I've heard some stuff that just struck me as . . . strange. What have you come across lately?28 responses total.
The cover of "Flowers on the Wall" isn't really "strange", even though it caught me by surprise a few weeks back when I heard it on W4 Country. However, a Wolfman Jack imitator introducing "Whiskey in the Jar" on a classic rock station in Nashville, TN, as _a request_ was really off. And then when it turned it out to be the real thing, done by Metallica, uh, wow. And then last night, I heard a cut apparently from a CD entitled "28 Teeth", but I missed the band's name. The DJ, who sounded barely old enough to be in college (but it was apparently a school-based station in Cincinnati", claimed it was her favorite: "I Think I Love You." Yeah, that one. Done as hard rock: too loud electric guitar, screamed vocals, the whole bit. Stop the world. I want to get off.
I love it.
I've heard a 'punked' up version of the Celine Dion song
from Titantic.
I have Lead Zeplin music done up by a jugband, for symphony,
and by some good bluegrass pickers.
Those bluegrass pickers have also 'picked' on John Melencamp,
Bonnie Rait, the Rolling Stones and others.
jug bnad led zep who's that I want to hear it...
Some of Led Zeppelin's stuff gets pretty close to jug band already. "Black Country Woman" and "Boogie With Stu," from _Physical Graffiti,_ sound like misguided attempts at country blues. (Of course, I'd put those two in the strange stuff category also.) "Come on, feel the noise" done as a mellow ballad by Bran Van 3000. This was actually the first version of the song that I heard, and the original keeps striking me as some sort of strange heavy cover. _Punk Side Story,_ a complete performance of West Side Story by various punk bands I'd never heard of. "Gee Officer Krupke" actually improves in the process, but the rest of the musical goes downhill. Cornershop's first album included a cover of "Norwegian Wood" done totally straight, except for the fact that all the lyrics were translated into (I think) Hindi. They end up with too many syllables, and the rhythm is all over the place.
re 3: Then see the Juggernaught Jug Band at Greenwood Coffee house on January 12th, right here in Ann Arbor. sample length em-pee-three might be on: http://www.juggernaughtjugband.com.
Too bad I'm not in Ann Arbor anymore, eh? I've heard punk side story it's a hoot. I've been listening to a new Devo live CD called greatest hits that does jocko homo a sort of lab steel country thang, it's great.
I finally got a chance to hear some Macumba. Whenever I hear steel drums and other Caribbean percussion, usually in the subway, I like the rhythm but feel like I'm waiting for the melody to come in. Now I know what I was waiting for: highland bagpipes! It's odd, but pretty good.
One of the funniest things I've ever heard was the lyrics to the Gilligan's Island theme done to the tune of Zep's Stairway to Heaven. They played it on the radio in Philly a couple of times before it was pulled due to some copyright infringement thing.. pity. Then there's always Faith No More doing the Nestle's song..
Ah. I've done Gilligan's Island to "Amazing Grace". And vice versa. I think I tried Gilligan's to "House of the Rising Sun," too.
I also remember hearing "Amazing Grace" to the tune of the "Mickey Mouse Club" theme, as well as the Methodist "Doxology" to the tunes of "Hernando's Hideaway" and the Gillette "Look Sharp, Feel Sharp, Be Sharp" jingle.
One can do Canadian Gordon Lightfoot's "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" to Canadian Stan Roger's "Safe in the Harbor". One might want to add a chorus as Steve MacDonald and Dan Glassier did to produce the version I heard. re 8: You need more funny music in your life. You'll laugh more often. re 9: And all can be done to Alice's Restaurant.
I've heard Stairway to Heaven done by Frank Zappa as a pseudo-reggae song, and by some Beatles tribute group in the style of the early Beatles, complete with new early-60s chord changes. Another good shipwreck song, "The Mary Ellen Carter," can be exchanged with "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" with a little tweaking.
With Christmas coming up soon (again), there's nothing like startling people at carolling sessions by suddenly bursting out with the following, in a cheerful voice to the tune of "Deck the Halls": Once upon a midnight dreary, fa la la la la, la la la la As I pondered weak and weary, fa la la la la, la la la la It doesn't really scan very well after that, but it sure makes a striking beginning.
re #13: What was the movie where some character complained that another
character had ruined all of Emily Dickinson's poetry for her by pointing
out that it could all be sung to "The Yellow Rose of Texas"?
"Because I could not stop for death
he kindly stopped for meeeee..."
i like singing poe's "Annabelle Lee" to the tune of "Big John" by Jimmy Dean
Dorothy Parker's 'Resumé' to 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star'...
(Ouch) Spider pointed out that the chemical name paradimethylaminobenzaldehyde can serve as lyrics to pretty well any Irish jig you care to mention.
And today I heard "Play that country music, Cowboy." Had to listen to the lyrics to figure out why it was on W4 Country; otherwise, it sounded just like it did back in '77.
I guess I'm on a roll:
move your mouse around until you land on me,
at double-u double-u double-u dot family
On W4 country.
RE #19 I believe the song you quoted was Alan Jackson's latest release entitled "www.memory".
That sounds dreadful..
OK, it sounds like "family" to me, but I'll take your word. :)
Oh, that's great - misheard URLs are already a bane of life, now we get them in song lyrics. It was Isaac Asimov who first sang "paradimethylaminobenzaldehyde" to a jig (The Irish Washerwoman), which prompted some sf fan to write an entire "Chemist's Drinking Song" to that tune.
gulliver.weblogs.com/2000/06/20 says.... Heh. Some of you may remember the old story about Isaac Asimov - apparently he was at a chemistry conference in Ireland (he was a chemistry professor, IIRC) and had to remember the name of a particular stuff - paradimethylaminobenzaldehyde - for his presentation the next day. He realised (probably in the pub) that the word "paradimethylaminobenzaldehyde" fits the tune "The Irish Washerwoman" perfectly (in case you don't know the name, this is the Irish jig. The one everyone knows). And he found he had a bad case of earworm - he couldn't get the tune out of it head and kept singing along. He went home that night, still singing "paradimethylaminobenzaldehyde, paradimethylaminobenzaldehyde..." , and the landlady of his guest house interrupted him, saying, "Oh, and you know the Irish words, too!"
picky correction department ... It had nothing to do with a chemistry conference in Ireland, or with a presentation he was making. Asimov just needed the chemical for his research, noted that the name made a perfect fit, and then absent- mindedly mumbled his earworm the next day in front of a secretary of Irish descent, who said, "Oh! You know it in the original Gaelic!"
Regardless. I didn't even realize Asimov did chemical research. You learn something new....
IIRC Columbia granted him a(n earned) PhD in Chemistry. "The Endochronic Properties of Thiotimeline" was (purportedly) written as 'practice' for the real thing.
That's what Asimov said. Years of writing plain pulp fiction left him unprepared, he said, for turgid academic prose. So he invented thiotimoline (inspired by a fast-dissolving chemical he was actually using) as a dry run. Even at that, his advisers said his thesis "read like a novel," which they did not mean as a compliment. But when at his orals they finished by asking him to discuss thiotimoline, he knew he'd passed (because they wouldn't have pulled that joke if he hadn't). After getting his Ph.D., Asimov spent eight years as a biochemistry professor at Boston U. Mostly he taught first-year med students and wrote textbooks, which led to his later lecturing and non-fiction career, but he also did cancer research - which, he said, he was no good at. He preferred the teaching and disliked having to do lab work, so when he found he was making more money from outside writing, he quit. [This is a bald and somewhat inaccurate summary, but it'll give you a rough idea.]
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