Recently, we ditched our satellite television service here at BangShift Mid-West and instead went all-internet entertainment, with one notable exception: a Bluetooth sound system for the house. We got a soundbar with a subwoofer, and while the wife is at work and the resident feline population is asleep in some part of the house, I’ve had the music on, going through my collections. I’ve been on a kick lately for music from The Cars…between watching way too much MTV in the late 1980s and the imagery that album covers like Candy-O and Heartbeat City played up to a budding gearhead, they’ve been a favorite of mine for a long time. So while I was doing dishes earlier today I was listening to the usual selections: “Shake It Up”, “Let’s Go” and so forth. Being that I usually just link into a YouTube playlist and let that carry for a while, I wasn’t ready for what I got to hear, today’s Tune-Up.

This is the second Cars cover I’ve heard of. The first is a down-tempo cover of “Drive” done by the Deftones, and it’s been a staple on my traveling playlist for years because Chino Moreno’s vocals give the song a haunting vibe that Benjamin Orr’s vocals couldn’t touch even on their best day. By comparison, hearing Kurt Cobain belting out “My Best Friend’s Girlfriend” with Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic ripping it up beside him was a slap in the face I didn’t see coming. Growing up in the Puget Sound area, knowing Nirvana songs wasn’t exactly optional…you heard them everywhere. This footage comes from the last concert that the band played, in Munich in March, 1994, and watching Cobain blast out a Cars cover isn’t a surprise…he was friends with Cars frontman Ric Ocasek and “My Best Friend’s Girl” was one of the first songs that he ever learned to play on a guitar, when he was fourteen years old.

Amazing, that full circle thing, isn’t it?