There’s a dan­ger for musi­cians in cov­er­ing well-known songs from famous artists. The obvi­ous prob­lem: one can fail to meet the chal­lenge and deliv­er a sub­stan­dard per­for­mance of a beloved clas­sic, almost a crim­i­nal act in the esti­ma­tion of die-hard fans. But it’s too tempt­ing not to try. Musi­cians, like writ­ers and oth­er artists, learn best by mim­ic­k­ing the greats, then take what they’ve learned and devel­op their own style. Some of the best cov­ers of pop­u­lar songs are those that trans­pose them into a dif­fer­ent key, style, tem­po, or anoth­er genre entire­ly. “Make it your own!” as they say. Still a risky move… espe­cial­ly when it comes to the Bea­t­les.

There are indeed many phe­nom­e­nal Bea­t­les cov­ers—such as Bad Brains’ live take on “Day Trip­per” (for me anyway)—that rival the orig­i­nals. Some oth­ers… not so much. But when a Bea­t­les cov­er is real­ly good, and I mean real­ly, real­ly good… it’s usu­al­ly a pro who pulls it off. So hats off to David Brook­ings, an able non-famous musi­cian and Bea­t­les super­fan who set him­self the gar­gan­tu­an task of cov­er­ing 209 Bea­t­les songs in 209 days. Are all his cov­er ver­sions gems?

No, but the bar is set so high that it’s an impos­si­ble expec­ta­tion, espe­cial­ly giv­en the con­straints. Brook­ings isn’t re-invent­ing the pop genius wheel. He’s hav­ing fun with Bea­t­les’ songs, accom­pa­nied by an acoustic gui­tar, a key­board, a friend—singing Yoko’s parts in the sil­ly “The Con­tin­u­ing Sto­ry of Bun­ga­low Bill,” above—or his wife Shel­by, as in “Please Please Me,” below.…

With their home video pro­duc­tion val­ues, Brook­ings’ cov­ers don’t rise far above the wealth of oth­er such efforts that flood YouTube, many of which are high­ly admirable in their own way. But what sets his project apart—beyond its ambi­tious scope—is his occa­sion­al­ly tren­chant com­men­tary and an inter­est­ing per­son­al back­sto­ry. Brook­ings under­took his Bea­t­les cov­ers project in 2010 as a trib­ute not only to the Bea­t­les, but also, per­haps, to Steve Jobs, founder of that com­pa­ny named after the band’s own label (and like­ly tax shel­ter). Brook­ings says the whole thing may have been just a stunt just to show that “some idiot record­ed all 209 songs in 209 days.” But it’s sure­ly more than a coin­ci­dence that the year ear­li­er, while work­ing as a tour guide at Mem­phis’ leg­endary Sun Stu­dios, he made such an impres­sion on Jobs that the Apple founder invit­ed him to Cuper­ti­no to help build Apple’s iTunes library of blues and ear­ly rock and roll.

A dream gig for any musi­cian and stu­dent of musi­cal his­to­ry, and enough of an inspi­ra­tion to take on the entire cat­a­log of the most famous band in the world. What’s more, Brook­ings hap­pened to be recov­er­ing from liv­er-trans­plant surgery when he met Jobs at Sun and scored the job. See Brook­ings and his adorable daugh­ter McKin­ley sing “Nor­we­gian Wood,” above and “She Said She Said” below, and check out all of his cov­ers, as well as orig­i­nal songs and per­for­mances with his band, on his YouTube chan­nel. Find Bea­t­les cov­ers 1–110 here. And songs 111–209 here.

h/t Mark at Par­tial­lyEx­am­inedLife

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear 100 Amaz­ing Cov­er Ver­sions of Bea­t­les Songs

The 15 Worst Cov­ers of Bea­t­les Songs: William Shat­ner, Bill Cos­by, Tiny Tim, Sean Con­nery & Your Excel­lent Picks

Jimi Hen­drix Plays “Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band” for The Bea­t­les, Just Three Days After the Album’s Release (1967)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

If you were watch­ing episode 8 of Twin Peaks on Sun­day night, you might still be recov­er­ing from an over­dose of uncut, pure David Lynch. We’re not here to sum­ma­rize the episode but instead to point to the musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment to one of the most star­tling sequences in all of the director’s fil­mog­ra­phy: The slow track­ing aer­i­al shot into the heart of the first nuclear test mush­room cloud, right into the mid­dle of hell itself (see below).

