A.V. Undercover: Videos of Musicians Performing Covers

Last week, I happened across the awesomely surreal video of GWAR covering “Carry On My Wayward Son”, by Kansas. From there, I learned about the A.V. Undercover series.

It started with a list of 25 songs, voted on by readers. As each group came in to perform a song, they would have to pick one from the list. Once performed, that song was crossed off… which resulted in a smaller list of songs later musicians could choose from. Naturally, this ended up creating some really interesting pairings.

They’ve done this three times now, with about maybe 75 songs in total. I got lost looking through a ton of videos, and there’s some pretty fun stuff to be found.

As a sample, here’s a great version of “Everybody Wants to Rule The World,” originally by Tears For Fears and covered by Ted Leo and the Pharmacists:

Ok, just one more. To mix things up a bit, here’s a very interesting cover of “Game of Pricks” by Guided by Voices, done by Owen Pallett (using just a violin):

Also worth a watch: R. Kelly’s “Ignition (Remix)”, as covered by Young the Giant.

Alright, I’m going to stop here before I post up like half their videos. Like I said – lots of fun stuff to check out.

Related:
I Quote the Immortal Words of Socrates, Who Said… “I Drank What?”
Ted Leo @ Logan Square Auditorium
Music CD’s, 2003