Back in the late ‘60s, before I found my life’s calling and became a professor, I was in a band called The Strawberry Amputees. We used to play all of the hotspots in northern Saskatchewan, until our drummer was attacked by a Kodiak bear and he gave up music to become a drag queen cartoonist.

But I digress.

We didn’t have the talent necessary to compose our own musical opuses, so we were strictly a cover band. We’d go out and buy an album (or a 45, and no, it wasn’t a handgun or a malt liquor back then) and we’d listen to the song over and over and over, each member learning the appropriate part until we had the song down cold. Ultimately our toiling and sweating were wasted, since we never had an audience, but at least we made the effort.

Nowadays, with the nation’s creativity almost completely sucked dry, you have platinum-coated musicians doing cover songs. And I, for one, think it’s a good thing. It’s interesting to hear one band’s interpretation of another band’s classic, or even a not-so-classic. There are a few instances when it backfires horribly, and all you can think is, “Why? Why was this allowed to happen?” (Yes, I’m talking to you, you blonde-haired, vapid, no-talent hack. I’ll deal with you in another lesson.) But overall, I’m in favor of it.

Unless the band doing the cover doesn’t learn the song.

The mighty Def Leppard did a cover of Alice Cooper’s “Under My Wheels.” There’s a line in the original that goes, “But when you call me on the telephone saying/ Take me to the show/ And then I say honey I just can’t go/ Old lady’s sick and I can’t leave her home.” A grammatical nightmare, but the meaning comes across. Def Leppard sang this: “But when you call me on the telephone saying/ Take me to the show/ And then I say uh-huh I just can’t go/ But wait a minute I can’t leave her home.” Huh?

The Offspring did a cover of an even more well-known song, The Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated.” And somehow the line “Twenty twenty twenty-four hours to go/ I wanna be sedated” became “Twenty twenty twenty-four hours ago/ I wanna be sedated.”

Boys, take a knee and lend me your ears: These songs could be heard by MILLIONS OF PEOPLE. It’s not like you’re no-names playing a shitty club in New Jersey where the patrons are too drunk to know what the hell might be spewing out of your mouths. These are RECORDINGS. Preserved for the AGES. Preserved WRONG.

If hundreds of garage bands can take the time to learn famous bands’ songs, the least those famous bands could do is learn other famous bands’ songs CORRECTLY.

That’s all I’m saying.

© 2004 Crankypants