Tag: The Bloodhound Gang

  • Classics IV – Spooky

    In 1966 saxophone Mike Sharpe and his band recorded an instrumental song titled Spooky. About a year later, the track found its way into the charts and got noticed. A band that mainly played covers named the Classics IV, decided to record a cover of the song also titled Spooky which was released in 1967 and became a huge hit in 1968. The Classics IV added something to their cover that wasn’t on the original, apart from their own instrumentation: lyrics.

    The Classics IV track spawned a number of covers. In 1969 Carl Tjader recorded an again instrumental xylophone cover of which you can wonder whether it was based on the Sharpe or the Classics IV version.  In 1970 Dusty Springfield recorded a cover of Spooky with the lyrics of the Classics IV version. In 1980 Lydia Lunch did her take on Spooky. Several other bands have played or recorded a cover like REM, Imogen  Heap, the Puppini Sisters and many others. The most intriguing ‘cover’ of Spooky is by a band named the Atlanta Rhythm Section in 1979. The band consisted of former members of the Classics IV and another band, the Candymen.

    The song didn’t go unnoticed when sampling started. When former model Naomi Campbell released an album, Spooky was used in the track Looks Swank (which I can’t listen to thanks to Sony being a dick on YouTube).  Barry Adamson used a clearly recognisable sample of Spooky on his 1996 track Something Wicked This Way Comes. The track found its way onto the soundtrack of the bizarre David Lynch film Lost Highway in 1997. Also in 1996, The Bloodhound Gang used Spooky in their song Why is Everybody Always Pickin’ on Me?

    Though technically speaking the Classics IV version of Spooky isn’t the original, it did birth a lot of versions and samples:

  • The Roof Is On Fire

    Usually a famous sample gets used over and over again by a range of artists, but occasionally, multiple samples from the same track find their way into very different tracks by other people. Take Rock Master Scott & The Dynamic Three’s classic hip hop track from 1984: The Roof is on Fire.

    If I say “the roof is on fire” you’ll either chant along with the original, sing the mopey version in Fire Water Burn by the Bloodhound Gang from 1997, bounce to the 1998 song “Follow the Leader” by the Soca Boys, remember you danced to the 1989 dance track The roof is on fire by Westbam (which features a ton of other samples too), you may have headbanged to Sway by Coal Chamber from 1997 or if you’re really hardcore you remember Atari Teenage Riot using the lyrics in their 1999 track Anarchy 999. That or you heard the lines “the roof is on fire, we don’t need the water, let the motherfucker burn” in any other song that the Wiki article on the song mentions.

    And that’s kinda ironic, since The Roof Is On Fire was actually the B-side of the single that was intended as a hit song: Request Line. You may recognise the intro to that track as the same as that to Missy Elliot’s Work It from 2002. Somehow the simple but effective lyrics of the B-side found its way into pop culture and became just as standard for MC’s as “put your hands up for Detroit“.

    Even more ironic is the odd’s you will know yet another sample from The Roof is on Fire even though it completely ignores the famous lyrics involving lack of a fire department. Hey Girl Hey Boy by the Chemical Brothers from 1999 directly samples the opening of this original version of The Roof is on Fire.
    So hey girls and hey boys, we don’t need no water despite that The Roof is on Fire: