It’s not often that I write reviews for something that makes me nostalgic. I’ve wrote about this before, but I fell in love with ska in the third wave ska revival in 1996 and the “Summer of Ska” in 1997. For the next decade I rarely listened to anything else, but by 2005 I was married and not going to many shows. I stopped seeking out new bands and almost only listened to the same music that I already owned and the occasional new album by the bands I had already known. By 2015 I basically stopped listening to music. In 2020, that all changed, and I started listening to only new music. It’s still almost exclusively ska, but very rarely do I listen to anything recorded before 2020, and it’s almost all new bands.
For that reason, I don’t really encounter anything that has a sense of nostalgia. However, there are a few bands from that time that still put out new music. Back in 2004 I drove from Dayton, Ohio up to Michigan to a music fest. I had heard Suburban Legends before this, and they were not the reason I went to the fest, but their stage performance blew me away. I picked up a copy of their CD and even a copy of their DVD- because they had one and we were still living in the technological dark ages of DVD players.
While their original music is definitely my favorite, Suburban Legends may be best known for their Disney cover songs. For several years in the early 2000s Suburban Legends played daily at the Disneyland resort. They put out an album of Disney Cover songs, and have followed it up with a few random singles over the years. This newest single is in that category, but it’s not a song that I ever expected anyone to cover. In fact, the nostalgia I was referencing earlier isn’t even about Suburban Legends. It’s about the song, a cover of the theme song from Darkwing Duck. When I came home from school as a latchkey kid growing up, every day my brothers and I would get home and turn on the TV to be raised for 2 hours a day of the same syndicated cartoons, and Darkwing Duck was a favorite. While the theme song pales in comparison to Gummy Bears and Duck Tales as far as popularity, (both already covered by Suburban Legends) it still held a spot in my memory.
Let’s get dangerous.
I have to admit, the only lyrics I still remembered from the song were “when you’re in trouble you call D W” and “Let’s get dangerous”. The Suburban Legends cover sounded really good. It felt a little darker than I recalled, and not at all campy- which is impressive for a ska band covering Disney. I went back and watched the original theme song a few times after hearing the song, and I have to admit, Suburban Legends did a great job. They kept all the original themes while updating the sound, adding an intro, and as I said before, made it less campy while adding in horns. It’s nice to hear something that takes me back to my childhood, but in a way that feels modern and current.
Thank you, Suburban Legends, this old man appreciates you. Hopefully everyone else enjoys this as much as I did.
Written by Gimpleg