The greatest punk cover never made...

I love a good cover song, particularly when some band rips the beating heart out of some great song and stomps on it. One of my favourite covers of all time is Helmet covering Bjork because it is soooo bad. The vocals are hilariously shit as apparently there is far more art to Bjork's vocals than I first thought. Alternately, one of my favourite bands Jawbox gained a short bout of recognition for covering Cornflake Girl which is equally terrible but not in a good way. They were a fantastic band but that cover just sucks the life out of that song - too earnest, too bad.

Anyhow, there was a spate of young punk/emo bands in the '00's who gained fame by doing sped up covers of famous songs (it was kind of like hair metal bands doing ballads in the 80's). Remember that band that covered the Boys of Summer? No? Neither do I but they were famous for a full five minutes. Or those endless bands covering Michael Jackson - hilarious... Geez they were shit.

Anyway, if you are in a young punk band looking for the perfect song to cover, I have the solution - Counting the Beat by the Swingers. It has all the perfect elements for a punk makeover: a wicked walking bass line, guitars that need distorting, woo-woo's and a section of la-di-da's begging for a punk singalong. If you can divorce the image of the song being used in a Target ad, I sincerely think you could get famous covering it. Just think about it...

Seriously - it'd be awesome.

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