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Copy, Right?

Liza Pavelich digs up the good, the bad and the ugly of cover songs.

Monday Nov 13, 2006.     By Jessica Herman

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Thanks to a bad case of insomnia a few years back, Liza Pavelich compiled a massive collection of cover songs via file-sharing, Google searches and database scavenging...so many songs that she speculates she could continue posting for another 10 to 15 years without downloading any new additions. She threw random sets up on the Internet, and in no time no at all, attracted a captive audience to her blog Copy, Right?.

Two years later, Pavelich posts a play list of 10 to 15 songs (with mp3 links) once a week, occasionally accompanied by anecdotes or memories that the songs bring to mind. While the playlists are sometimes as specific as all Adam Ant covers, they're more often random selections based on her mood or the songs that come out of an iTunes shuffle.

Much like its title, the blog provokes the question: Is this for real, or is it simply one big tongue-in-cheek show? Pavelich describes it as a love-hate relationship.

"I don't know if I'll ever surrender my love of irony," says Pavelich. "It's impossible for me to know what I really like and what I really don't. I would use the word guilty-pleasure, but I'm not so much guilty about it anymore."

What's the gist of your blog?
It is a blog full of cover songs that I think are either good or bad, but I love them all.

My computer is surrounded by...
Well, not much I just cleaned my desk. Recordable CDs, scissors, a bacon air freshener and my El Taco Real calendar with Jesus on it.

How do you pay the bills?
Right now, very sporadically.

When you aren't loving blogging, you're loving BLANK in Chicago:
Taking photographs. I like to take photographs of mostly people. Pictures from public transportation of everyday Chicago scenes. I also have been cataloguing the Kirsten Dunst phenomenon in Lincoln Park and Lakeview for the last few years. There's been someone who puts pictures of Kirsten Dunst in all the free newspaper bins on Clark Street or the neighboring areas—I kind of obsessively take pictures of those boxes. I like the weird things about Chicago and people who have weird obsessions.

Name a local blogger extraordinaire.
My friend Wendy at Poundy. She's the most extraordinaire.

Jessica Herman likes peeking into other folks' lives, which sure helps when she's grilling hip Chicago bloggers. If you'd like to shower a little love on a local blogger whose antics and anecdotes are your favorite flavor of procrastination, shoot her an email.