Although Ange­lo Badala­men­ti is back on board as the show’s com­pos­er, Lynch chose to use for this scene the mod­ern clas­si­cal work by Krzysztof Pen­derec­ki, Thren­ody to the Vic­tims of Hiroshi­ma, one of the most har­row­ing works of the 20th cen­tu­ry.

The eight-and-a-half minute composition—-which you can lis­ten to while fol­low­ing the composer’s abstract score in the video above—-was writ­ten by the Pol­ish com­pos­er for 52 strings, noth­ing else. This accounts for the shrill, all tre­ble nature of the piece. The title and ded­i­ca­tion came lat­er, only after Pen­derec­ki had lis­tened to it being per­formed.

“I was struck by the emo­tion­al charge of the work,” Pen­derec­ki said, “I searched for asso­ci­a­tions and, in the end, I decid­ed to ded­i­cate it to the Hiroshi­ma vic­tims.”

The work went on to take third place at the Grze­gorz Fitel­berg Com­posers’ Com­pe­ti­tion in Katow­ice in 1960 and won the Tri­bune Inter­na­tionale des Com­pos­i­teurs UNESCO prize in 1961, two major awards that began Penderecki’s jour­ney to become one of Poland’s most respect­ed com­posers, sec­ond only to Hen­ryk Górec­ki.

This isn’t Lynch’s first use of Pen­derec­ki, hav­ing put an excerpt of 1970’s Kos­mogo­nia in Wild at Heart’s “lip­stick freak­out” scene, and six pieces in Inland Empire.

And it isn’t the first time Thren­ody to the Vic­tims of Hiroshi­ma, has been used in film. It was cho­sen by Alfon­so Cuarón for Chil­dren of Men, and by Wes Craven for The Peo­ple Under the Stairs, which coin­ci­den­tal­ly starred two actors from Twin Peaks.

Inter­est­ing­ly, Pen­derec­ki had scored films in the ‘60s, but they were work for hire jobs: a pleas­ant folk filled score for Woj­ciech Has’s The Saragos­sa Man­u­script and choral pas­tiche in a Renais­sance style for Alain Resnais’ Je t’aime, Je t’aime, along with some tele­vi­sion work. But he kept that music sep­a­rate from his seri­ous work as a con­cert com­pos­er, see­ing sound­track work as undignified—-this was long before Philip Glass was scor­ing films, when careers were more reg­i­ment­ed.

Because he refused to score William Friedkin’s The Exor­cist for that rea­son, the direc­tor chose instead to use five of Penderecki’s already exist­ing works for some of the film’s scari­est moments: the appear­ance of words on Regan’s body, Father Merrin’s vision of evil near the start of the film, and dur­ing the exor­cism itself. Peo­ple remem­ber Mike Oldfield’s “Tubu­lar Bells” for its futur­is­tic sound of occult appre­hen­sion, but it’s Pen­dereck­i’s work that accom­pa­nied all the scream­ing from the audi­ences.

Six years lat­er in 1979, Stan­ley Kubrick would use sev­en Pen­derec­ki works for The Shin­ing, under­lin­ing the state of mad­ness in that par­tic­u­lar­ly jar­ring film.

By the mid-1970s, the com­pos­er was turn­ing away from the dis­cor­dant tonal clus­ters of these ear­ly works and towards a more tra­di­tion­al and often beau­ti­ful style. But for a cer­tain gen­er­a­tion of film­mak­ers, Pen­derec­ki will be syn­ony­mous with hor­ror. Last Sun­day showed the piece still holds a grim, dev­as­tat­ing pow­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Clas­si­cal Music in Stan­ley Kubrick’s Films: Lis­ten to a Free, 4 Hour Playlist

The Scores That Elec­tron­ic Music Pio­neer Wendy Car­los Com­posed for Stan­ley Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange and The Shin­ing
Ange­lo Badala­men­ti Reveals How He and David Lynch Com­posed the Twin Peaks‘ “Love Theme”

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.