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Band Aid Gets A F*cked Up Makeover
6-Nov-2009
Written by: Robyn Chelsea-Seifert
Toronto band covers 80’s famine relief song with all star line up.
Most new acts would take the money and run after winning 20 grand in the Polaris Music Prize.
The award is given out annually to the best Canadian album in any genre regardless of sales. But the again most bands aren’t F*cked Up.
Damian Abraham, bare-chested singer for the punk rock outfit has other more fitting plans for the cash. He’s going to use the money to record his version of the 80’s classic “Do They Know It's Christmas” with an all star line-up.
This go round will not aid Ethiopian famine relief but rather missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada.
“I liked the idea of somewhat marginalized indie rockers coming together for a marginalized cause,” Abraham told the New Yorker. “This is an undocumented, underreported crime that’s been going on for years. And while this is for Canadian organizations, the same sort of thing is going on at the U.S.-Mexico border, with Mexican women going missing, and in Australia, with aboriginal women there.”
Artists who are confirmed for the project are comedian David Cross, members of Vampire Weekend, TV on the Radio, Broken Social Scene, the GZA, Bob Mould, No Age, and Yo La Tengo.
“I’m still waiting on confirmation from Feist, Jarvis Cocker, and M.I.A. We wanted the biggest people we could get. If we could get a Jonas Brother on this, I would get a Jonas Brother. If Bono wanted to be on the record, I’d say yes, because, at the end of the day, it’s about raising money and awareness. As terrible as I find his music, and as reprehensible as I find him as a person, I would definitely have him on.”
Abraham was very deliberate about the cover he chose believing the song lends a certain irony to the cause.
“There’s a kind of cavalier colonialism to the original, like the West has to go in and help this poor Third World country. But the charities that we’re trying to help are exactly a product of this colonial history. People who have been subjugated and oppressed for so many years are going missing.”
Don’t hold your breath on any new lyrics. According to Abraham they’re “tasteless enough as it is.” The only F*cked Up signature moves you will hear will be screaming in the chorus.
“I want to make something listenable, so I’ll be drowned out by people with beautiful voices.”
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