It’s the exception rather than the rule for a cover to be better than the original, especially when the original is a Captain Beefheart song. But take a listen to this:

PLAY

The song is called “Electricity,” and the problem with the Captain’s version is not so much the performance as the sound quality, which was poor even for its day. So the song was just laying there for twenty years or so waiting for Sonic Youth to come along and run a million fucking volts through it, which they did on the now out-of-print Beefheart tribute album Fast’n’Bulbous. The result is transplendant, or superious, or some other Don King-style adjective.

Oh, by the way, play it loud.