I encountered the following over at Scalzi’s Whatever and thought it was pretty cool. FYI, there’s no actual video here, only music played over a still image:
I normally don’t care for cover versions of songs I consider personal landmarks — which “Jump” definitely is for me; it’s an instant time portal back to one particular summer — for much the same reason that I resist movie remakes: I like what I like and, with few exceptions, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with still listening to or watching favorite older media. “Old” doesn’t equal “bad,” in my opinion. That said, a cover that’s well-done and drastically different from the original can sometimes make something that’s become intimately familiar seem exciting and fresh again. If nothing else in this case, I can finally understand all the lyrics that I’ve never managed to decipher in 25 years of listening to David Lee Roth’s slurry delivery.
Incidentally and for whatever it’s worth (not much, probably), I was really annoyed with the commenters over at the Whatever. One guy said “I didn’t think it was possible to make that song listenable,” and there were several other remarks along the lines of “lame 80s song,” “cheesy 80s song,” etc. I know I’m in the terminally unhip minority for continuing to enjoy the stuff I liked as a kid, but I just don’t understand where this kind of attitude comes from. Why does music that was once immensely popular have to be declared lame after a few years? Is it a backlash thing? Or snobby hipsters who can’t handle the idea of something appealing to a mass audience? Or is just the Damn Kids showing zero tolerance for anything that came out before they had breakfast yesterday?
I agree with you oon the old stuff. A good song is a good song forever, no matter how old it is. However, what makes us say “You call that music? Now, we listened to MUSIC!” as we grow older? 🙂
Possibly the fact that the stuff The Damn Kids like sucks? 🙂
If you’re going to remake “Jump”, then do it the right way, no emo kid is going to gather anything from the depressing version you’ve posted…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_cmmCRVs38
Paul Anka all the way!
Uh, wow. At the risk of turning myself into a hypocrite for using this terminology, Paul Anka is cheeezeee with a capital cheese. On the positive side, I no longer feel so terminally unhip.
I love this! Never mind how bad it is–it took some real ingenuity to turn “Jump” into a folksy guitar song.
On a related note, here’s a moderately clever mashup of Van Halen and the Beatles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v#DTxZs-pRZ_M&feature#related
Doh! Bad URL, Robert!
I think every generation thinks the music of the previous generation is “retro” and the music of the subsequent generatino “sucks.”
Take heart, Jason – most of Scalzi’s commenters were infants when Van Halen was “jumping”
Joking about The Damn Kids aside, I think what frustrates me so much about the dismissive attitude of younger people these days — and even a lot of people our age who also seem to have very little respect for any media older than about five years — is that it’s so alien to the way I myself grew up and think. I was a child of my times, obviously, and loved all the things that were current then, but I spent nearly as much time listening to my mother’s Motown and Elvis records as my own Van Halen LPs. And my love of old movies and television that predates me own lifespan is well-documented here.
Guess I just never realized until recently how uncommon my breadth of appreciation and/or tolerance actually is.