The Debutante Hour Cover Up For Once
Musicians know that if you really want to keep an audience’s attention with a cover song, you have to find a way to make it different from the original. Usually the more you change it, the funnier it gets. The Debutante Hour’s new album Follow Me is all cover songs: hip-hop, new wave pop, bluegrass, Phil Spector and indie rock done oldtimey style with accordion, cello and percussion. Is the band being silly? Sarcastic? Serious? With the Debutante Hour, you never know. Accordionist Maria Sonevytsky, cellist Mia Pixley and multi-instrumentalist Susan Hwang’s stagewear may not leave much to the imagination, but their songs do the opposite: their deadpan surrealism isn’t always easy to figure out. Which is what makes them so appealing – aside from their perfectly charming three-part harmonies. And the outfits of course. They definitely were serious about putting the album together, with crystalline production from World Inferno’s Franz Nicolay.
The first song is No Scrubs, originally done by TLC, recast here as a ukelele shuffle. The original was mildly funny and this is funnier (live, it’s absolutely hilarious). When it comes time for the bridge, Baltimore hip-hop diva TK Wonder reminds that girl in the song isn’t a gold digger, she’s just sick of getting hit on by scuzzy guys – beeyatch!
Just What I Needed by the Cars is a horrible song, one cliche after another, absolutely unredeemable unless maybe as death metal or industrial. Here it’s reinvented as a tongue-in-cheek accordion tune, as the Main Squeeze Orchestra might have done it. When Nicolay comes in with his banjo, that’s when it gets really funny.
The third track is an acoustic hip-hop hit by popular Ukrainian duo 5’Nizza (whose name is a Russian pun, meaning “Friday”). It seems to be a come-on (the hook seems to mean something along the lines of “I’m not like that”). To a non-Ukrainian speaker, it comes across as catchy, innocuous trip-hop. The first serious song here is an unselfconsciously beautiful version of the Stanley Bros.’ If That’s the Way You Feel, evocative of the Roulette Sisters. Another serious one is Be My Baby, where they take the generic white doo-wop hit burned out by oldies radio decades ago and make it downright sultry. They close with the Flaming Lips’ Do You Realize. If you missed the original, it’s Brian Jonestown Massacre-style nouveau psychedelia, in this case a third-rate John Lennon imitation with really awful (and kind of morbid) lyrics. The Debutante Hour’s version plays down the death fixation and plays up the pretty tune. They’re at Joe’s Pub on 3/25 at 7 PM.
Since now we know that the Debutante Hour’s covers are as fun and interesting as their originals, here’s some other cover ideas: John Sheppard or Thomas Tallis’ death-fixated sixteenth-century plainchant with intricate harmonies that scream out gothically for a reinterpretation by the Debutante Hour! How about Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, which is so idiotic that it wouldn’t be hard to have a little fun with – maybe bring back TK Wonder for that one? Gogol Bordello’s Start Wearing Purple, which pretty much everybody knows, and could use some harmonies? Camay by Ghostface Killah? The Girl’s Guide to the Modern Diva by Black Box Recorder? Vladimir Vysotksky’s acoustic gypsy-punk revolutionary anthem Okhata Na Volkov (The Wolf Hunt)? Just brainstorming here…
Album of the Day 11/6/10
Every day our 1000 best albums of all time countdown continues all the way to #1. Saturday’s album is #815:
Weird Al Yankovic – Weird Al in 3-D
Some of you will think we’re insane for including a Weird Al album on this list. But Weird Al is awesome! Even if he isn’t as absolutely essential as he must have been 25 years ago, when there was actually an audience over 12 years old who were familiar with the top 40 hits he parodied so ruthlessly. That’s why we chose this 1984 album, his second: Weird Al doesn’t really make sense unless you know the source material, and a lot of these songs are still in heavy rotation on a lot of stations, all these years after they came out. This one has the crazy accordionist’s biggest 80s hit, Eat It (a spot-on spoof of Michael Jackson’s Beat It, right down to guest guitarist Rich Derringer’s shredding solo that absolutely blows away the Eddie Van Halen original). A lot of these songs are new wave parodies: The Brady Bunch makes fun of Men Without Hats’ Safety Dance; Mr. Popeil does the same with the B-52s, and King of Suede goofs on the Police. The funniest one here is the Eye of the Tiger satire The Rye or the Kaiser, a sad tale of an ex-boxer deli owner who’s only got enough left in him to punch out a sausage or two. There’s also the reggae sendup Buy Me a Condo (insinuating that holier-than-thou Rasta reggae artists are all just sellouts at heart), and the reliably amusing Polkas on 45, a joke version of the hit medley Stars on 45. Weird Al is such a funny guy that he could take a completely boring album like Bad by Michael Jackson and make it interesting. The trouble with what he does is that as the audience for top 40 has eroded, so has his fan base: he could spoof Lady Gaga all he wants, but who over age ten knows any of her songs? Maybe it’s time for Weird Al to do a Broken Social Scene record. Here’s a random torrent.
