Sometimes in March 2016 we have received an offer from ReverbNation to make a cover of this classic song “Route 66” for possible placement in film, television, trailers, and advertisements (!!).
The recommendations were towards complete originality:
“Accepted genre and styles are wide-open — reinterpret the song as dark and foreboding, or give it a peppy pop sound, whatever style works for you. We’re looking for originality and personality, so make the song your own.”
Unfortunately, we couldn’t do it in time and missed the opportunity. But we still made it three month later, just for the sake of it.
This song has been covered by numerous artists in the past. It’s been composed by Bobby Troup as a jazz piece in 1946. After that it’s been re-made by many others.
Here are three videos of Route66, made during the past 70 years: first the composer himself playing it, then the Rolling Stones and – more recently – the young band The Strypes.
So we liked this challenge and started to work on it.
But the deadline was too close: less than 10 days.
And we missed it…
The problem is we don’t spend a lot of time with our band – being quite busy with other stuff (school & play). So we only could finish our cover much later – too late – sometimes in May.
In fact we should have given up on this project as soon as we missed the deadline, but we didn’t because we liked:
– the beautiful medieval melody which we had merged into a heavier riff,
– and the sound for the solo guitar part.
So, after losing the ReverbNation opportunity, we decided that this piece should be added to our ‘history of rock’ repertoire. And we played it soon after that, live, during our summer concerts. Here is one:
And here is the home recording, more elaborate on mixing (although the guitar should have been fatter):
Now we like to think that, if we’d not missed the deadline, our cover would have been selected. Who knows?
Anyway, it seems that this is the story of our band: too late – in a world spiraling downwards.
But our mission – to promote non-frivolous and non-evil rock – is a noble one. So we keep trying 🙂
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CMB 