It’s hard to pull off a tribute song well. Probably the best approach is the one favoured by the artists on this podcast: don’t try to sound anything like the objects of your affection.
Said objects would form a formidable festival line up. Who wouldn’t sleep in a $20 tent from Ray’s Outdoors and suffer the slings and arrows of festival toilets for this line up:
2pm. The Beach Boys
3pm. The Carpenters
4pm. Nick Drake
5pm. Billie Holliday
6pm. Amy Winehouse
7pm. Can
8pm. Jay Reatard
9pm. The Meat Puppets
10pm. Nirvana
12am. The Fall
2am. The Velvet Underground
There’ll be plenty who’d like to see the Beach Boys headlining, but as I said on the show there’s something about their harmonising that makes me feel queasy. And everyone would need to stay very quiet for Nick Drake, only occasional shouts of “We love you, Nick” and “Now’s your time!” would be permitted.
On another note, and also as mentioned on the programme, this is the debut of a few bands, not least the Jazz Butcher. They remain the only significant band that the Gloom Brothers in their brief glorious incarnation, supported. And The Gloom Brothers, to pre-empt your query, being the band of which I was the ‘singer’ from 1982-84.
All I can say is we were better than Tony Blair’s Ugly Rumours. I mean I haven’t heard Ugly Rumours, nobody has, but we were certainly better.
Tracklist:
Velvet Underground, Jonathan Richman
Under the influence of Meat Puppets, fIREHOSE
Let me in, REM
I saw Nick Drake, Robin Hitchcock
Ladykillers, Lush
My only friend, The Magnetic Fields
Southern Mark Smith, The Jazz Butcher
Mr Wilson, John Cale
I am Damo Suzuki, The Fall
Amy aka Spent Gladiator, The Mountain Goats
Tunic (Song for Karen), Sonic Youth
He would have laughed, Deerhunter