March, here in Ohio (USA) is still quite cold, wet and snowy. It is a good time to stay indoors and under the covers. That said, I thought it might be a good time to resurrect and series I had on my old blog (long since deleted) that was titled Under The Covers.

The series features reinterpretations of classic rock songs to the extent that they’ve been completely re-imagined as a new work. I’ve never been a fan of just “straight” or faithful covers. If I want to hear a faithful version of the song I’ll listen to the original. I want to see imagination and a flicker of inspiration in the how the music is re-interpreted.

Todays installment is a wonderful interpretation of Nirvana’s HEART SHAPED BOX, written by Kurt Cobain from their album IN UTERO. It was performed and recorded by the Wojtek Mazolewski Quintet; a jazz outfit from Poland that has some incredible original music. This recording was on their European release of the album oddly titled POLKA. I say “oddly” because my only reference to polka was the popular music/dance style. In the region where I grew up there was even a popular sunday television broadcast called “Polka Varieties”. But turns out the word “polka” is actually a Czech word simply meaning polish girl. Which is more in line with this recording. So imagine this album was titled “Polish Girl”. In fact I humorously imagine the young woman on the cover of the album may be grimacing at the use of polka as an outdated musical style. The original US release of the Polka album did not include this cover (presumably for copyright reasons)

I hope you enjoy this version. For those, like myself that like to compare I have included the Nirvana version below as well.