I like a good musical parody. Note the word “good” in there. I’m not talking about the Barron Knights here[1], but I enjoy listening to The King covering Nirvana in the style of Elvis Presley or Frank Bennett covering Radiohead’s “Creep”.
So there’s one level on which I should have enjoyed the busker in Tottenham Court Road tube station who had reduced Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger” to an end of the pier singalong. But I strongly suspect that the busker didn’t have an ironic bone in his body and that he was playing it that way because he plays everything that way.
It was horrible.
[1] Am I showing my age by mentioning the Barron Knights? Can anyone under 40 remember them?
Yup, I’m under 40 for another fortnight, and I still remember them…
If you’d have asked a few months ago, I could have answered yes to that ;) I still a few albums of theirs somewhere … on vinyl, you know that big circle of black stuff with 2 grooves on :)
No.
Nope, not me.
Richard Cheese’s Lounge Against the Machineare some of my favourite parodies, and he’s mykaraoke role model.
Surely no-one can beat the mighty Rutles in the parody hit parade…Though Rich Hall’s country-music-convict alter ego Otis Lee Crenshaw has some fine lines, and Peter Cook’s mock-Sixties star, performing on a mock-Ready Steady Go, in ‘Bedazzled’ is cherishable, not least for the loving lyric: ‘You fill me with inertia’…As for buskers, everytime I went to Camden Lock market as a kid, there would be a tiny disabled man, doughtily standing his ground amid the stumbling crowds, strumming a zither and singing old Beatles and Monkees tunes. He did, unfortunately, sound terrible, but I felt sad to return recently and find no sign of him… The place just didn’t seem the same.