I'm sure most of you have heard the Cat Stevens standard "Peace Train." And if you're like me, you're probably not too fond of its overdrenched syrupy hippiness.
10,000 Maniacs did a decent job with it, but they really couldn't save it either. El vomito.For me at least, that song was absolutely MADE by the Austin-based group WreckdoM.
Who??
WreckdoM (the capital M is not a typo, that's how they spell it) is certainly one of if not THE most prolific band on the Songfight web site. In fact, they just submitted their 100th Songfight entry, with a song entitled "Shoelace Soup." They're not everyone's proverbial cup of tea, and that's putting it mildly. When they first started, well, I'll be blunt - they were pretty awful. They took all kinds of abuse on the forums during their early Songfight tenure, but they just kept plugging away and plugging away, entering dismal songs week after week, ignoring the flamejobs and doing their thing. I really began to admire their persistence and their attitude, even when I didn't like their music.
And as it often happens, at some point, they got better. Once they finally started to grasp cohesive song structures and show some real musicianship, they started making some great stuff, making actual listenable songs to go along with their abject nuttiness. They ended up winning their first fight with a hysterical song called "Punk Bartender." They've even won a couple of more times since then. Their evolution has truly been one of the more fascinating things to witness on Songfight.
They've done some really good covers, too. They did "Peace Train" for the 2005 Gift of Music (I discuss the GoM in more detail here, and I discuss my entry for that project here), and they nuked that song so utterly and so wonderfully it became a huge Songfight favorite from that year.
I can't find a valid link for the song, so I am including it here as an attachment. I'm MANLY!!
UPDATE (10/30/08): Lo and behold, WreckdoM WON the "Shoelace Soup" fight!
This is part of week-long series on songs about trains.
