This mashup shtick has gotten out of hand.
When all those B-team bluegrass dudes began churning out those "Pickin' on the Beatles" and "Pickin' on Zeppelin" albums years ago, it was cute (if not thrilling) to hear high lonesome versions of "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Kashmir."
Those bluegrass guys weren't the first. In 1978 a San Francisco rock band called Little Roger and the Goosebumps gleefully merged the lyrics of the "Gilligan's Island" theme with Led Zep's "Stairway to Heaven," creating the notorious, cheesy, cheeky "Stairway to Gilligan's Island." (Zep's management quickly trampled it underfoot, but you can find it on the Internet still.)
In 1989 on the soundtrack for his movie "UHF," Weird Al married Dire Straits' "Money For Nothing" with the theme from "The Beverly Hillbillies,"
The "mash-up" concept hit its peak a half-decade ago, first in 2004 when Danger Mouse (right) cleverly put a Vulcan mind-meld on the Beatles' "White Album" and Jay-Z's "The Black Album" and called it "The Grey Album." The mash-up went viral despite efforts to squash it by the Beatles' record company, and the set appeared on the top 10 lists of numerous critics that year.
A year later, Go Home Productions (the alter ego of English producer-deejay-remixer Mark Vidler) crafted "Rapture Riders," an exhilarating (and authorized) mash-up between the Doors' "Riders on the Storm" and Blondie's "Rapture." (Check out the worthy video mashup below.)
It's been downhill ever since. A Beatles/Wu-Tang Clan mashup, "Enter the Magical Mystery Chambers," appeared a few months ago and just as suddenly disappeared from the Internet (given the tepid results, shout "Goo-goo-ga-joob" that it's gone).
And the band Beatallica, a Metallica-Beatles "bash-up," is currently touring behind their second and latest album, "Masterful Mystery Tour." (Are you beginning to notice a trend with these leech-the-Beatles projects?)
Beatallica features the predictable choking-Rottweiler vocals and Beavis-and-Butt-headian guitars as the lads cough up such fare as "The Battery of Jaymz and Yoko," "Everybody's Got a Ticket to Ride Except For Me and My Lightning," "I Want to Choke Your Band" and "Fuel on the Hill" (the latter is available on YouTube, if you must).
Now comes the band Rock Sugar with their debut CD, "Reimaginator," which, according to the band's PR, "combines the best-loved heavy metal riffs of the '80s with the melodies of the world's favorite '80s pop classics."
Thus Rock Sugar delivers such mashups as "Don't Stop the Sandman" (Journey's "Don't Stop Believin' " mixed with Metallica's "Enter Sandman"), "We Will Kickstart Your Rhapsody" (Motley Crue's "Kickstart My Heart" merged with Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "We Will Rock You"), "Crazy Girl" (Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train" and Rick Springfield's "Jessie's Girl") and "Shook Me Like a Prayer" (AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long" chained to Madonna's "Like a Prayer").
Though Rock Sugar's Web site wasn't offering sound samples when I checked, there is evidence that the band is taking a refreshing, Spinal Tap-ish approach to the mashup game. Check out Rock Sugar's tongue-in-cheeky bio at rocksugarband.com . . . something about a hair metal band being shipwrecked on an island in the 1980s with the record collection of a 13-year-old girl.
But how long will it be before some remixer does a mashup of Beatallica and Rock Sugar, or "Stairway to Gilligan's Island" and "I Want to Choke Your Band"?
Somewhere John Lennon is crying -- or maybe laughing his arse off.
Rick de Yampert is The Daytona Beach News-Journal's entertainment writer. He can be reached at rick.deyampert@news-jrnl.com
