Good Cause, Bad Idea: Ram Covered

Cool indie rockers cover McCartney classic for WFMU pledge drive.

By Fred Mills

In 1971 Paul McCartney issued his second solo album, Ram, and it was, in a word, pure genius. While his eponymous debut was great, and his Wings gem Band On The Run was awesome, for Macca lovers this was the album that was start-to-finish, top-to-bottom brilliant without a single weak or throwaway track. It's stood the test of time, too, and it's rarely strayed far from the BLURT mixing desk. Put another way: from the first time we listened to it on 8-track cartridge to the Ramtunes on MP3 currently lodged on our iPod, Ram has consistently brought a big wide grin to our face.

As with all classics, you can't top perfection. Which means that attempting a song-by-song recreation of a classic is not only risky, it's foolhardy. It insults the intelligence and memories of fans. Only a handful of such projects come to mind that ultimately justified the effort on the part of the recreator - as well as the listeners - come to mind, including Carla Bozulich's edgy-yet-atmospheric 2003 take on Willie Nelson's Red Headed Stranger, from 1975, and Petra Haden's astonishing 2005 a capella cover of The Who Sell Out, from '67. The reason why those two were successful is that they were the products of single artists' visions, a focused refraction, if you will, of how they viewed the original artists' own visions.

The same can never be true, of course, of multiple-artist takes on classic records; it's like having 11 coaches simultaneously trying to steer a football team downfield and score. (This is also why tribute albums, virtually across the board, blow chunks.) But here ya go: teaming up are the likes of Death Cab for Cutie, Ted Leo, Portastatic, Danielson, Aimee Mann, the Black Hollies, James McNew of Yo La Tengo (as Dump) and others with a track-by-track interpretation of Ram. Yes, this is a bad idea. But luckily it's for a good cause, so this time around, regardless of extant quality, it gets a pass.

According to Pitchfork, it's part of public radio powerhouse WFMU-FM's annual fundraiser, currently running now through March 15, and if you pledge at the $75 level during funnyman Tom Scharpling's frankly amazing "The Best Show" on March 3 or 10 during the hourse of 8-11 p.m. EST, you'll nab a copy of the Ram covers album - for the occasion, they're retitling it as Tom.

Pledge away, punters. And here's hoping that the so-called "bad idea" turns out to be a fun, listenable collection of tunes.

The Pitchfork article also has news of yet a second charity album in which indie rockers, most of them considerably lesser known, have covered the Ram album.