covers

There’s not a lot to say about this other than “It’s Awesome”. It’s White Rabbits performing John Lennon’s “Instant Karma” with Britt Daniels of Spoon. See, I told you. Awesome.

Our favorite uke player is back! This time Molly’s dressing up and covering Lady GaGa’s truly irritating “Poker Face”. And she manages to make it not annoying. That’s a win in my book!

Ah, Devo. Classic minimalist rock. Not exactly what Pearl Jam is known for. But they celebrated Halloween by dressing up as Devo and playing their classic “Whip It”. Kind of awesome.

This might be the most random of the Random Covers of the Week. It’s a choir of ventriloquists, on Hungarian television, singing The Beatles’ “Yesterday”. Seriously. Apparently these guys were big on Conan back in the day, but apparently I missed it. This thing rocked my world and shook my faith in humanity. Think about it for a second. Think about the skills involved here. You have to be a proficient ventriloquist. You have to be able to sing. And you have to be able to bear making a complete fool of yourself. I’m amazed there were enough people with this skill set to form a group this size. And it seems like they managed to assemble pre-internet. Can you imagine the bulletin board posting? “Singing ventriloquist seeking similar to form cover choir”.

Now, the premise here is hilarious all by itself. But the fact that they’re really good ventriloquists, really bad singers, and incredibly goofy looking people really pushes it over the top. For me it went from Stunned Silence to Uncomfortable Laughter to All-Out Guffawing and back. That’s a lot of emotions for one short song. Well, without further ado:

via BoingBoing

The Flaming Lips stopped by KCRW last week for an appearance on “Morning Becomes Eclectic”. They played a few songs from their new album Embryonic, then they announced an interesting little nugget: they’ve recorded a cover of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. The entire album. They teamed up with Stardeath and The White Dwarfs for the project, with some other guests joining in. They didn’t announce a release date for the album, but they DID play the album’s closer, “Eclipse”:

You can check out a stream of their full set, including tracks from Embryonic, and “the most rare song” they have.

I’m a Bruce Springsteen fan, but I’m not necessarily a fan of all of his stuff. I tend to lean toward melancholy Bruce over arena-rock Bruce. I prefer Nebraska over Born to Run for instance. I happen to think “The River” is one of Bruce’s masterpieces, a tremendous piece of storytelling. Josh Ritter probably agrees to me, based on the fact that he plays a classic, respectful cover of the tune:

Let’s get something out of the way before we start: I don’t like The Polyphonic Spree. Their music isn’t all that bad, but their whole cult-like act is just creepy. I think it’s the robes. Though they were still creepy in their Fragile Army stage too, so maybe it’s more than that.

Anyway, I only bring that up to let y’all know I’m posting this video in spite of it being Polyphonic Spree, not because of it. On the surface a cover of Nirvana’s “Lithium” by the robed freaks should be just gawdawful. But for some reason it’s not. I’d even go so far as to say it’s good. Maybe even really good. Though I am under the influence of cold medicine, so that could have something to do with it…

Most of the time I choose Random Covers that are good, that either give a new and interesting twist to the original or even improve on it. But every once in a while it’s good to feature a cover that’s just a train wreck from start to finish. This one falls squarely into that category. It’s what appears to be a Russian naval choir singing “Let it Be”. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Russians are freakin’ cool.

via BoingBoing

It’s the convergence of amazing things: The Beatles, ukuleles, Jonathan Coulton. All mixed together with a title stolen from gross-out porn. Fantastic.

So here’s the story: Last year Jonathan Coulton suggested that his two feuding ukulele ladies get together and perform a song on one uke, with one strumming and the other fretting. There were two problems with this idea. First, the two ladies, Molly Lewis (aka SweetAfton23) and Kristen Shorts, were on different coasts. Second, they hate each other. Or not. Maybe it was just the first one. Who knows with these things? Anyway, they finally got together and did The Beatles’ “We Can Work it Out”. As they say in the business, wackiness ensues. I hope you’re happy JoCo.

The Protomen are strange. They wrote a rock opera about Megaman. They wear costumes and go by stage names. They give interviews in character, so little is known about their true origins or history.

While the band may be a bit of an enigma, this cover of Kenny Loggins’ classic “Danger Zone”, from the legendary Top Gun, is not. It just kicks ass.