Cross-genre Louie Louie: Everybody Sing!

This is a cake with a South Youth cover on it. It is the dorkiest thing ever.

There’s this great video of Sonic Youth and company covering “I Wanna Be Your Dog” by The Stooges on some late-night SNL off-shoot that I’m not old enough to remember.  I can’t embed it because Universal Music Group (and most major record labels) have an idiotic policy regarding video embedding outside of sponsored sites because I guess they don’t want people to listen to the music and enjoy it, insisting on controlling the means of distribution even though the fucking point of the Internet is the dissemination of information.

Anyways, the video is awesome and punk as shit; there’s like ten guys on stage, a dude playing a keytar in the background, Kim Gordon in that phase where she was embracing her sex symbol status at least enough to wear those fishnets getting all the young kids excited in their seats, and for no real reason some dude starts wailing on the flute into the microphone.  It’s just one big happy jam fest on a song everyone knows and loves.  Here, “I Wanna Be Your Dog” is used as the punk “Louie Louie,” even though “Louie Louie” is pretty punk by itself.  I got thinking: What would be the equivalent to “Louie Louie” in any other genre?  At Taintbrush, almost everything begins with, “I got to thinking…”  And here we are.

Rap: Sugarhill Gang – Rapper’s Delight

There’s no doubt about it; the song is long enough for everyone to get a verse in, it’s got one of those funky classic beats that you can imagine a clown like Cam’Ron getting his dance on to, and if VH1 has taught me everything it’s that aspiring rappers always grow up rocking that old school shit, at least the ones born in the early 80’s.  If this song doesn’t make you smile a little, you must hate fun.

Pop-punk: Blink 182 – Dammit

These guys are back together, which is an entry for another day, but the point is that everyone knows how to play this riff and I remember being at high school shows where it busted out, even ironically.  No one has to know the lyrics; everyone just needs to be able to play that riff and mosh.  I’ve been thinking about Blink 182 pretty hard for the last few days (okay, not hard at all) and basically they were just three funny dudes who knew their punk music (seriously, they covered “Another Girl, Another Planet” and the fucking Replacements did that, which actually is probably why I’m taking it so seriously) and had no real pretensions about being a gateway band into better music until they got all serious on the last album and actually dropped some solid mainstream rock tracks.  What I am saying is, it certainly doesn’t suck that Blink is back together, fuck yeah.

Arena rock: Bruce Springsteen – Born to Run

I am not saying I want to see this, but if the Killers, the Hold Steady, Death Cab for Cutie, Bright Eyes, Coldplay, and any other emotional/anthemic rock band got on stage, two things would happen: 1. The biggest dick fight ever for the microphone right before the “1-2-3-4!” count-off would cover the entire crowd in semen, and 2. The pyrotechnics would melt everyone’s faces off.  So basically, don’t ever go to a festival that has at least two of those guys on the billing.

Emo: Fugazi – Waiting Room

I actually don’t know if this would fly at all, I just think it would be really funny to see ten or fifteen super serious musicians standing in silence during that breakdown in the beginning.  Do you think Ian McKaye has ever been cruel to an animal?  Do you think he’s ever accidentally punched a dog in annoyance and seriously cried about it afterwards?  Probably not.

Shoegaze: Doesn’t matter

The power and weight of all the amps would either cause the electricity to blow out or the stage to collapse, at which point bizarro-Kevin Shields would crush everyone with his rolls of fat.  Does anyone else remember that rumor that he got monstruously fat during My Bloody Valentine’s hiatus?  He sure looked skinny in all of those reunion concert videos.  Maybe the camera actually takes off 10 pounds when it gets pointed at him.  Wait, that doesn’t make any sense.

Funk: Anything James Brown did with an instrumental breakdown

If only so Diddy could get his dance in in the long interlude.  Then, everyone could wonder why Diddy was on stage at a funk concert.