I am embarrassed to say that I am the senior editor of anything after taking the “I’m from Rolling Stone” music quiz. The highest score I could muster at any level was 69%. It was the hip hop questions that did me in. I think I missed every one of them.
I did laugh, though, when they asked a question about We Are Scientists’ album cover, which is my favorite album cover of all time. I reprint it here once again, for my amusement and to guarantee that no one gets a zero.
Okay, it’s by no means their best single, but it’s a damn fine one just the same, and the video is a certifiable hoot. My favorite part was the birth-school-work-death sequence in the second chorus (hmmm, that gives me an idea for a future installment). But what was with Jools Holland’s makeup?
The first two entries to my Covers thread involved more recent acts covering older songs (I say more recent, even though both of those bands, Simply Red and the Pet Shop Boys, debuted in 1986), but this time, we’re going the other way. I want old prog to cover the new prog.
Rush made an EP a couple years ago called Feedback. On that EP, they covered songs that made them want to form a band in the first place. Bands like the Who, Blue Cheer, Buffalo Springfield, that kind of thing. To this Rush fan, that is a complete waste of time. I don’t want to hear Rush covering songs that are beneath their abilities: I want to hear them covering “Welcome to the Jungle,” “Silent Lucidity” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (don’t laugh, they’d knock it out of the fucking park), you know?
Well, here is their chance. Muse is Radiohead + Queen, if we’re using “music math,” which means that there are at least two or three songs in their catalog that would fit Rush like an old pair of jeans. Tell me that Alex wouldn’t salivate at the thought of playing the guitar line to “Stockholm Syndrome” (it’d remind him of “The Spirit of Radio”), while Neil bashes his drums to high heaven and Geddy gets to justify playing both bass and keys in a song again. Come on, you know he misses it so.
Watch the vid, and tell me that Rush doesn’t fucking love this song.