This 18-song compilation [Popscape: The Best Of Ralph Covert And The Bad Examples], which culls material from the four Bad Examples albums, Covert's 1993 solo debut "Eat At Godot's," and the solo EP "Adam McCarthy" along with two previously unreleased tracks and an alternate version, is a handy introduction for new listeners to this unsung talent.
Rather than go with a stilted chronological order, Waterdog opted to sequence "Popscape" in a manner that best suited the material, showcasing Covert's range, rather than attempting to display how his material has evolved over the years.
"Popscape" opens with the Beatlesque "Shades Of Grey" from 1996's "Kisses 50¢" before moving into the stark and moving ballad "Cold Shivers" from "Eat At Godot's."
The heart of the album, however, is the one-two punch of "Adam McCarthy" and "Out Of My Element."
The former track, which was originally released on the 1994 EP of the same name benefiting the Leukemia Research Foundation, chronicles of the decline of Covert's friend, who died of the disease at 33 in 1992.
During McCarthy's battle with leukemia, Covert was frequently on the road. "It all happened in pretty big shocking steps for me," Covert recalls. "He had been fine, and then the next time I saw him he was in his apartment in a hospital bed smoking a cigarette. I said, 'You're sick, why are you smoking?' but he knew he was already dead. It didn't matter."
Covert didn't write the heart-wrenching acoustic pop tune immediately following his friend's death. It wasn't until a year later, when he performed an improvised monologue in an acting class, in the character of a man dying from AIDS, that the memories came flooding back to him.
"When I got home, I felt like I had been on both sides of the bed with the whole experience of watching him die and improvising that I was dying," he says. That night, the song came flooding out of him.
"Out Of My Element," from "Eat At Godot's," opens with an acoustic guitar riff that recalls the style of "Led Zeppelin III," before launching into a tale of personal crisis, which opens with the lyrics, "Then we were young and foolish/ Now we're older, but we're still fools."
Covert wrote part of the song on a $10 12-string guitar he purchased on the road. "I couldn't play it unless it was open tuned," he admits.
In "Out Of My Element," which Covert says is not autobiographical, a divorced man contemplates suicide before he has an encounter with a waitress at a tavern. "I felt so good I forgot that I felt bad," Covert sings, before adding, "And I believe I've been out of my element/So long it feels like home."
Yet Covert's songs aren't all downers. The life-affirming rocker "Not Dead Yet," which was covered by Styx in 1990 when the group was attempting to sidestep the pomp of its earlier material for a more straightforward approach, wouldn't have been out of place in the Georgia Satellites' repertoire.
"It's a mindless pop song," Covert admits. "I get a good kick out of that song. It was fun and funny to write a song like that. That's a song about nothing but entertainment."
The same could be said of the aptly titled "Mindless Pop Song," which exists, Covert confesses in the lyric, "to distract you from the problems that occupy your life."
In all, "Popscape" offers an array of pleasurable distractions. On the jewel box spine, the album's subtitle reads "The Best Of Ralph Covert And The Bad Examples Vol. 1." With the recent release of Covert's "Birthday," featuring such gems as "Angels Wings And Lemon Blossoms," "Raspberry Jam," and "Somewhere That Feels Like Home," Vol. 2 is likely to be just as impressive.
-by Craig Rosen