though it does appear on their early live album Alabama Ass Woopin', and there’s a much better version on their live DVD at The 40 Watt Club which captures it well.

As does this version on Youtube



Get a pretty good live version of the Drive-By Truckers playing People Who Died from here.