Music Issue Spring '05

Let Me Go On

by Patrick Rapa

You can learn a lot from a cover band. As a junior at La Salle I watched Flip Like Wilson play our Spring Fling and learned right away that Radiohead's "Creep" does not work as a ska-country jam.

The more important lesson came when the band strung together a Violent Femmes medley. "Blister in the Sun" and "Add It Up" and some other thing off the first album, all Jackson Pollocked into each other. It wasn't awful, it was vicious. Why? Because on the same day, at probably the same time, the actual Violent Femmes were playing Penn's Spring Fling. The lessons sprouting from the muddy quad that day are hard to put into words.

But cover bands are not uniformly evil. Some, especially the tribute variety, are actually kinda cool. Last week I watched Adam Arcuragi and a fleet of other local musicians under the name the Holy Rattlesnakes reproduce Neutral Milk Hotel's indie classic In the Aeroplane Over the Sea song-for-song at the Khyber. The nostalgia trip was put on in the name of charity — and they did raise $1,041 for Doctors Without Borders — but that was just a good excuse. That night was about rekindling affection for a bygone band from simpler times. (And that's no cliche. It's a scientific fact that life becomes more complicated as you accumulate jobs and exes and ATM receipts and minutes; ergo just yesterday was a simpler time. Aw, remember yesterday?)

During the sing-along intro to "King of Carrot Flowers Pts. 2-3" I realized something: It wasn't the band, or even the music I had missed — it was the shared experience. After Aeroplane came out in 1998, word-of-mouth turned it into a phenomenon culminating, for me anyway, in a sweaty, claustrophobic show downstairs at Ye Olde Pontiac Grille. After that, Neutral Milk Hotel disbanded, frontman Jeff Mangum disappeared and Aeroplane was banished to a CD that skips and an iPod only I can hear. At the Khyber, the music became a hive-mind experience again.

That's pretty much the appeal of Welcome to My Face, Philly's hard-working glam metal revivalists (seen on the cover with Ginger and Paula, our lovely volunteers from the Gold Club). These are guys who were, and are, and always will be, in original bands, but who live out their rock-star dreams by playing Def Leppard and Guns N' Roses in eyeliner and wigs.

Welcome to My Face is not the best cover band in the city. Surely that title goes to the Philadelphia Orchestra (although they always ignore it when I yell for "Mr. Brownstone"). But they are resuscitating old favorites because they like to play it, and maybe you'd like to sing along.

Meanwhile, Jeff Mangum is probably hanging out at Axl's place, sipping iced tea next to a swimming pool full of dolphins. They'll be back, most likely, but they're taking their time about it. Until then, let's act like we don't need them.

No, this isn't a Music Issue devoted entirely to cover bands. That would pretty much blow. But why not dedicate it to them?

This one's for you, Welcome to My Face. And The Holy Rattlesnakes. And even you, Flip Like Wilson, you heartless butchers. And for The Familiar Strangers, my eighth-grade classmates who capped off the St. John talent show with "Sweet Child O' Mine." And for Split Decision, who may be my sister's favorite non-NKOTB band of all time. For Love Seed Mama Jump, who dared to slip an original into a set of party favorites. And Strange As Angels just because.