Tuesday, July 31, 2012

The Other One: Len, "Feelin' All Right"




"The Other One" is usually not as good as the first one (hence, why it was not a hit,) and this is no exception. But it wasn't bad. It had all the ingredients that made "Steal My Sunshine" so undeniable: the same fed-up, bored-with-the-world Gen X slacker tone, set to a bouncy, power pop rhythm... yet it just didn't have that energy, that spirit that "Sunshine" did.

Cover: Cake, "War Pigs"



It would be kind of a useless statement to point out that Black Sabbath and Cake are very different musical entities. Cake is in a realm of their own, which partly the fun of watching them do covers. The bring disparate influences like Gloria Gaynor, Frank Sinatra, and here Ozzy & Co, to their slacker alt rock BBQ.

It's no surprise to me that this works. When you're a band like Cake, who really knows their style, you can transform almost anything to fit your needs. "War Pigs" is an early metal cut from before the genre had really reached the limit of its tropes, so it has a debt to earlier forms of hard rock and heavy blues. It's that lineage that Cake is able to bring out of it and exploit. And just like Ozzy always seems a little dead, John McCrae always sounds a little tired, so the adaptation works.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

The Other One: Chumbawamba, "Amnesia"



A while ago I came up with a concept for a feature for this site where I spotlighted the "other" songs by supposed one-hit wonders. I don't think the concept has a lot of legs because someone's always going to say "Hey, THAT was a hit too!" but in this case I think it works perfectly.

As you know, Chumbawamba is perceived as being a one-hit wonder, and due to the immense popularity of "Tubthumper," they are. But they had a long, weird history that remains incredibly obscure even to me. What I do remember, though, is this song, which rivals "Tubthumper" even in awesomeness. I post it today on the occasion of Chumbawamba's (arguable overdue, arguably not) break-up. Enjoy.