The Redhead Said You Shred The Cello

A String Quartet Tribute To Weezer “El Scorcho” – I’m developing a real fascination with Vitamin Records’ string quartet tribute records to the giants of 80s and 90s alt-rock. On one hand, they are utterly frivolous and sort of ridiculous – what exactly is the point of making Marilyn Manson’s music sound ‘classy’? On the other, they can be surprisingly good and reveal an unexpected musical continuity between modern pop and actual classical music. Some things that seem as though they would obviously be a sure thing in the string quartet context, such as U2’s “Where The Streets Have No Name” fall flat, whereas oddballs like Weezer’s “El Scorcho” and “Dope Nose” sound almost as though Rivers Cuomo had this kind of arrangement in mind all along. Not all of the Weezer songs work so well, though. “Undone – The Sweater Song” and “Say It Ain’t So” are total duds, but that could have something to do with some awkward decisions on the musician’s parts to include the percussion and intro chatter of the former and to add fuzz pedal distortion onto the chorus of the latter.

I’m currently collecting string quartet adaptations of any pop music that I can find. As it stands, I have tributes to Radiohead, Weezer, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Nirvana, Bjork, U2, R.E.M. (including a totally bizarre rendition of “Crush With Eyeliner,” of all songs!), The Cure, The Smiths, Pearl Jam, Tori Amos, Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, and Coldplay. I know that there are tributes to Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Foo Fighters, John Lennon, The White Stripes, Jeff Buckley, The Who, and Black Sabbath by the Vitamin Records people, and if any of you can help me get copies of these, I would greatly appreciate it and do my best to return a favor. It doesn’t have to be Vitamin Records string tributes – any instrumental string arrangement of a pop song would be great, I’m just focusing on the 80s-90s artists out of a) convenience and b) my own curatorial interest in that era.