Making Flippy Floppy

Tribute albums are strange creatures. The last big trend in that sometimes sticky realm was "A String Quartet Tribute To..." and no-one seemed immune, from Britney Spears to Dead Can Dance. It seemed that literally every musical act had some mysterious String Quartet tribute CD on the racks. Were there all performed by the same String Quartet or what? Who buys these pointless and likely unlistenable silver coasters? The latest thing in the world of tribute LPs is rock classics turned into children's music. Devo 2.0 was that band's hits lyrically tamed down a notch and sung by teen girls. I've heard something about an upcoming Ramones-For-Kids project of some kind. Oddest of all, however, is the Rock-a-Bye Baby series of releases on Baby Rock Records. These albums feature soothing, music-box-esque "lullaby renditions" of over a dozen rock artists including: Pixies, Radiohead, Nirvana, Pink Floyd, Tool, and my favorite, The Cure. With the latter's lullaby tribute, the focus is primarily on the band's poppier hits (Friday I'm In Love, Boys Don't Cry, Close to Me.) My favorite is today's MP3 pick, a plonkity-plonk dreamy version of Disintegration's Homesick in which the lovely melody of the tune is brought out of the original's beautifully doomy muck. The music's not bad - it's not synthesized like one might expect but performed live on acoustic guitars, dulcimers, and xylophones. It makes good background music for just chilling with a book and relaxing.

Labels: MP3