Thursday, November 10, 2005

the legend lives on

For some reason, I love cover songs that cross genre lines. A perfect example would be the Broadway show tunes done punk rock style by Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. Another example would be Paul Anka singing swing versions of alternative rock songs, although I liked it better when Richard Cheese did the same thing 5 years ago.

Today is a big day for my friend Bean. As you undoubtedly already know, it's the anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Bean sent an email that said:
there had better be a touching tribute in your blog entry tomorrow, being thirty years and all!
He included a link to an mp3 file called "The Wreck Of the Edmund Fitzgerald," which I assumed would play Gordon Lightfoot's dreary song when I clicked on it. To my pleasant surprise, it was actually a cover version of the song done in surf music style by a band called The Sin-Tones. Their website lets you hear their "surfabilly" versions of the themes to "Batman," "Spider-man" and a couple of other shows.

My fondness of cross-genre covers probably explains my interest in collecting Christmas music. That's why I prefer to hear "Last Christmas" done by Dexter Freebish or Jimmy Eat World rather than Wham. I like Gary Hoey's rock instrumentals and a capella versions of holiday classics by Rockapella and by The Blenders. The Christmas CD I want the most this year is the new one by the Brian Setzer Orchestra.

A while back I wrote about Bowling For Soup's cross-genre cover of a Britney Spears song. Next week they're going to release a whole CD of songs they've done for movies and television. The disc will include their cover versions of "Gilligan's Island Theme" and "I Melt With You" among others. How long must I wait for a Bowling For Soup Christmas disc?
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1 Comments:

Blogger alicia said...

Frank - have you listened to the soundtrack for the video game
"Stubbs the Zombie"
?
Ben Kweller doing "Lollipop"
Cake doing "Strangers in the Night"
cross-genre cover heaven!

11/14/2005  

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