Watch Members Of Young Widows, Mutoid Man, Filth Is Eternal, More Play Metal Cover Of Nick Cave’s “Stagger Lee”
Nick Cave’s version of “Stagger Lee” was already a kind of cover. On their 1996 album Murder Ballads, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds released a version of “Stagger Lee,” an old blues traditional about a murderous pimp. But Nick Cave did significantly Nick Cave-ify “Stagger Lee,” giving the song a whole new level of extremity. In Cave’s hands, for instance, Stagger Lee becomes the kind of person who says, “I’m a bad motherfucker, don’t you know, and I’ll crawl over fifty good pussies just to get to one fat boy’s asshole!”
Today, Jordan Olds’ videos series Two Minutes To Late Night, which last paid tribute to Toto’s “Hold The Line” a month ago, has now returned with a new version of Nick Cave’s version of “Stagger Lee.” For this latest installment, an all-star team of metal and punk musicians has gotten together to adapt Cave’s “Stagger Lee,” updating the lyrics slightly but keeping the noisy blues-throb.
In the Two Minutes to Late Night version, Evan Patterson, the former Young Widows/Breather Resist member who now records as Jay Jayle, sings lead. Filth Is Eternal leader Lisa Mungo plays keyboards, while Jess Gowrie, who makes up half of Mrs. Piss alongside Chelsea Wolfe, plays drums. Former Mutoid Man bassist Nick Cageo and Imperial Triumphant guitarist Zachary Ilya Ezrin also join in, as does Jordan Olds in his Gwarsenio Hall persona.
For some reason, the video has a Nintendo 64 GoldenEye theme? Is there a GoldenEye/”Stagger Lee” connection? Maybe it’s because the song is now Evan Patterson singing about killing Gwarsenio Hall? And now there’s a vampire in it? This shit is confusing, and it might just be an extended string of inside jokes, but it rules. Below, watch the videos for the Two Minutes To Late Night and Bad Seeds versions.
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