The Mother of All Tribute Albums

Description

The Mother of All Tribute Albums is a multi-artist tribute compilation featuring 15 artists each covering the artist/song of their choice, released by HM magazine on their custom label HM Records in March 1998.

HM magazine mogul, Doug Van Pelt, has put together a tricky tribute record. Usually a tribute record honors one artist’s work with cover versions by an assortment of admiring artists. What has happened here, however, is that Van Pelt has asked individual artists to pick any song by any artist they wanted to do, and put it on a multi-artist tribute album. He has ended up with a huge variety of artists and songs that somehow work together for an interesting record.

The songs are so diverse and the artists so varied that the record does not flow. The only apparent attempt at continuity is the song grouping. For example, the two U2 songs are next to each other, as are the two Stryper songs. Other than that, the song styles and genres jump from here to there randomly. Even the two Stryper songs that follow each other are so different in style that if you didn’t know the originals you’d never know the similarity.

The first cut is by metal giant, Tourniquet, doing King’s X’s «Dogman», an appealing group and song combination. Tourniquet has taken the low tuning on the original and tuned it even lower. It is cool when a band can take another artist’s song and using their own style make it their own song. Tourniquet has successfully done that with «Dogman». Then Doug Pinnick from King’s X clocks in, playing all the instruments on U2’s song, «I Will Follow». Pinnick credits U2’s Bono for influencing his own approach to honesty in lyrics. Next Echo Hollow offers another U2 song on cut three, «Sunday Bloody Sunday», which is not quite as effectively rendered as the previous U2 interpretation. Track four is Spy Glass Blue featuring Allan Aguire with his Bowie-like vocals doing a fine take on Keith Green’s «Song to My Parents». The band has so carefully recreated the 70’s glam rock of Bowie that the song sounds like it could fit on …Ziggy Stardust. Rich Mullins is honored, post mortem, by Reflescent Tide, then Justin Fox does a rendition of 77’s great song «Do It for Love». Both of these treatments are fine but not as moving as the originals (who could improve on Mike Roe’s vocals though, so that might not be fair). An unexpected but welcome contribution here is Rush’s song, «2112 Overture», done very well by Paul Roraback.

The two Stryper songs come up next. First, Crimson Thorn roars through «Loud and Clear». They have done a fantastic job taking the Yellow and Black boy’s pop metal sing-along song and moving it into the death metal column. From the swelling growl of the first measure, through a most interesting violin solo in the break, to the last vox crunch, this is now a heavy Crimson Thorn number and one of this album’s highlights. Guardian has picked «C’mon Rock» to cover out of genuine admiration for what Stryper accomplished, as it should be. Guardian play «C’mon Rock» pretty straight, and come off sounding like they sincerely owe a lot to Stryper’s ground breaking efforts.

Not all the songs are from guitar greats, or ground breaking Christian rock artists. The tenth song is from the Veggie Tales! The Channel Surfers must like kid’s videos, too. They do a rocking reggae version of «God Is Bigger», which is followed by the reggae beat of the Police’s impressive «Message in a Bottle», as performed by Blackball. Even though they saw the Christian implications that one could transfer to the tune, Blackball didn’t change much about the song to claim it. This results in a less than impressive track from an otherwise impressive band. The Imperials «Water Grave» is fittingly done by Atomic Opera; slow, dark, moving. The new One Bad Pig decided on Barry McGuire’s «Cosmic Cowboy», and play some good dueling guitars at the bridge as well as capturing the western spirit of the song. The underrated and all too unknown Violet Burning take a mostly underrated, unknown Beatles song, and hand in a truly wonderful interpretation of «It’s All Too Much», a George Harrison song from the Yellow Submarine sound track album. To wrap up the record, a truly original Jesus Freak takes DC Talk’s «Jesus Freak» and improves it with a twist. That Jesus freak is Larry Norman, and he has altered the original to a nearly industrial, dance style hymn. Good idea, Mr. Norman! It rocks! (The man is masterful!)

The record is uneven, but despite its flaws, this mother works hard. The bands did a good job of picking cool songs, and then dealing out a full house of entertaining high cards. Especially if you enjoy records that mix various artists, this is worth the effort to find. [Tony LaFianza, The Phantom Tollbooth, 8/14/98]

CD tracklist:

01. Touniquet (pays tribute to King’s X) – Dogman – 3:54
02. Doug Pinnick (pays tribute to U2) – I Will Follow – 3:47
03. Echo Hollow (pays tribute to U2) – Sunday Bloody Sunday – 4:10
04. Spy Glass Blue (pays tribute to Keith Green) – Song To My Parents – 4:45
05. Reflescent Tide (pays tribute to Rich Mullins) – Hold Me Jesus – 3:56
06. Justin Fox (pays tribute to The 77’s) – Do It For Love – 3:58
07. Paul Roraback (pays tribute to Rush) – 2112 Overture – 4:02
08. Crimson Thorn (pays tribute to Stryper) – Loud ‘n’ Clear – 3:41
09. Guardian (pays tribute to Stryper) – C’mon Rock – 3:48
10. The Channelsurfers (pays tribute to Veggie Tales) – God Is Bigger – 4:09
11. Blackball (pays tribute to The Police) – Message in a Bottle – 4:05
12. Atomic Opera (pays tribute to The Imperials) – Watergrave – 3:56
13. One Bad Pig (pays tribute to Barry McGuire) – Cosmic Cowboy – 5:59
14. The Violet Burning (pays tribute to The Beatles) – It’s All Too Much – 6:01
15. Larry Norman (pays tribute to dc Talk) – Jesus Freak – 4:43