Tragedy - All Metal Tribute To The Bee Gees

If, like me, you've ever lain awake at night wondering what your favourite Bee Gees hits might sound like given the once over by a grotesque, foul-mouthed Heavy Metal band, you can now kiss your insomnia goodnight, because I have the answer: something like Tragedy, the world's number one (and possibly, only) 'All-Metal Tribute to the Bee Gees and Beyond.' During my trip to the States last year, I was simultaneously chuffed and gutted to stumble upon this poster only to find that the circus had long-since left town.

On Sunday evening Mrs Shelf-Stacker and I finally caught up with the band when they played at the Jazz Café (!) in Camden Town. The line-up has now expanded to a five-piece (plus onstage stooge), whilst their image has degenerated into that of a bunch of corpulent, homo-curious bikers let loose in Cher's wardrobe. I laughed 'til my jaw hurt!

Like Hayseed Dixie before them, the band has obviously wised up to the potentially limiting nature of covering just one band's songs and have broadened their repertoire to include any über-camp hit that can be given the Tragedy treatment. And so, we are treated to barking mad, flying V-enhanced versions of songs popularised by Donna Summer, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers, KC and the Sunshine Band and Bonnie Tyler. Pick of the bunch though has to be their mash-up of Slayer's Raining Blood with The Weather Girl's It's Raining Men. If you can keep a straight face through their promo video you might want to check your pulse.

So Shelf-Stacker, where's the vinyl in this post then, you may ask? Well, it's a tenuous link at best, but Tragedy's support act, a genius one-man-band by the name of Corn Mo, who also happens to be the keyboard player in Tragedy using the pseudonym Disco Mountain Man (are you following this?) happens to be in another band called .357 Lover who have a new album out on vinyl. I did mention that the link is tenuous, didn't I? If the whole album features material as gloriously, ludicrously, uninhibitedly, pomptastic as the title track, The Purchase Of The North Pole, then my pole is definitely headed north!