Faithfully (polka version)

Because I have no shame, I have used an accordion to cover Journey.

Forever yours? You betcha dupa.

(Get Flash to see the track player.)
posted by uncleozzy (18 comments total)

Oh, man. Oh holy hell.
posted by cortex at 7:12 AM on May 2

Holy hell is right.
posted by dobie at 8:37 AM on May 2

That made me vomit, but in a good way.
posted by raisindebt at 8:57 PM on May 2 [1 favorite]

I don't know if this is what cortex meant, but oh man this is great.
posted by sambosambo at 3:24 AM on May 3

You're my favorite person ever. This is fantastic.
posted by Caduceus at 12:19 PM on May 3

This is awesome. Two questions, are those drums real and who is playing the accordion?
posted by BrnP84 at 6:01 PM on May 3

HA! I just listened to the original and realized it was THAT song. I don't know why but I find Journey's version funnier than yours.
posted by BrnP84 at 6:02 PM on May 3 [1 favorite]

You know, I suggested that bluegrass cover of "Wheel in the Sky." I might have a Journey problem. It really is an awfully wonderful song, isn't it? I do agree that the original might actually be funnier than this. It's just so earnest and stupid.

And those drums, as almost always, are not real, although I am actually playing the accordion. (I did play the left and right hand parts separately, though, both because I'm not very good and because the mix is more flexible that way.)
posted by uncleozzy at 8:20 PM on May 3

This is inspired and brilliant.

The part that made me do a spit take was the final seconds. I picture you (or 8-10 multitracked yous, 'Being John Malkovich'-style) in barbershop quartet garb, taking your barbershop quartet hats on and off of your heads, eyebrows going up and down cheesily (waka waka), as you dance off-stage just in time to avoid being gonged.
posted by umbú at 8:59 PM on May 3

I wish you actually were my uncle. As umbú said, the ending is really great.
posted by Corduroy at 5:20 AM on May 4

Thanks, guys. I really wish I could take credit for the tag at the end, but it's actually just my take on the tag on one (or possibly more) of Weird Al's polkas (of course). It was a last-minute addition; right before I recorded the vocal tracks, I thought, how can I make this more ridiculous? And there it is, and I really think it makes the song.
posted by uncleozzy at 5:41 AM on May 4

You may be playing the accordion, but this is 1000 times more punk than Journey could ever be. And I like that. A LOT! Your "not real" drums kick ass too. This song is punchy as hell!
posted by snsranch at 5:56 PM on May 6

Weird Al did this better
posted by wheelieman at 8:18 AM on May 13

Of course Weird Al did it better! That's his job. I did, however, consider giving a tour through the Journey oeuvre, a-la "Hot Rocks Polka," but decided against it in the interest of knocking this out in two hours instead of ten.

I will, however, take this opportunity to expound upon the way in which Weird Al contributed to my musical upbringing; how he was, for the most part, my only exposure to current pop music until the age of 11 or 12. Everything I write or play is, on some level, going through an internal Weird Al filter. His style parodies, in particular, are pure genius, the spirit of which I try to capture in much of the music I make.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:50 AM on May 14

Amen, unc. Al was a guiding force in my early understanding of pop and rock music, and my get-the-gist, never-mind-the-fiddly-details approach to understanding song structures quickly instead of trying to memorize specific parts by rote probably owes a lot to that young exposure to his style of gleeful reconstruction of classic tunes.
posted by cortex at 8:00 AM on May 14

Yeah, one of the first 45s I owned was Weird Al's "Another one rides the bus"/"Gotta boogie (on my finger)." I put that the kind of heavy rotation that only a nine year old can withstand.
posted by umbú at 1:19 PM on May 14

my get-the-gist, never-mind-the-fiddly-details approach to understanding song structures quickly instead of trying to memorize specific parts by rote probably owes a lot to that young exposure to his style of gleeful reconstruction of classic tunes.

Weird, I have a totally different response to Al Yankovic's songs. It was always the exquisite detail he put into every parody that sold the song for me. From WAY I learned how the arrangement, and it's performance, could have profound impact on the way the song was per/received.
posted by abc123xyzinfinity at 11:29 PM on May 16

Part of thing for me was that I hadn't heard a lot of the songs he parodied before I heard his versions, so on that front I didn't have a point of comparison to pick up on the details—it was more an investment, in that sense, for five years later when I started listening to classic rock and pop music at all and suddenly realized that, hey, "Smoke on the Water" also sounds like this!

The space between the Weird Al polka and Deep Purple original, and the way they formally collapsed together despite being so different in type, is the paydirt, is what I'm trying to get at. I think that helped my development of internal music theory and arrangement sensibilities in a weird way.
posted by cortex at 8:12 AM on May 17