When musical worlds collide

An exchange on Twitter today got me thinking about odd musical crossovers. The message that started me off was:

jont: @morageyrie hayseed dixie are ace by contrast however this is awful http://twurl.nl/8jeh1r

I'll leave you to watch the David Lee Roth video and form your own opinions. Suffice to say, I agree with jont. The Bluegrass band are very good and David Lee Roth is a great rock vocalist and frontman but his voice doesn't work with this style of music. As I said in reply to jont, at least David Lee Roth has the decency to look embarrassed... as well as embarrassing. :-)

Disclaimer
Before I go any further, it has to be said that in general I don't like the Whoever Philharmonic Orchestra plays The Beatles type albums, or the Famous Opera Singer Sings Pop Songs genre. It seems to me that classical music buffs like classical music and rock fans like rock, so I'm never sure what the market for that type of crossover is. However, I'm about to list some odd musical mixes that I like... Inconsistent? Moi? My defence is that these guys aren't taking themselves entirely seriously. They are seriously good musicians but they seem to be having fun - which as far as I'm concerned covers a multitude of musical sins!

Hayseed Dixie
I thought it only fair to start with the Hayseed Dixie track posted by morageyrie. Hayseed Dixie started as an AC/DC tribute, but have branched out to cover other bands and have even released an album of all original music. This is an awesome cover of a Motörhead track:



Frenetic, fantastic and fun!

Vitamin String Quartet
Various musicians use the name Vitamin String Quartet to produce classical style covers of various popular/rock acts. I first heard them when Phil Jupitus did the breakfast show on 6 Music. He used their cover of Rush's The Treesas a bed for his talky bits.



Of the crossovers posted here, this is the one I'm least sure about because 1) the video is rubbish and 2) I'm not sure they're doing it for a laugh. What do you think? Do they deserve to be here?

Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain
What's not to like about the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain? Here is an outstandingly good live performance that shows what they're made of:



Their website links to some other great videos. Well worth seeing live I suspect.

Dread Zeppelin
Dread Zeppelin are a band that have to be seen to be believed! They are Robert Plant's favourite Zeppelin cover band (he says) and I think he's on record as saying Dread's cover of Your Time Is Gonna Come is better than the original. However, I can't find any evidence of this online so here's a slightly fuzzy video of it - you can make up your own mind:



I think it's magnificent!

What do you think?
What do you think of musical crossovers like this? What's your favourite of the ones shown here? Do you know of any other bizarre mixes that I've missed? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.