The AV Club's Undercover series has been generating artistic interpretations and humorous curiosities for four years now, and the most humorous of the curiosities have been provided by alien thrash band Gwar for the previous two years. Last year, the militant mutants rocked out to their own version of Kansas's "Carry on My Wayward Son," and this year they landed with Billy Ocean's "Get Out of My Dreams, Get Into My Car."
The AV Club begins with a list of songs and then invites bands one-by-one to choose one to cover. Gwar was near the end of the list and got stuck with "Car," which vocalist Oderous Urungus complained about its lack of guitars. He further introduced the song by noting that it seems to be about less than savory methods for picking up women.
GWAR covers Billy Ocean
The band launched into the song, taking a less mainstream rock approach and punctuating a chugging riff with plenty of pinch harmonics. Urungus reinterpreted the vocals of the chorus, as he had suggested in his introduction, as a command versus a pick-up line, and gripped his head in mock insanity during the "get out of my head" lines. Guitarist Pustulus Maximus added a shredding guitar solo where once there was none and then...suddenly the song morphed into The Who's "Baba O'Reilly," which the band ended the recording on.
This year's series has included other minor stars covering hits by more major acts, such as Charlie XCX covering Backstreet Boys' "Fire," Kurt Vile handling Nine Inch Nails' "Down In It," and Alpine covering Radiohead's "Just." There will be 28 total performances when the series is over. Only songs by Heart and The Rollins Band remain.
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