When I was in college, a friend introduced me to Dread Zeppelin. Here is a band that took the music of the mighty Zeppelin, put a Reggae beat behind it, and threw in an Elvis impersonator to boot. I laughed my Asian arse off the first time I heard their music, and laughed even harder when I finally saw them live.
It’s been a good while since I’ve experienced a morphing of styles like that… and I guess somehow the universe knew that I was ready for more.
You can probably already guess where I’m going with this… there are plenty of hints already… the title of this post, the picture on the left… all point to a blending of Metallica and The Beatles. Yep. You read it right, man… Metallica and The Beatles. Now, for some that may not seem so far off. Metallica did, after all, cover Queen‘s “Stone Cold Crazy” with flying colors, so it wouldn’t be so far off for them to cover other bands as well. The amazing thing with Beatallica is that it’s not James Hetfield singing… no, it’s Jaymz OH!NOOO! Lennfield… and he sounds pretty frakkin’ good.
He sounds REALLY frakkin’ good. He’s got all the Hetfield-isms… like ending lines with “oh-aaarrr” and putting a “ya” at the end of words like “yeah.” I couldn’t stop laughing when I first heard him sing because it was so spot on.
But the more I heard Beatallica, the more it made sense, and the more I liked it. Which could be considered blasphemous to some… but we live in a country that is supposed to be a “melting pot” for people… why should it be any different for music?
Here’s Beatallica doing “Blakened the U.S.S.R,” which is a mash-up of Metallica’s “Blackened” and The Beatles’ “Back in the U.S.S.R.” Really good job here.
What’s really cool is that Metallica has given Beatallica their blessing and even helped Beatallica solve some legal problems that came up regarding copyright violation (imagine that). That’s really cool of Metallica. I wonder what Yoko Ono thinks about Beatallica?
Anyhow, the good news is that according to Beatallica’s official site, they’ve got some shows coming up… the bad news is that they’re not going to be in the West coast anytime soon. Rats.
Jun 24 2010 8:00P Summerfest Rock Stage Milwaukee, WI
Jul 2 2010 8:00P Newport Music Hall Columbus, Ohio, US
Jul 31 2010 5:00P Atwood Summerfest Madison, Wisconsin , US
Dec 11 2010 8:00P Back Bar Beloit, WI
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That was surreal.