Uneasy Rhetoric

This has nothing to do with Sacramento, but seeing as I blew my teenager allowance at The Beat (when it was on H Street) on many vinyl disks, including a copy of Scottish punk band the Skids’ “Scared to Dance,” I thought I’d bring this up.

It appears chart-punkers Green Day and chart-geezers U2 are getting together to record a cover of a venerable Skids song that no one has heard since 1978, “The Saints are Coming,” as a benefit for Music Rising, which provides instruments to musicians in New Orleans who have lost theirs.

If it were just Green Day, I’m sure they’d do a serviceable cover. But U2? I know that the Edge has proclaimed his love of the Skids in the past, but I still have to wonder how Bono will manage to sigh and cough his way through the lyrics. For those of us who know the original song, this will inevitably be a self-parody on the part of U2.

“It seems no matter how I try I realize there’s no reply…”

Updates: September 15, 2006. The Chronicle of Philanthropy mentions the collaboration, and Richard Jobson, former lead of the Skids, talks about it on his website.

Update #2: September 25, 2006. I missed the segment on Monday Night Football, but, sucker that I am, I bought the song from Rhapsody (yeah, that sucks, but whatever). It’s pretty good!