Once Around The Block
Shawn Lee’s Ping Pong Orchestra
Hits the Hits!, 2007
My friend Cocoe from Ubiquity Records just sent me some treats in the mail which included this track which I couldn’t resist posting even though the stellar Orgōne album was vying for attention. This song is a cover of the Badly Drawn Boy song that I posted 2 1/2 years go. Not like I thought the song was my secret or anything but I was really surprised to find it on a CD with covers of (what I think of as) much bigger hits like “Hey Ya” by OutKast and songs by Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, The Gorillaz, Amy Winehouse and Missy Elliot.
Shawn Lee generally finds a nice balance of playing stripped-down funky versions of these songs while not going overboard on the irony factor (there’s a little, for sure). I guess novelty factor is another thing that makes “Once Around the Block” seem out of place on this album. He covers it with basically the same instrumentation, substituting flute for lead vocals and throwing in some nice touches like an interpolation of “My Favorite Things.”
Here’s a snippet of his covers of “1 Thing” by Amerie and “Hey Ya.” Can anyone tell me what wind instrument that is in the Amerie cover??
>> songs are available for two weeks [5.1 MB]
>> songs are available for two weeks [8.5 MB]


November 29th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
okay, so it’s not good enough for old boy to absolutely kill it on the song, but he has to add that trippy ass laugh at the end to let you know _he_ knows he killed it. it’s almost like he’s taking the same kind of authority that jack nicholson takes to that ass in the coke scene of “the departed”. “don’t get up til your face is numb”. that’s killing it people.
December 1st, 2007 at 5:49 pm
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha