let’s not go into personal matters. especially not today. i’m sure you understand.

but how about music? the big question to me today is tribute albums. are they a good idea? they may sound like one, but actually listening to them in most cases would tend to show you that no, they’re not such a good idea. why take a band everyone loves, and put out a whole disc’s worth of their songs covered by bands that are not the band you actually love, but a bunch of other people who love the band you love doing not-as-good a job at playing the songs you love by the band you love? it just doesn’t seem like a good musical decision.

now i will admit to liking quite a few cover songs in my day, some quite more than the original, in a lot of cases. jawbox’s “cornflake girl” cover is fantastic. if you don’t find it fun to listen to reggie and the full effect covering slayer’s “raining blood”, then i pity you (sidenote: when they played live here on the vagrant tour last august, they fucking opened with that song. it was a truly sublime musical moment). i really dig a few of the covers braid did, “exploding boy” covered by alkaline trio… i’m sure there are others too. but i don’t think i’ve ever heard a tribute/cover cd that was a majority of really well-done songs.

the reason i had been thinking of this is because the song of the week, which i’ve been listening to a lot lately, is going to have to be the good life, the classic weezer song, covered by the impossibles. i found out well after i had found the song (thank you audiogalaxy) that this is on a cd that was just released called rock music: a tribute to weezer. imagine if you will — all your favorite weezer songs (from the heyday of weezer, not a single cover from the green album, from what i understand), played by indie/punk bands, or whatever you might call them. if you’re me, this has potential, until you think, “wait, but i liked the weezer songs the way they were already”. i don’t know how badly i need to hear dashboard confessional sing anything, let alone an old weezer favorite. however, i stand by my old favorites the impossibles in their decision, because i think they did a really great job of making the song their own and maintaining the integrity of the original. naturally, though, i am biased because i love them.

i’ll leave you to decide, anyway. you can hear midtown covering “suzanne” on the label’s site if you like. they have the cd at the radio station here too, so you can listen and request stuff (ha ha..), but more importantly, i can check it out more and see what the verdict will be for myself. if i keep my expectations low though, maybe it won’t let me down.

“i wanna go back, i wanna go back, and i don’t even know how i got off the track…”