Guilt by association
|  | | Mariah in Can't Take That Away | | August 28th release date brings Mike Watt, Will Oldham, Petra Haden, Devendra Banhart, Superchunk, Jim O'Rourke and other much-loved indie rockers covering songs by Journey, Shania Twain, Mariah Carey, Eddie Money, Fall Out Boy, the Spice Girls and other much-despised mainstream acts.
The album is called Guilt By Association (Engine Room Recordings) and is the brainchild of the label's Peter Block, who first began toying around with the idea with various bands about five years ago. Musical supervisors Randall Poster and Jim Dunbar, whose combined credits include "Rushmore", "The Royal Tenenbaums", "The School of Rock" and ABC's "Lost", got involved soon after.
Engine Room's general manager, Wes Verhoeve recalls "A lot of really great bands were being dropped from the major labels at that time, and we thought it would be a cool idea to have bands like that cover some of the acts that were actually being supported by the majors." Verhoeve adds, "The bands that were approached were all very enthused by the whole concept, and many of them even had a song in mind right away. I think it's a perfect example of a good song appealing to everyone with a love for music, even if the original packaging of the song might not be one's cup of tea."
Engine Room also has a contest going to create a music video for one of three selected tracks off the record (Petra Haden's a capella version of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'"; Devendra Banhart's rendition of Oasis' "Don't Look Back in Anger" and Will Oldham's cover of Mariah Carey's "Can't Take That Away"). Interested parties can send in their concepts for their videos and five semi-finalists will be selected to make videos. The final winner's video will be promoted as the "official" video for the project. (Harp magazine)
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