"Rock Swings" Rocks!

[Enoch]

I just got this album, and it is amazing.

 

As a singer, Anka is a competent crooner (perhaps a bit too captive to the rythmic & melodic interpretations of the originals); where the album really shines is in the big band/orchestral arrangements of recent (last 25 years or so) rock tunes. I know it sounds gimmicky, but the tunes consistently work better than most genre-crossing covers I can think of. Van Halen's "Jump" and Bon Jovi's "It's My Life," for example, make damn fine big band standards. Even suspect tunes like Oasis' "Wonderwall" and Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" actually work better with a little touch of Vegas crooner schmaltz.

 

But the real highlights are the arrangements of unlikely subjects like Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun." First, simply being able to understand the lyrics is neat (and it's just plain fun to hear Anka belt out "a mosquito, MY LI-BI-DO!"). But the horn & string parts are really well done and fit the songs in an unexpectedly appropriate way.

 

Definitely a

[EnderAndrew]

I don't think you were able to understand Cobain when he sung the lyrics to Smells Like Teen Spirit.

[alanschu]

And we're mumblin'

And we're screamin'

And you don't know

What we're singin'

 

Buy our album

We're Nirvana

At least we don't sound

Like Madonna

[Oerwinde]

And we're mumblin'

And we're screamin'

And you don't know

What we're singin'

 

Buy our album

We're Nirvana

At we don't sound

Like Madonna

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

The video was awesome, where the janitor finds the tutu in his mop bucket and puts it on.

[EnderAndrew]

I liked the cow sound sampled in.

 

Pure brilliance. Now when I hear Nirvana, I want to hear the cow sound, but I have to imagine it.

[alanschu]

Wierd Al is very talented IMO.

 

He makes excellent songs to the sounds of different artists, and he's never really derogatory in his parodies, and just has fun. If I was a musician, I'd be honoured if Wierd Al wanted to parody one of my songs.

 

 

He has a lot of "false" credit out there, if you do a search for Wierd Al on any of those non-existing Peer2Peer networks that don't share music.

[EnderAndrew]

Like the Star Wars cantina song. Who really did that?

[Jellybelly]

Ash.