How can such a good song go so, so wrong?

So I was listening to Repetition*Bowie: Midfinger's Tribute To David Bowie with thoughts of reviewing it for DoneWaiting* and realized that reviewing a tribute album is largely a pointless endeavor. It is what it is. Usually they're terrible, sometimes they're revelatory, but usually they're just curiosities for people that are already fans.

For the most part the Repetition*Bowie comp does a decent job. The best songs are the new interpretations of David Bowie's older and more obscure tunes, like the nice reading of "Conversation Piece" by The Gumo or the lush take on "Letter To Hermione" by Hollowblue. neither version makes either song any better, but they are at least entertaining and interesting to listen to while avoiding absolute mimicry in achieving their objective.

Now, often I respect most the artists that take the songs and twist them into something entirely different -- Ike & Tina Turner's "Proud Mary" is a good example of this -- or infuse them with a wholly unique character -- like Wilson Pickett's "Hey Jude".

The only band on all of Repetition*Bowie that really attempts this style of re-reading is Outsider with their surprising version of "Let's Dance" done as a metal tune straight out of the mental hollows of Limp Bizkit's Florida. Now, I said I often respect artists that attempt wildly radical readings of popular tunes, but this is a fine example of something that is just a bad, bad, bad idea. It's terrible. Just awful. As a matter of fact, it's so off-the-mark and painful to listen to, I can't suffer it alone. So join me.

MP3: Outsider "Let's Dance"

Are your ears bleeding yet? Okay, let that settle in for a minute. Don't move, you might go into shock. Just relax. Let it slip from your consciousness. And, when you feel as if you've been able to tie together enough shreds of your sanity to regain control of your motor skills, play this as a sort of antidote to chase the final horrors that have latched onto your deepest subconcious. the Wrens are going to make everything okay, trust me.

MP3: The Wrens "This Boy Is Exhausted (live)"

Wrens photo by Matthew Kanable

*Hey Rob, can we get a ruling on the correct way to write out that website? Is it "donewaiting" or "DoneWaiting" or "Done Waiting" or "donewaiting.com" or what?!

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Heroic possibilities?

The Primatech Paper Company is much more than it seems. Maybe you should apply for a job there?