Even if you've never heard of any of the bands on this compilation of covered hits-of which all or most of 'em were at one time or another-ya gotta be curious to hear what a song like the Beach Boys' "I Can Hear Music" or Britney Spears' "Baby One More Time" sound like all Punked up…did I just say that?

Okay so there's a few head-scratchers and eye-poppers but rest assured Second Floor Daycare's gonna have a lot of fun with that one!

You got two discs and over fifty songs worth of other peoples' music revised, sometimes ravaged and unusually Rocked by many bands you never knew existed… in large part due to their predominantly Germanic heritage, and thus we can thank the Wolverine
occupants for introducing the rest of the world to the nihilist offerings of their current crop of spike-wearing bomb droppers!

In all honesty I could live without hearing anything Roy Orbison… my mother can't but that's another matter entirely. Most of the covers are of popular eighties heyday acts like The Cars, Peter Schilling-well "Major Tom" did chart for several months anyway didn't it-Pet Shop Boys, Human League, and a few of the newer sensations like the aforementioned
Britney, Ricky Martin and brace yourselves, The Backstreet Boys!

Most of the contributing groups teeter along the Punk/Power Pop populous so it's sometimes hard to tell what angle they're coming from themselves, but expect no real Punk covers even though it would've been way cool, this ain't about covering others of their ilk, only to exploit the weaknesses of many of the originals while compounding the strengths that many of the participants can boast.

I liked The Unknown's version of The Cars' "You Might Think" and The Living End's "Tainted Love" which sounds scarily true to the original… sure there are a few losers,
probably even more than a few if I could get my head out of 1983 for a minute-Die Toten Hosen, a great new discovery for me earlier on with their own music does their take on The McCoys' "Hang On Sloopy" that made me want to punch my keyboard; Undaunted, if a little dilated, I managed to move forward and dig in to this new look nostalgic twist and
until we get to the horrible Natalie "still can't figure out how the fuck she got a record deal in the first place" Imbruglia cut "Torn" kinda re-reddens my face again.

There are way many on the plus side both in song selection and band sound to make this an overall winner-I mean anyone that can make The Pet Shop Boys, Human League and Mr. Sinatra sound disruptive earns my respect-and for the two-disc for the price of one promotion and about a thousand minutes of material, this is hard to pass up.

Released by Wolverine Records

Review by Vinnie Apicella [va85@columbia.edu]
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