Thursday, October 4, 2012

4 October 2012 - Special "I Am The Walrus" Edition

Like my colleague on this blog, I will frequently get ideas for this blog from a simple YouTube search for a song, followed by the word "cover".  This type of search usually yields an awful lot of kids with acoustic guitars strumming for the guitar in their bedrooms.

Today, I initially went looking for a very specific cover.  This is the cover, a Beatles classic as performed by Oingo Boingo at their farewell show, before Danny Elfman went off for a life of movie scores. It's an uptempo version, with horns.....

 

..... and it wasn't as good as I remembered it was.   So I went off looking for other covers of the song I knew about.  Of course, when I think about Beatles covers, I think about the former Mr. Katy Perry, who performed the tune - in my opinion, admirably - at the 2012 Olympic closing ceremonies in London.  I'm not really a fan of the guy, but he seems to get this song and how it's supposed to be performed.



I knew, however, that most of you would be unhappy with this choice, so I kept looking.  And I accidentally stumbled upon THIS version by Oasis.  They thought they were better than the Beatles anyway.... In all seriousness, they also did an admirable job on John Lennon's classic.  This version is live, from 1994.  The band did record the song in studio, and used it as a B-Side.



Little known fact: "I Am The Walrus" was the B-side to "Hello Goodbye", another beloved song.  Now, let's listen to a post-Dennis DeYoung Styx desecrate it, complete with the worst music video ever made.



OK, I can't end on that.  I'll end with Jim Carrey?  He does an interesting (and slightly angry) rendition of the tune, but he doesn't murder it like Styx did.


BONUS COVER: Here are Colin's Hermits..... ok, it's XTC.... doing the same song.  There isn't a video, but it's still worth a listen.  Perhaps the best cover here.

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