Fight for Your Right (to Satire)

A few years ago, we made it to the second round of Tucson's Acoustic Battle of the Bands. To make things interesting, everybody participating was tasked with learning a new cover song ...

... from the Beastie Boys.

Beastie Boys tunes performed by sensitive folk singers are about as hilarious as you'd expect them to be. We had fun with it. Our pick was "Fight for Your Right (to Party)." We added a vocal melody (so nobody had to suffer the trauma of hearing me rap) and inserted a piano riff that kinda sorta echoed the original guitar riff but didn't sound anything like it. To make the goof complete, we played it totally straight.

What we didn't realize was that the Beastie Boys themselves didn't take the song any more seriously than we did.

... the Beasties hated the whole rocker scene, feeling it was populated by obnoxious, testosterone-laden douchebags. They wanted to poke fun at mindless party anthems like "Smoking in the Boys Room," so they cut the lyrics to "Fight for Your Right" as an in-joke before going on tour ... Thinking the song's success was hilarious, the Beasties made what they assumed was an equally ridiculous video to go along with it.

Slowly, they began to realize that the whole "parody" part was lost on most of the listening public, and the majority of their newfound fan base was now made up of the same toolbags they were making fun of.

Beastie Boys: That is awesome. I would have liked your song a whole lot more—or, you know, at all—if I'd realized it was satire.

In case you were curious, here's our heartfelt version, live from Ron the Drummer's living room.

Lady Who?

A friend of mine had an epiphany the other day: Cinder Bridge should cover "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga. We've successfully put our special Cinder Bridge spin on other songs outside our genre, so "Poker Face" would be right up our alley.

The idea seemed good in principle, but it was hard for me to judge. I had never heard Lady Gaga.

Oh, I'd heard OF her. I haven't been trapped in a bomb shelter for the past two years. I knew she was really really famous. I just couldn't identify any of her songs in a lineup. And from what I'd heard, I didn't think I was missing out.

* * *

Coming up in the '80s, one of the great disappointments of my life was discovering that the music of my generation sucked. Boomers got the Allman Brothers, Pink Floyd, Joni Mitchell, the Beatles, the Stones, David Bowie. What did I get? The Gogos. Hall and Oates. Madonna.

So it's not like my dismissal of the trendy stuff is something that developed as I aged out of adolescence and early adulthood. I've always been at odds with it. The difference is in how distant it feels now. I mean, I may not have cared for early-'80s Madonna, but I knew Madonna. ("Holiday-eeee ... It would beeee sooooo nice") She was everywhere. I couldn't have gotten away from her if I tried, and I'm pretty sure I did try.

"Poker Face" was number one on the charts for months. I listen to the radio. How could I possibly have missed it?

* * *

At precisely 4 p.m. today, I queued up the "Poker Face" video on YouTube and lost my Gaga virginity.

I didn't like her. I didn't hate her. And about five minutes after listening, I couldn't have told you how the song went.

Am I as out of touch as I fear? Or are today's biggest hits just that forgettable?

More musical grocery store revelations

While pushing my cart through Sunflower Market this afternoon, a familiar song made its way through the intercom. The singer, female, had a polished coffeehouse style:

Every time I look in the mirror
All these lines on my face getting clearer
The past is gone

I knew right away that this was a cover of a song I'd heard many times before, but it took a few more lines before I identified it as "Dream On," originally by Aerosmith.

Funny thing was, the lyrics seemed so much more profound in this dialed-down, folksy version. I found myself nodding along with those first lines, thinking, yes, "All these lines on my face getting clearer" is a poetic way of describing the observation of one's own aging. I'd never really noticed any of the words in Aerosmith's version, aside from the refrain.

Why? Part of it was just that the chick singer enunciated the lyrics much more clearly than Steven Tyler did. Another part of it was pure classical conditioning: if it's slow and folksy, the words will be thoughtful and meaningful; if it's hard-driving, kick-ass rock 'n' roll, the lyrics probably don't matter that much.

It's all in the presentation.