I had an idea for a song for this week but it wasn’t quite coming together, so I decided to go with a cover. This is a song I’ve been thinking about covering since before I started the song a week challenge, so it was fun to finally do it. If you’re not a Ramones super fan, you probably haven’t heard this song before. It appeared on their second album, and served as a sort of sequel to “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue.” After the initial pressings went out the song was pulled because Carbona was a trademarked name, and future pressings replaced it with “Sheena is a Punk Rocker.” Wikipedia has a different explanation for why the song was removed, but this is the version of the story I’ve read many times, so I think Wikipedia is wrong.
When working on a cover, it’s always good to get some distance from the original and really make the song your own. My rock songs are so heavily influenced by the Ramones that I was afraid my version would be too similar to the original. Solution: no guitars, fully electronic. I even decided to use vocoder effects on the vocals to make them sound electronic. I think the vocals will make the listener feel like you’ve been huffing Carbona, glue, and/ or roach spray. But not paint, that would sound very different.

This is how it feels to do a daily comic plus a monthly comic plus more. Also, a song a week plus more.

This was another remix for a contest on The Painted Man. I sped up the vocals 25%, then made a beat combining punk drums, a Bjork-ish drone, and plenty of other instruments almost randomly coming in and out of the song. You can download the Kevin Arnold EP (which contains the original version of this song) for free.

For this song we decided to each sing, since there is more than one vocal track in the original. Bren does his normal Tom Waits inspired voice, while I match his vocals with my Nick Cave inspired voice.

Cryptic lyrics are a rock n roll staple, from REM to the Pixies to Nirvana. Nonsense phrases like “Shama Lama Ding Dong” and “Give Peace a Chance” have baffled and intrigued music fans for decades. Here is my first entry into the gibberish canon, “Donated Minolta.”