Friday farce: Skeptics double-play

Well, New Zealand music month is over again. And thank god. So long to state-sponsored sycophancy. Farewell to cynical marketing ploys and blinkered jingoism. Wave buh-bye to NZ Music Month. Buh-bye! Buh-bye...

Now. She's Lost: an underground New Zealand music recovery expedition is a free downloadable virtual compilation CD featuring "some of New Zealand's finest dark alternative/industrial/electro/experimental artists" recording cover versions of their favourite Kiwi songs. Or that's how it's being pitched, anyways.

Since it's no longer NZ Music Month, you probably can't download the whole thing anymore. (Which you may or may not be thankful for.) But you can read the story of the compilation here. And, like me, you may want to spend a moment blissfully reveling in the fact that the Skeptics (Wikipedia) are apparently now popular enough that their songs appear -- not once, but TWICE -- on the the compilation.

I love the Skeptics, me. In fact, the other night -- whilst sailing with a couple of sheets to the breeze -- I expressed a desire to quantifiably become the world's biggest Skeptics fan. (Ask me how, go'an.) So you'd think I'd be happy. And I would be, except that the covers are laughable. Utterly wretched.

I've lectured in the past at length about the various "rules" of cover-versions, and there are a good number. But surely the very first, the primary, the preeminent rule of recording a good cover is -- not to attempt to faithfully reproduce the original, adding nothing in the process.

So [1] Some noisy chumps called Hog Haul Valentine ignore that imperative and record a virtually indistinguishable version of La Motta, the brooding, chilling account of a boxer getting the shit beaten out of him:

Hog Haul Valentine - La Motta (4.77 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download)

It's not actually particularly bad, just... well... kinda boring. And the same. Their site is here, anyhow.

And [2] your listening pleasure, some horrible person called Greg "Danger" has fair ruined the spastic dance-floor classic AFFCO for all time:

Greg Danger - AFFCO (4.66 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download)

For god's sake, what was he thinking? I'm going to have to paraphrase the sample he uses on the intro to his track and direct it back at him:

I wanted to tell that you're an evil horrible person. You're an awful person, you represent horrible ideas, god hates you and he wants to kill your children. You should burn in hell. Bye.

Some of the other covers on She's Lost are quite good, though.

Links:
The Skeptics at Last.fm (where you can kinda listen to two different versions of Sheen of Gold)
She's Lost official site and Myspace page

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Don't forget to check out David Cauchi's address about Science Fiction and Art at the film archive tomorrow afternoon.

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NP: Inferi - Shores of Sorrow (Metal Observer review).