Strange Bedfellows Dept.
Featuring Quirky and Oddball Cover Songs
Jazz Goes Grunge
Members of the modern jazz group, Bad Plus broke into a rousing avant garde rendition of Nirvana's
Lithium at last week's Winnepeg Jazz Festival. Their version of the Cobain song didn't get a lot of applause, except from the three Nirvana fans in the audience. Jazz music fans aren't exactly known for their musical pluralism, unlike jazz musicians who are often very hip to contemporary music trends. The vocalist, Wendy Lewis has been doing jazz infused covers of offbeat songs for awhile and she's a great vocal stylist.
Bossa Nova Bunnymen
Nouvelle Vague has been around for about five years now and specializes in covers of post-punk songs with a twist of Brazilian samba or bossa nova. I like this Nouvelle Vague cover of Echo and the Bunnymen's
The Killing Moon better than the original.
Sorry about that, Echo.
Angry Old Fogies
My final choice is the Zimmer's rousing rendition of the Who's
My Generation . The Zimmers were all the rage a mere two years ago and their music video went viral on the internet.
Since that moment of glory, we haven't heard much of anything from the Zimmers. Apparently the band will only be remembered as just another
one hit wonder but their rendition of
My Generation is a memorable one.
When your band's youngest member is 75 years old, you probably don't get many long term 5 album contract offers from record companies.
Who knows?... Maybe half of the Zimmers have kicked the bucket since 2007. The official video of the song is wickedly funny and quite good musically...but copyright law forbids me from it embedding the video offsite. You can view it on
YouTube