Song of the Day 9/14/10
Every day our 1000 best albums of all time countdown continues all the way to #1. Tuesday’s album is #868:
Blowfly – Blowfly’s Party
Whether or not Blowfly really earned his nickname as a teenager when castigated by his grandmother for singing “C’mon baby, suck my dick,” instead of “do the twist,” Clarence Reid still has a franchise on x-rated R&B. He was making what used to be called “party records,” no doubt inspired by Red Foxx and Rudy Ray Moore, as early as the 1970s, when he wasn’t working as a hired-gun songwriter for acts as diverse as Betty Wright and KC and the Sunshine Band. But he saved his best stuff for himself. Maybe because he was so funny (or maybe because musicians thought that a connection to his filthy alter ego might translate into a hit single, or a session gig), he attracted topnotch players in droves. This album, from 1980, was an underground sensation and actually made the Billboard charts despite getting no airplay (apparently Blowfly didn’t think of making a “clean” version). Everything here is good for a laugh: Blowfly’s Rap (a Kurtis Blow ripoff) and Show Me a Man Who Don’t Like to Fuck, for example. Can I Come In Your Mouth is actually all about equal opportunity: Blowfly makes it clear to the girl that he’s willing to reciprocate. And some of the tracks are downright hilarious, particularly Who Did I Eat Last Night. All of this you can dance to. In the mid-zeros, Blowfly teamed up with a bunch of punk musicians and issued two albums of sexually explicit punk covers on Alternative Tentacles. Now in his seventies, he still tours. Be extra careful looking for a download – because some consider this adult entertainment (it’s actually the most juvenile album on this list), links that appear to be for torrents may lead to attack sites or malware: good luck and sweep your machine afterward.
Top Ten Songs of the Week 9/6/10
This is sort of our weekly, Kasey Kasem-inspired luddite DIY version of a podcast. Every week, we try to mix it up, offer a little something for everyone: sad songs, funny songs, upbeat songs, quieter stuff, you name it. We’ve designed this as something you can do on your lunch break if you work at a computer (and you have headphones – your boss won’t approve of a lot of this stuff). If you don’t like one of these songs, you can always go on to the next one: every link here will take you to each individual song. As always, the #1 song here will appear on our Best Songs of 2010 list at the end of the year.
1.Tom Warnick & the World’s Fair – No Longer Gage
From his new album The Great Escape, this is the lurid, creepy tale of 1800s Vermont railroadman Phineas Gage, who took a blasting rod through the skull and lived – but was never the same. The song relates what happened.
2. Serena Jost – Great Conclusions
Characteristically smart, majestic art-rock from the New York cellist/chanteuse. She has a kickstarter campaign going on in case you feel like assuaging your bourgeois guilt and contributing to the fund for her next album.
3. Clinic – I’m Aware
Free download – 60s psychedelic chamber pop from their shockingly mellow forthcoming album Bubblegum
4. Bobtown – Shadow of the Mountain
Click on the video with the vinyl record for a fun oldtimey treat.
5. LJ Murphy – Nowhere Now
Casually intense live version of a standout track from his classic 2006 album Mad Within Reason. He’s at Theatre 86 St. Mark’s at 7 on Friday the 10th.
6. The Snow – Handle Your Weapon
A soul song for a would-be suicide from this magnificent art-rock crew’s latest album I Die Every Night.
7. The Dixons – Thanks a Lot
Real oldschool Bakersfield country music from 1964 – except that this is Brooklyn 2010. Unbelievable. They’re at Union Pool on 9/8 at 10.
8. Garfunkel & Oates – Worst Song Medley
Even if you try to hide from top 40 radio you’ll recognize some of these from the supermarket. And they are awful. And the two girls singing them are hilarious.
9. The Giving Tree Band – Circles
Cool bluegrass/roots kiss-off song – a lot like M Shanghai String Band.
10. Bad Cop – I’m in Lust with You
Completely sick unhinged noise guitar madness. Not for fans of melody. They’re at Don Pedro’s on 9/25 and look like they’d be a lot of fun.
Lucid Culture 