Hero (cover)

First album I ever bought for myself was Mariah Carey's "Music Box", and it was mostly for the single "Hero". Accordingly, I had to cover that for this month's challenge. I wasn't sure what the hell to do with it, so I recorded an instrumental with: drums, piano, upright bass, melodica, two acoustic guitars, baritone uke, banjo, harmonica, another harmonica in a different key, some flute thing I found, thumb piano, and theremin and also some more theremin, almost all of those just playing improvised melody takes.

I also recorded a vocal track but I thought it sounded a little too busy like that. Minimalism is the touchstone of good taste, wouldn't want to come off gauche.

• play
• pause
• min volume
• max volume

posted by cortex (15 comments total)

omg
posted by cgc373 at 1:16 PM on February 29, 2012

> wouldn't want to come off gauche.

You!? Never...
posted by mrzarquon at 1:26 PM on February 29, 2012

This is terrific. Also I'd like a picture of the flute thing, because I need to know.
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 1:29 PM on February 29, 2012

i would watch a youtube video of you playing all the instruments,
posted by nadawi at 2:21 PM on February 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

You know, when I heard about Mariah Carey's breakdown a couple years back, my former roommate and I had this discussion about what it would mean if a pop star / celebrity had a break with reality and was able to completely reinvent themselves along whatever lines they wanted. They'd have the status and the soapbox - and the funds - to create something really weird and unusual. Mental illness isn't a joke, but lots of artists have channelled their struggle into their work.

What if Kathie Lee Gifford suddenly started writing Jandek songs? What if Thomas Kincaide started getting visions of the God-Emperor of Mankind? What if Alan Greenspan became a Pentecostal Juggalo? I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that it would truly alter our society in a weird way, maybe even snowballing into some kind of creative avalanche of mind-bending proportions. Mariah was this close to tilting our collective pinball machine - but we were cheated.


Thanks to cortex, we can now delight our ears with the version of "Hero" that could have been.
posted by dubold at 2:36 PM on February 29, 2012

For some reason, this made me think of the stars of this FPP getting together their first garage band. In a good way.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:37 PM on February 29, 2012

Wait, you have a theremin??
posted by TwoWordReview at 2:59 PM on February 29, 2012

No, no, I just have one theremin twice.
posted by cortex at 3:10 PM on February 29, 2012

Not a pairamin, then?
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 3:16 PM on February 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

ha ha, glad you finally figured out something to do with this.
posted by sleepy pete at 4:41 PM on February 29, 2012

It's raining theramen!
posted by unSane at 5:31 PM on February 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

Somehow the start of this reminds me of Perfect Strangers.
posted by Beardman at 2:51 PM on March 2, 2012

woah, you didn't buy yourself an album until 1993?
posted by Hoopo at 7:49 PM on March 2, 2012

I was kind of a late bloomer on music consumption, yeah.
posted by cortex at 8:15 PM on March 2, 2012

Holy crap cortex, that's the first album I bought too! I was totally going to cover Hero for the challenge. Dang!

(nicely done BTW)
posted by Doleful Creature at 7:50 AM on March 4, 2012