Big Daddy keeps its retro-pop parodies coming in show at McCabe’s on Friday
Prepare yourselves, Adele and Taylor Swift, you’re about to get Big Daddy’d.
The veteran Culver City-based pop parody band has a couple of new treats up its sleeve that will figure into the group’s show Friday at McCabe’s in Santa Monica.
Founding member Bob Wayne gave The Times a couple of hints about the new material earlier this week, but wanted to hold back a few surprises for fans who turn out.
“We’re doing Adele’s ‘Hello’ and Taylor Swift’s ‘Shake It Off,’” said the man whose band surfaced in 1983 with “Big Daddy .… Whatever Happened to the Band of ‘59,” an album full of hits of the day reimagined as if they’d been performed in the 1950s and early-’60s.
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Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” was reframed as Frankie Avalon’s “Venus,” Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” channeled Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “16 Tons” and Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” tapped into the Tokens’ “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” among other pop music guilty pleasures.
Wayne didn’t reveal what the seven-piece band has done with “Hello.” As for “Shake It Off,” Swift’s monster hit, he noted that the song “goes from a ballad to a real uptempo part. I wouldn’t want to tell you everything, but in the end we go into ‘Shout,’ but it’s ‘Shake,’ of course. It’s a lot of fun.”
The band was an early signee to Rhino Records, back when the label focused heavily on comedy and novelty music more than the reissues it later became known for. Big Daddy released four albums for Rhino, the most ambitious being a complete reshaping of the Beatles “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” then went on hiatus for nearly 15 years.
The band resurfaced in 2012 with a Kickstarter-funded album of songs from the movies and Broadway, “Smashing Songs of Stage and Screen.”
Wayne said the group will draw songs from each of its albums for a career-spanning set at McCabe’s, and promised to include a medley of “Star Wars” themes the band has reconfigured on different albums.
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