Song 2wo / Galaxy – Earl Zinger

Another cover of Blur’s Song 2; first time around it was Baker Boy’s rap version (complete with didgeridoo solo), this time it’s a fuzzy dub take by Earl Zinger (aka Rob Gallagher, Doug Carramouche and General Rubbish to name but a few aliases). This one comes from Zinger’s 2001 concept album Put Your Phazers On Stun, Throw Your Health Food Skyward, which also includes a pretty faithful cover of War’s Galaxy…

Incidentally, Gallagher’s previous band Galliano started out their career with a cover of Curtis Mayfield’s Freddie’s Dead entitled Frederic Lies Still…

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Freddie’s Dead – MFSB and Fishbone

Best known as the group behind the Soul Train theme (aka TSOP – The Sound of Philadelphia) and pioneers of the disco sound, MFSB (an acronym for either ‘Mother, Father, Sister, Brother’ or ‘Mother Fuckin’ Son-of-a-Bitch’ depending on who you ask) was a pool of more than 30 Philadelphia-based studio musicans who backed such groups as The O’Jays, The Stylistics, the Three Degrees and The Delfonics as well as producing seven studio albums and multiple singles. Their cover of Curtis Mayfield’s Freddie’s Dead is taken from their second studio album MFSB released in 1973.

Freddie’s Dead first appeared on Mayfield’s 1972 soundtrack for the Blaxploitation movie Super Fly – one of the few soundtracks to out-gross the film it accompanied.

Another of my favourite Freddie’s Dead covers comes courtesy of L.A.’s Fishbone and was the opening track on their breakthrough 1988 album Truth and Soul…

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