Just listened to a few tracks from Doveman's cover of the entire soundtrack to Footloose. Yes, that's right. Kevin Bacon dancing, Kenny Loggins, Bonnie Tyler, the whole thing. Here's the story behind why Doveman decided to cover the entire album from beginning to end, in a moody "Sufjan Stevens/Tom Waits influenced acoustic piano based" way, which he did on the suggestion of a friend, who's story reads:
"When I was very young, my half-sister Jenny died tragically. She was a teenager, and it was the 80's. She left behind a wardrobe of brightly colored clothes, rainbow stickers, life-size paintings, doodles on lined paper, and hundreds of tapes. These constitute most of my memories of her. It's sad for me to look at these things, and usually I don't. But a couple of summers ago I found a tape of hers with a startling cover photograph - this was Footloose. I couldn't stop listening: it was a portrait of 80's love, desire, pain, freedom, and frenzy; of being a teenager in a time of change. By listening, I could step into Jenny's shoes, see things from her vantage point. I could be emancipated by rock and roll and walkmen, just as she had been. We could listen together.
I asked my friend Thomas to cover the album, which, sheltered as he is, he had never heard before. I was clear that I wanted to him to cover the whole album - the point wasn't to rework any one song, but to re-imagine the picture they made together. With a new Footloose we could reply to the past, tell our own story about being young. This is what he made." - Gabriel Greenberg
You can listen to the album on his website, dovemanmusic.com, where it can stream - but no downloads, as the cease and desist orders have already gone out. But it is fascinating.
