Forgive me if the answer is obvious, but I've listened to a number of tribute albums lately and none of them are that interesting, including: Thanks Duke: A tribute to Duke Ellington, Power Of Soul: A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix, Inner city blues: the music of marvin gaye, and then I've listened to bits from that recent stevie wonder album whose name escapes me. With a few exceptions, none of the songs feature here is as good as the original and most fail to even be drastically different. Should the industry just stop bothering with these or is it an idea that could work?

i liked the "red hot + blue" tribute album to cole porter, but mostly i think tribute albums are kinda sucky. unfortunately.

Anxiety said:

I think part of the problem is that the just get a bunch of "artists of the day" so to speak and offer them one of the songs of insert tributed artist's name here, instead of asking people who were really fans of the artist to do it.

whoa..was that a run on sentence or what? lol

And I don't mean those obviously chep tributes we see for every single artists new or old.

Chico1 said:

I don't think the "flavor of the week" syndrome is necessarily the whole problem. I mean, the Hendrix and Duke tribute albums I referred to had some pretty big wig players who would seem very appropriate (our purple highness is on Power of Soul) yet overall they still don't work out so well.

I think that every artist strives to make a song their own, so tribute albums are really just eclectic/incohesive compilations of artists using lead sheets from one source.

That Marvin Gaye tribute album from `95 looks aiiight, but I have only heard Madonna feat. Massive Attack's "I Want You".

the dolly pardon, "cause im a woman" rates right up their with the red, hot + blue disc...


beautiful..beautiful i say...

Well, the "Red Hot + Riot" tribute to Fela Kuti didn't.