I guess it's a cover tunes week

The Wife sent me this video this morning of Dynamite Hack's cover of "Boyz In The Hood". It's good. The only problem with it is that for it to work at all, it needs the video, which turns the song into an ironic look at...well, at a whole bunch of things. Without the video, I don't think the song really has anything going for it. It's funny to hear once, but having heard it, I don't feel the need to listen to it again. It's just kind of dull.

Obligatory Warning: While the video itself doesn't really contain anything that's not safe for work or small kids, the song definitely does.



Contrast that with the big sensation from a few years ago, the Gourds' cover of "Gin and Juice." It's a high-energy song that works on its own. It's musically interesting (and the dude plays the hell out of his mandolin). I think it brings something to the song that Dynamite Hack doesn't bring to "Boyz". A certain je ne sais quoi, if you will, but I don't know what it is.

Warning: the video is homemade, and contains some imagery that would probably be considered unsafe for viewing at work or in the presence of small children. Also there's a picture of The Decider being sodomized. (You can just kind of glide over the guy miming playing the banjo during all the mandolin solos.) Uh, and the song itself is probably not something you'll want to blare over the PA.



(Endnote: for the rest of my life, I will wonder if I used the "je ne sais quoi" bit at the right time, or if I should have saved it. Or maybe I'll just overuse it the way I do everything else!)