Today was my last day of undergraduate classes at Weber State University. I still have a final and a project to wrap up for next week, but the last day of actually being in a classroom was today.

In a lot of ways, I'm glad to be done, even though it still seems a bit unreal. I've just been doing this for so long that going to school has become a fact of life. Of course, trying to cram school in around a full-time job didn't exactly make it go faster.

I'm a little wistful. I built some friendships with two great professors, but only in the waning semesters of school, since I've had to do my upper division classwork in meatspace. Yet another drawback to fitting school around work, I guess.

Non sequitur! I was driving to work after school thinking about the best reinventions of songs by the bands that originally performed them. So not a cover really, in that it's the same band both times.

I started thinking about this because I was listening to Counting Crows' "Mr. Jones", the version from their Across a Wire two-discer, which practically epitomizes what I was trying to describe. "Mr. Jones" was the first single from their fantastic debut album August and Everything After; it's a great electric-guitar-driven rock song about wanting to be famous. I love the tune, but I may like the slowed down, acoustic version on Across a Wire even more. With only minor lyrics tweaks--including lifting a line, to excellent effect, from the Byrds' "So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star"--the song changes from being about a kid trying to make it big as a rock star, to being about the veteran rock star who's made it ... and the fairy tale wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

Sadly, I can'tam not technically allowed to embed the original "Mr. Jones" video.

And the version I'm talking about (the songs starts about two and a half minutes in):

The only other song I could think of that really compares is "Bad" by U2. I've heard plenty of live versions of songs that are better than the album versions, but "Bad" stands out. Unless you're a U2 fan, when you hear the original cut from The Unforgettable Fire, you'll most likely think, "Meh." Heck, I am a U2 fan, and I still think the album version of "Bad" is pretty mediocre. But somehow, when U2 perform this song in the concert film Rattle & Hum, "Bad" becomes an epic, with soaring, searing guitar and gotta-sing-along vocals--despite nobody knowing what the lyrics are supposed to mean. (Not too mention a sweaty Bono strutting around the stage sans shirt.)

The album version (accompanying a CG toon about an old man and a fish):

And the R&H version (again, I warn you about sweaty, bare-chested Bono):

So what other great tunes am I missing here?