If you’re paying really close attention, you know I had a good weekend when Cover Wars doesn’t make it onto the blog on Tuesday. Well yeah, my car may still smell like wet festival, but the trip that brought me to two ports (Newport for the Folk Festival and Bridgeport for Gathering Of The Vibes) was totally worth it. Following up from last week, PBS has walked away as the clear winner of the Spanish Castle Magic edition.

“Everyone knows rock n’ roll attained perfection in 1974; It’s a scientific fact”. This is according to Homer Simpson in the episode Homerpalooza, where he is questioning the need for “new bands” as he has realized he is out of touch with the music of the young people. Frankenstein was actually released in 1973, though Homer may have been referring to a specific experience WITH the song and not just the song’s release. The song titled originally titled “Double Drum Solo”, the Edgar Winter Group renamed the tune Frankenstein in reference to the fact that it had been spliced together from numerous separate recordings. The result? One of the most bad-ass rock instrumentals ever written.

You gotta register/login to IMEEM to listen to the songs below in their entirety:

READ ON after the jump for some versions not included in the playlist, voting, info on each version and much much more of the original Cover Wars…

Addison Groove Project: This version is coming to you from AGP’s penultimate gig in 2007. At this point, Rob Marscher was playing all the basslines with his left hand on the keyboards due to the passing of their bass player John Hall. You can check out the whole show on The Archive

The Breakfast: Well technically they were still called Psychedelic Breakfast during the show that I picked…A more or less straight ahead and very tight rendition. Check out the whole show on The Archive

Bonerama: I’m always psyched when we get some unique arrangements during Cover Wars and Bonerama delivers one here. Not only is there a great arrangement for the composition (Four Trombones, Sousaphone, Guitar and Drums) but there’s a big nasty jam in the middle. There’s some real interesting stuff going on inside here with the effects that the Sousaphone player throws on. You can check out the whole show on The Archive

Marcus Miller: Almost certainly coincidentally, Marcus Miller and Phish have a similar taste in cover songs. Both artists also appeared on an early edition of Cover Wars when we looked at Boogie On Reggae Woman. Boogie On and Frankenstein are also both on 2005 studio release Silver Rain. Anyway, real smooth and funky rendition with some cool vamp grooves for the horn players to blow over.

Phish: And we’ve got these guys. Phish played Frankenstein 76 times in between 1989 and 2004. Most of them were pretty similar, often closing sets or in the encore slot. Unique versions include a few renditions with the Giant Country Horns and that bizarre Frankenstein > Kung > Frankenstein at the 20th anniversary show in Boston – that was weird. But the one I chose today comes from Boise ‘99. While it’s not the best version (perhaps the band was spent dropping the nastiest AC/DC Bag ever earlier in the set), it’s got two fun little quirks about it. First, the Pink Floyd vocal tease from Fishman. And second, check the beginning of this video to see how Trey lets Page know what song is coming next.

That’s all I got for this week, as always, here’s some video of the original. The Edgar Winter Group dropping a 10-minute version!