Road to Nowhere: Attack of the Clones Division

April 24th, 2014

Sometimes I’ll cruise iTunes looking for covers of songs I like. While doing so for Talking Heads’ “Road to Nowhere,” I discovered that one ensemble had released the same cover of “Road to Nowhere” under multiple band names.

Eleven times.

Indeed, the versions of “Road to Nowhere” on iTunes by the following bands (all of which clock in between 3:49 and 3:53) are all exactly the same:

  • Burning Down the House
  • The Insurgency
  • Klone Orchestra
  • The Minister of Soundalikes
  • Monsters of Rock
  • Psycho Killers
  • Secret Popstars
  • Studio Sunset
  • Studio Union
  • Tribute Stars
  • Wildlife
  • Moreover, several of those incarnations of the same band (Studio Sunset, Burning Down the House, Psycho Killers, Wildlife, Klone Orchestra) appear to have issued the same entire album of Talking Heads covers (with the same tracks) multiple times. Indeed, they appear to have done it three times under just their Studio Sunset name!

    (BTW, if you really want that album, the cheapest version is Burning Down the House’s A Salute to Talking Heads, which is a mere $5.99, compared to $7.99 or $9.99 for some of the others.)

    But wait! There’s a completely different group that did the exact same thing with the same song.

    Eleven times.

    All these covers of “Road to Nowhere” under these band names (all of which clock in around 4:01) are the same:

  • Ameritz
  • The Hit Co.
  • The Hit Group
  • The Hit Crew
  • OMP Allstars
  • Party City
  • Rock Fest
  • The Rock Masters
  • Singing Mouths
  • Studio Group
  • Finally, here eight cover versions that are not only exactly the same, but the underlying track is so close to the ones above they might be the exact same version with a different vocal mix:

  • The Comptones
  • Dynamite
  • Driving Masters
  • The Falling Downs
  • Graham Blvd.
  • Road Demonz
  • Rock Playlist Masters
  • TMZ TV Tunes
  • Shoegazer Sunday: Spokraket’s “Just Go Spit Out Another Lie”

    April 20th, 2014

    Danish band Spokraket offers garage band psychedelic surf rock married to Here Come the Warm Jets-era Brain Eno, offering plenty of distorted guitars and end up sounding like a low-fi version of Black Tambourine. “Just Go Spit Out Another Lie” is pretty much a steady state Shoegaze song: Like the riff and groove? Just wait around and there will be plenty more of it coming down the pike…

    And here’s an earlier live version of it, when it was called “(Drifting Away In) Solitary Dreams”

    Another Insane Lego Ball Machine

    April 18th, 2014

    A while back I featured this Lego ball machine from Japan.

    Well, this one (also from Japan) is twice as insane.

    It may even be from the same guy.

    (Hat tip: Lou Anders‘ Facebook page.)

    Library Additions: Two Books, One Signed by Gilda Radner

    April 17th, 2014

    Every now and then you see an item outside your sphere of collecting interests at a good price and go “I want that!” This is one of those times.

  • Radner, Gilda and Alan Zweibel. Roseanne Roseannadanna’s Hey, Get Back to Work! Book. Long Shadow Books, 1983. First edition trade paperback original, a Near Fine copy with a few small sports to page block edges. Inscribed by Radner and Zweibel: “Thanks/a lot to/Tim/Gilda Radner” and “”To Tim-/You just brought back/a million great/memories when you/handed me this book./Al”

    Roseanne Roseannadanna's

    Radner Sig

  • Bought in a lot with:

  • Zweibel, Alan. Bunny Bunny: Gilda Radner: A Sort of Love Story. Villard Books, 1994. First edition hardback, a Near Fine copy with a clipped price. Early Saturday Night Live writer’s memoir of working with Radner.
  • Among the areas I occasionally contemplate starting book collections in are the early history of Apple Computer and the original cast of Saturday Night Live. (Warning: Get off my lawn ahead.) I know that Saturday Night Live is about as edgy as a bowling ball these days, but the original SNL was groundbreaking, daring and funny as hell. So when I saw this in that 70% off sale I bought so many SF books in, I snapped it up. Bought for $40.49.

    Though Radner was the best female cast member in the original cast, the Roseanne Roseannadanna character was far from her best bit (see the Judy Miller Show, where she plays a hyperactive girl for that), but she died young enough that books signed by her are not particularly common.

    Two tidbits on Alan Zweibel:

  • On Weekend Update, the Roseanne Roseannadanna character would often read letters written by “a Richard Feder of Fort Lee, New Jersey” In fact, there is a real Richard Feder of Fort Lee, New Jersey, who was Zweibel’s brother-in-law.
  • Zweibel wrote the young adult novel North, upon which Rob Reiner’s famously horrible movie of the same name was based.
  • Trailer for Cold in July

    April 16th, 2014

    Here’s the official trailer for Cold in July, the film based on the Joe R. Lansdale novel starring Michael C. Hall, Sam Shepard and Don Johnston.

    I hear Joe himself is pleased with it, and his daughter Kasey has a song on the soundtrack.

    Pretty promising.

    Shoegazer Sunday: Lights That Change’s “Beautiful Soul”

    April 13th, 2014

    Lights That Change is a neo-Shoegaze band out of the UK. With “Beautiful Soul” they offer up a bright, gauzy, floating slab of prettiness with some great female vocals.

    Sadly, it seems that vocalist Lisa VonH has already split with the band.

    PAX Coming to San Antonio in January 2015

    April 12th, 2014

    Penny Arcade Expo is coming to San Antonio January 23-25, 2015. No venue was announced, but I can’t imagine they can hold that monster in anything smaller than the convention center, since PAX Prime in Seattle has drawn as many as 70,000 participants.

    This is what they call “a big deal.” And unlike Worldcon, expect most of the attendees to be under 30 rather than over 50…

    Mike Judge Has A New TV Show: Silicon Valley

    April 9th, 2014

    The creator of Office Space, Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill has a new (live action) TV show on HBO called Silicon Valley.

    The first episode is up free:

    I’ve seen about half of it. It’s reasonably funny, but some of the geek characters are a bit too cliched…

    File Under: Technical Proficiency

    April 7th, 2014

    Given that 2Cellos‘s first video here already nearly 15,000,000 million hits, there’s a good chance that you’ve already seen the bad boys of Croatian classical music cover AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck.” If not, you’re in for a treat:

    But only about half a million have seen their equally impressive (if less showy) cover of U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name.”

    Shoegazer Sunday: Terminal Sound System’s “Lords Of The Living, Masters Of The Dead”

    April 6th, 2014

    Terminal Sound System is the latest incarnation of Skye Klein, who I first encountered A Beautiful Machine, whose “Breathe in Space” has been ensconced in my personal top 10 list ever since. On “Lords Of The Living, Masters Of The Dead,” the heavy side of A Beautiful Machine (see, for example, “Home”) get’s slowed down for a doom-laden piece hailing from the netherworld between Shoegaze, Post-Rock, and Doom/Depressive Metal for a sound that reminds me of Talking Heads’ “The Overload” with a bit of acid rock thrown in for good measure.

    A most appropriate sound for a band whose name suggests the end of all things (though I could do without the hippie ashram bit in the late middle…).