December 22nd, 2013 
James Shotwell 
Santa Claus may still be half a week away from sliding down your chimney, but today UTG is dawning the beard and red cap to offer music fans a first listen to The Venetia Fair‘s latest release.
Hitting digital retailers on Christmas Eve, Basically Just Does Karaoke is the first-ever covers release from New England rock deities in The Venetia Fair. We’re premiering the album’s second track, a cover of Dexys Midnight Runners’ “Come On Eileen,” which was originally requested by Eileen Mullen during TVF’s Kickstarter campaign. You can stream the song, in full, at the end of this post.
Plans for this EP stem back to the band’s extremely successful Kickstarter campaign in 2012 which funded their acclaimed full-length record, Every Sick Disgusting Thought We’ve Got In Our Brain. During this campaign, 6 donors purchased a prize which entitled them to choose a song for the band to cover – as a result the track listing for this EP was born. That track listing reads as follows:
1. Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen
2. Come on Eileen – Dexys Midnight Runners
3. Rock Lobster – The B52s
4. Jesus of Suburbia – Green Day
5. Camouflage, Camouflage – The Blood Brothers
6. The Willing Well III: Apollo II: The Telling Truth — Coheed and Cambria
Speaking of the release, singer Benny Santoro comments:
“We said we’d cover anything they wanted and we got 6 very different songs from different genres and different eras in music, each with their own challenges. We had no intention of simply playing these songs as they were originally played (especially Bohemian Rhapsody… we didn’t wanna go anywhere near that song!) so we took our time and completely rebuilt them from the ground up to make sure we made them our own. Some of the songs we loved and had to figure out how to tweak them without totally ruining them and some of the songs we hated and had to figure out how to make them good, but I believe we rose to the challenge and, with the help of our Kickstarter backers, put together a very strange and very cool little cover EP. We definitely trashed some classic tunes, but it’s all very tongue-in-cheek since we would never take a cover song seriously ’cause it’s basically just doing karaoke…”
We have been fortunate enough to hear the entire release already and I will be the first to tell you The Venetia Fair have truly outdone themselves with this EP. Is it silly? A bit. But it’s also a lot, and I mean a lot, of fun. If you want to order your copy, head over to Bandcamp and add this fantastic EP to your digital collection.
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Seriously, UTG. Spell check and proofread next time lol. “Venetia Fir”? Every Sick Disgusting “Though” We’ve Got In Our Brain? Anyway, thanks for doing this. Even more excited for this now (if that were even possible)!!!
Sorry to disappoint! We make mistakes every now and then, but do try to keep it minimal.
I was a skeptic with how they would do these songs, but what can I say? They nailed this one. Still anxious to see how they tackle the harder songs like the Queen and Coheed tracks.
Dying for the Coheed cover!
o it is u frum tumbler
Haha no it’s cool. It’s a Venetia Fair article so naturally someone has to catch some crap lol. Y’all do good work.