Saturday, 30 April 2016

Big Daddy - Cutting Their Own Groove


Rating: 5/5

Review:
Completely brilliant



I absolutely love this album.  It's musically extremely well done, it's very, very funny and a genuine pleasure to listen to.

Big Daddy take hits of later ears (mainly 80s here) and perform them in the style of well-known 50s and early 60s hits.  This album features gems like The Living Years (Mike & the Mechanics) sounding like Leader Of the Pack, with a brilliant, sneaky bit of Deadman's Curve thrown in; Once In A Lifetime (Talking Heads) in the style of The Banana Boat Song by Harry Belafonte (or Spike Jones) and The Greatest Love Of All having it's overblown self-regard magnificently undermined by being performed like The Marcels' Blue Moon.
("Whatever they may take from me,
They can't take away my…dig-dig-dig-a-dingy-dong-a-ding-dong…")

The whole thing is just a joy, because the clowning and wit is underpinned by top-class musicianship, so the result really does sound like a well-produced record of older songs.  Every song makes me smile with its cleverness (try Paul Simon's Graceland as a mix of All Shook Up and Teddy Bear) and some make me laugh out loud.  (It helps to know both the songs which are being parodied and the older ones which these arrangements are based on, but it's not essential.)

I'm not a big fan of comedy/novelty records by and large, but this is a real favourite of mine because it's so good and I can recommend it very warmly indeed.

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