Sometimes, when people give us song suggestions, we look at each other and go, “Oh yes!” This was one of those. 🙂
We knew from the start that we’d have to do a fairly faithful rendition – but in the end we only managed 154 vocal tracks. I know, we should try harder. And of course, with such an iconic video for the original song, how could we not do a little bit of that too?
Here we present Freddie Mercury’s opus from 1975. Please feel free to headbang along in the car.
In October we asked you for song suggestions that we might attempt as covers, and got a bucketful of excellent ideas in response! After a short hiatus to accommodate real life, here’s the second of those – a classic piece of new jack swing / hip hop R&B from 1996, originally by Blackstreet.
Chosen by Rosie RJ’s dog, apparently, it required a little more reinterpretation that is usual for us, owing to neither of us really knowing what a “homie” is (well, OK, Andrea says she does), and one of us being somewhat British. But we gave it our best shot. (We only bleeped one word. Can you spot it?)
If you spotted our teaser video last week, you’ll recognise a little of this video – we have another of your suggestions coming within the next week – from 21 years before this one – so keep watching!
Its all-request Autumn in Aeon Wanderers land – many thanks to all our listeners who made suggestions for songs! We’re hoping to work through several more in the next few months, but here’s the first, from a thoughtful listener who wishes to remain nameless, in the form of this classic from The Mamas and The Papas. We chose not to deviate too far from the original – and it’s Andrea’s first outing on percussion too!
This was our entry for Mike Viola’s “The American Egypt” covers competition. We didn’t win, but had a great time turning his subtle original song into a dramatic AW piece! It didn’t actually snow during the making of the video! 😉
What do Connery, Moore, Dalton, Brosnan and Craig have in common? They’re far better at running around looking serious than Owen is! 😉
So back in March last year, Andrew Curry from CurryCuts approached us to record a bonus track for his “Songs Bond Songs” covers project, and gave us one of the unused James Bond theme songs to tackle. Although Sheena Easton’s track made the final rushes, Blondie also wrote a song for “For Your Eyes Only” – one of their classic guitar-driven post-punk pop tracks.
So we took it and Bondified it to the extreme! Andrea took on the vocals, while Owen pulled as many Bond-Thematic tricks as he could from the book for the music. And nearly 18 months on, we’ve finally made a video to go with it! Filmed on two continents and in three countries (I’m sure we could have done better with a bit more time), and with a few easter eggs for the eagle-eyed, here’s our slightly tongue-in-cheek homage to Bond films past and present! We hope it will leave you a little stirred, not shaken. 🙂
During Andrea’s 2018 visit to the UK, we heard this song live, and decided to give it our own flavour. Â It’s a “traditional” Scottish song, based on The Ballad of Balquhidder (Tannahill) and with words roughly similar to those written by McPeake and McPeake. Â With some traditional Scottish scenery to match!
A few years ago, Owen was asked to create a backing for a cover of this song for a weekly song challenge. He rose to the occasion with the full Owen treatment.
As it happens, Belly are currently touring the UK and US, so he figured it was high time to dust off that old backing track, convince Andrea to help throw some new vocals at it, and give it the Aeon Wanderers treatment!
Written, recorded and videographed (?) in under two weeks, this is a “two week challenge” song. Owen chose the title, handed it to Andrea, who created lyrics for a verse and chorus, and handed them back to Owen (with a snippet of suggested melody), who took that to create the music and make a demo, around which the rest of the lyrics were crafted. We opted for a fairly low-key video this time. 🙂
No sooner did we mention our first original song “Magpie” (see below) than we made a video to go with it!  🙂  There’s definitely a bird theme going on just now!
Enjoy!
We were invited to do a song for a tribute remake of The Cardigans 1996 album, “First Band On The Moon”. Here’s our adaptation of the opening track, “Your New Cuckoo”, with a little video of our own invention added for fun! 🙂  Andrea sings lead, and created all the green-screen video segments, while Owen created the musical backdrop and animated video segments.
You can hear the full tribute album, recreated by a plethora of talented types, here: https://thememusictribute.bandcamp.com/album/first-band-on-the-moon
