ForCoverFightingVille
There was an extended period that started in the late 90's and passed through into the early 'aughts that forms a massive hole in my knowledge of anything newly musical.
Why?
Pre-tenure-driven, work-a-holism times infinity, times.
That's why.
All of which is just a way of explaining why I knew absolutely nothing about the power-poppish, hook-laden 'Teenage Dirtbag' by Wheatus, despite the fact that it was, and is still, so popular that the band's original Vevo version, which was made for a crappy Amy Heckerling movie called 'Loser', now has 175 million views.
In fact, the first time I actually paid any attention to it at all was when it appeared in a much different form conjured up by that kid currently riding an indie supernova headed straight for the the mainstream named Phoebe Bridgers:
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Anyway, fast forward to yesterday and what does my favourite new musical site, which is called 'Cover Me' throw up?
Why, the five best covers of 'Teenage Dirtbag', of course.
Which, on its own, is great.
...Even if you didn’t grow up on Long Island in the ’80s, if you are a true-crime aficionado of a certain age (a horrific classification but here we are), you are likely to be familiar with the case of Ricky Kasso, who murdered Gary Lauwers (both 17) in June of 1984. And if you did grow up there like Wheatus’s Brendan B.Brown (and myself), the whole story is firmly and forever embedded in your psyche, especially if you were a kid or teen at the time. It was both tragic and terrifying.
It wasn’t long before the press found a sensationalistic angle to latch onto regarding the crime and the scapegoating began. When Kasso was arrested for the murder, he was famously photographed wearing an AC/DC shirt replete with a bloody logo and a green cartoon devil. And that little detail, coupled with rumors of the crime being part of a satanic sacrifice ritual, provided all the ammunition needed for those in authority–i.e. parents, teachers and police–to go into irrational overdrive. As naively fantastical as sounds, from that point on, if you actively listened to metal, if you wore tees featuring the bands you loved like Iron Maiden or Black Sabbath, you were heretofore regarded as one of the devil’s loyal soldiers. While this mistrust of metalheads was patently ridiculous, an absurd piece of residual damage based on a single news photo, it really happened. And it was this very notion that led Brendan B. Brown to pen “Teenage Dirtbag”...
'Cover Me' shows up over there on the blog crawler thingy. It's really a fantastic musical multi-level stratification sort of place to hang out.
Kind of like a cool record store from the old days where the folks working there would let you in on what's what because they were actually nice rather than jerks.
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We used to run a regular 'Saturday Night's Alright For Cover Fighting' thing around here...It involved ukulele's, mostly.
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