The Dan Band – Live!

Who here has seen the Will Ferrel movie Old School? How about Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson’s Starsky And Hutch? You have? Well then, you know more about The Dan Band then you think. They cursed their way through Bonnie Tyler‘s Total Eclipse Of The Heart in Old School during the wedding scene and sang to a 13 year old girl at her bat mitzvah Robert Flack‘s Feel Like making Love in Starsky And Hutch. And although this live album doesn’t feature the former of the two aforementioned tracks, it does feature the first – both live and studio versions of it.

But aside from those big time movies, what is The Dan Band? Well, they are a cover band formed after a night of drunkenness in a Toronto karaoke bar with Dan Finnerty leading the way. But unlike most cover bands, this band cover songs by female artists only; and this, their first album, is a live album (with two bonus studio tracks).

This album features songs originally done by people like Bonnie Tyler,Kelis (Milkshake), Abba, Helen Reddy (I Am Woman) and more. More often then not, the band takes two or more songs and molds them into one. One of the best examples of that is with their Christina Aguliera, TLC and Britney Spears cover of Genie In A Bottle/ No Scrubs/ Slave 4 U.

For a live album, the sound quality is done extremely well, you almost forget it is a live album until you hear the cheers and chatter of the band. For the most part, they keep the chatter to a minimum, but every once in a while they go on for a long time. When they drag it in, it more often then not hurts the flow of the album, like in Tyrone / No More Drama which clocks in at over nine minutes with all the talking added into it.

Now this album isn’t amazing, its a cover album of some songs which weren’t great when they were originally released. Its an innovative idea at times, and you can enjoy it a few spins, but it soon wears thin as nothing is too outstanding. Although, one thing that’s funny is reading the booklet, for most songs even though people like Britney Spears sang the song, they don’t get any credit at all for it.