"Bohemian Rhapsody" Through The Ears of a Child
Image via. Most assuredly not the original. Still, we think Freddie would approve.
Puscifer, fronted by Tool and A Perfect Circle's Maynard James Keenan, have just released the adorably named EP Donkey Punch The Night. On it, there is, for some reason, a cover of "Bohemian Rhapsody." You might be expecting Maynard to do something a bit industrial with it, but no, it's pretty much a straight-down-the-line cover version, multi-tracked vocal harmonies and all. You could easily mistake it for the original if you hadn't heard the original very much. The problem is, who hasn't heard "Bohemian Rhapsody" to death? Well, my 13 year old stepson, for one. Fresh off his somewhat controversial internet-igniting review of Dark Side of the Moon, I wondered if Lewis could tell the Puscifer version from the Queen version. By way of frustrating him, I chose to play two much sillier versions of Bohemian Rhapsody in the middle.
First up, Puscifer.
Lewis didn't even recognize the opening of the song. When everyone's favorite novelty pop-culture call-and-response kicks in, it dawns on him what the song is, and further convinces him that this is the real version. In fact, by the end he was "fairly sure it's the Queen one." Up until the famous part he "didn't expect Bohemian Rhapsody to be Bohemian Rhapsody. Does that make sense?"
Then, the distraction techniques. You'd be amazed how many covers of Bohemian Rhapsody there are.
The most famous recent one is of course the Muppets' YouTube-conquering effort.
So, onto that, which at first Lewis thought was a remix. I was, of course, telling him that of the four versions I was going to play for him, he had to guess the real one, so he was taking this entirely seriously until Animal's, er... verse, at which point he began to suspect something might be up.
Then, Rolf Harris' version.
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