Led Zeppelin songs covered in a reggae style with Elvis on vocals. It’s one thing to come up with the concept, it’s another thing to make it work and sell millions of records based on the idea. But somehow Dread Zeppelin pulled it off. Not only was Robert Plant a fan, they were on the same record label as R.E.M and they recorded their early material in a studio owned by Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics. Only in the 90s could any of this have happened…
Tag Archives: Eurythmics
Showroom Dummies – Senor Coconut Y Su Conjunto
Senor Coconut‘s Showroom Dummies is taken from the 1999 album El Baile Alemán, a collection of cha-cha-cha, merengue and cumbia Kraftwerk covers.
Showroom Dummies first appeared on Kraftwerk’s 1977 album Trans-Europe Express. The idea for the song came from Karl Flür and Wolfgang Bartos being compared to showroom dummies in a British concert review. The song’s count-in of “eins zwei drei vier” was intended as a parody of the Ramones. Showroom Dummies was also the first Kraftwerk song to be recorded in French as well as German and English.
Sweet Dreams – Señor Coconut and his Orchestra/Marilyn Manson
I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t love Señor Coconut’s 2008 cover of the Eurythmics’ 1983 hit Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This). What’s not to love?
Señor Coconut – a.k.a Uwe Schmidt, Atom, Atom Heart – is a German composer, musician and producer, often regarded as the father of electro-latino.
Co-composed by Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox after the dissolution of their previous group The Tourists, Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) was a worldwide hit. It was only kept from the number one spot in the UK by Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart.
In complete contrast to Señor Coconut, I’d be amiss here if I didn’t also mention Marilyn Manson’s version, from his 1995 covers EP Smells Like Children. A calculated move on the part of Manson, though the record company didn’t want to release it as a single, he knew that the track would reach beyond his existing fan base to find a wider audience. Which it did, thanks to heavy rotation of the promotional video on MTV.
Even Dave Stewart said he liked it, though he did also say that it was one the of the scariest things he’d ever seen. In fact, in 2010 Billboard rated it as the ‘scariest music video ever made’…
Cover to Cover 