Art of the Remake VIII

Strutter, the KISS classic, a standard in The Donna’s set:

The original:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNxNTHbFwHs

Our standard: “If you are going to cover a song, rip it apart a bit and make it your own.”

The Donna’s version exists in a world where punk rock happened. They do an all girl version of a hairy chested, swaggering guy song, and do it without irony. They own it and make something out of it that is their own. I love how the crowd is singing along so loudly. I wish I had been at that party.

The official Donna’s video of the song also pretty cool. (Brett looks fetching in Paul Stanley’s makeup.)

Some Timely Breakup Songs

Relationships don’t always work out. That’s why there are breakup songs.

Sometimes, the feelings leading to a breakup are mutual…neither partner wants to keep the other one around anymore. And yes, I think Obama is as dissatisfied with us, the American people, as we are with him. He clearly finds us to be very inadequate and unappreciative.

So, time to move on. And in honor of the impending breakup between American and Barak Obama, here’s a selection of fine breakup songs.

Goodbye to You

Goodbye is all we got left to say

Hit the road, Jack

You’re so vain

50 ways to leave your lover

It doesn’t matter anymore

Red rubber ball

Others?

Archive Post: Try To Remember That Time in September

(From my old Sgt. Stryker archive – a meditation on 9/11, written on the third anniversary)

Around the time of the first anniversary of 9/11, I saw a drawing commemorating, and making a bittersweet comment about anniversaries, memory and the passage of time. Quick pen sketches of the WTC towers, each with a sequential date underneath; 9/11/02, 9/11/03, 9/11/04, but with each repetition, the outline of the towers became mistier, more diffuse. The first anniversary to me was almost unbearable, as much of a psychic battering as the event itself. The second was a sad and thoughtful occasion, and now we are facing the third year, and the day falls on a Saturday; not a work day for most of us. Curiously, that seems to set the event a little aside, this year. I will not be walking into the glass and granite lobby of the office building where I work— a lobby that looks eerily like the lobby of the WTC buildings, owing to the fact they were built at about the same time, following many of the same architectural precepts, and which houses many of the same sort of businesses, although on a much smaller scale— on a glorious September day, not knowing that the towers had already been hit, they were burning, and thousands of people doing the same job they did every day would be dust and ashes in the next few moments.

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RERUN–Ruler of the Auto Industree

Brian Deese was one of Obama’s auto-industry “Czars”….for a time he was the Czar for General Motors. He is now Deputy Director of the National Economic Council where he’s “charged with coordinating policy development on several Administration economic priorities including tax policy, financial regulation, housing, clean energy, manufacturing, and the automotive industry.”

I wrote this little song in his honor and posted it originally on 6/11/2009. To be sung to the tune of “Ruler of the Queen’s Navee.”

When I was a lad, I was smart you see
So I went to Yale to get a law degree
I studied hard and I impressed some profs
But I thought I could do better so I blew it off

(he thought he could do better so he blew it off)

I quit and went to work for Hillary’s campaign
And they were really quite impressed with my most excellent brain
When Clinton dropped out Obama wanted me
And now I rule the U.S. auto industree

(when Clinton dropped out Obama wanted he
That’s why he rules the U.S. auto industree)

I never sold cars at a dealership
And I never worked the plant on the midnight shift
Or stayed up all night a-workin’ on a car design
Or fixin’ up the flow on the assembly line

(he never even saw that old assembly line)

I became a political man you see
So now I rule the US auto industry

(a political man most grand is he
so now he rules the U.S. auto industree)

I never had to wrestle with a P&L
To prove that I could run a business really well
I never executed any sales campaigns
Or handled the logistics with the trucks and the trains

(he never had to worry with the trucks and the trains)

Instead I was chosen by the “O” you see
So now I rule the US auto industry

(Obama reached down and annointed he
so now he rules the U.S. auto industree)

Now kids everywhere if you want to succeed
I’ve got some advice that you’ll do well to heed
Don’t go into business as an entrepreneur
Cause your odds of success they’ll be increasingly poor
Just become a political man like me
And some day you too may rule the auto industree

(just become a political man like he
and you too may rule the auto industree)

Original CB comment thread here

Music, and original words to the Gilbert & Sullivan song, here.

Just Because I Like It

Errol’s Song, by Adam Carroll