Brooklyn rockers Hospitality perform their first ever cover in the latest A.V. Undercover video, taking their fuzzy, youthful sound back in time to 1974 and applying it to the immortal Steely Dan hit “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number.” While they complain in the video about the dwindling choices remaining on the Undercover list, this song seems to fit their style quite nicely.
The iconic melodies, vocal harmonies and poppy song structure fit within Hospitality’s sound, and they make the composition their own by focusing more attention the bass line and busting out an impressive guitar solo. Lead Amber Papini’s vocals peel away the ’80’s cheesiness of the original without compromising the catchy vocal melody. As a whole, toning down the drama works well for Hospitality, making it a successful first cover for them. Watch it below.
Check out more from Hospitality here.
Hospitality does a nice job, but um, how did a 1974 song happen to suffer from ’80s cheesiness’?
Wow yes its faster – the vox are nothing like DF’s … no keys and totally stripped of any jazzy feel – but musically competent and it works !!!! . I enjoyed the fact the guitarist pretty much kept it sounding not that different from Skunk’s solo .. The Back beat drumming totally changes the feel so it achieved what it was meant to do ….
Wow, “peels away the 80’s cheesiness”? Steely Dan was the opposite of all 80’s cheesiness. They were the ones who could actually play their instruments and write intelligent compositions in the 80’s. The drummer here takes away all finesse of the original. The solo is at least 75% a copy of the original. Not a bad cover, but to pretend that this is some kind of send up of the original is really stretching it.
Oh yeah, and the song was released in 1974. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rikki_Don%27t_Lose_That_Number
Nice research.