One... step... beyond!

[venta]

It's Friday, and it's about 3 o'clock. It's time to go underneath the covers (with the lights out).

I always recommend listening to a cover version without knowing what or who it is, so click on the link before reading ahead...

Link to cover version expired

That was the Bikini Beach Band's Egyptian Medley. Which comprises Egyptian Reggae (originally by Jonathon Richman and the Modern Lovers, Walk like an Egyptian (originally by The Bangles), and Nightboat to Cairo (originally by Madness)[*].

One kudo to you if you recognised all three. One extra bonus kudo if you also recognised the guitar intro (not mentioned in the Bikini Beach Band's sleeve notes) to Killing an Arab, originally by The Cure.

I've seen the Bikini Beach Band live a few times, and they're bloody marvellous. They're a covers band - all they do is other people's tracks, in a Hawaiian surf-guitar sort of way. I was going to post up a "straight" cover (ie of just one song) - the album of theirs I have offered a choice of Babies (Pulp), Cars (Gary Numan) and Blue Monday (New Order), not to mention the theme from Swan Lake. However, what they do best is medleys, mixing together highly improbable combos of songs. How could you not like Telstar Wars (the theme from Star Wars with the 60's classic Telstar), or La Creepa (La Bamba sandwiched together with a famous Radiohead hit)?

I briefly would have listed their version of The Buzzcocks' Ever Fallen In Love as one of their "straight" covers, until I noticed the other days that it has 16 bars of the Darkness' I Believe in a Thing Called Love shoehorned into the middle eight.

Listening to them live is (if you're me) a very frustrating experience - barely have you identified one song when they're on to the next, leaving you snatching at a few bars of melody, trying to place it. They're geniuses in loud shirts and fezzes, and they're very, very funny. My first encounter with them had their dancers (in grass skirts and lei) waving pacards reading "Aloha", "Aloha" at carefully timed intervals during their cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit.

I'd recommend buying the album, but you might have to catch them in person for that. However, Amazon does seem to have a fine crop of mp3s for sale.

[*] Just in case you hadn't noticed, the "originally by..." links usually go to a YouTube version of the original song.

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

The guitar intro at the start of this track is the same as the bit from "Killing an Arab", but IIRC (which I might not, since I dont' own it) the same sequence occurs during the middle of the Cure track in a couple of places where the lyrics aren't.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ah. OK. It certainly occurs at the beginning of the Cure track, and, I think at the end, and very possibly in the middle as well :)