Every now and then somebody, somewhere comes up with a good old-fashioned wheeze. The idea doesn’t necessarily make loads of money, just captures imaginations and gives people a right good laugh.
Perth musician and producer Tom Mitchell has done just that.
Shreds is the name of the game, and he’s using all his skills as an audio technician to exploit the technique to poke fun at some of the world’s top superstars and, in the process, pull the wool over some die-hard fans who can’t tell a spoof video from the real thing.
Tom takes video footage of bands and gradually replaces the vocals with crazy sounds and noises, or introduces poor timing on the drums and out-of-tune guitars.
And it’s brilliant. His hilarious YouTube videos have earned over 300,000 hits, at the same time incurring the wrath of dozens of fans who have apparently had a sense of humour bypass.
So far he’s “shredded” Kings of Leon, Mars Volta, Sigur Ros and Radiohead among others, but unlike their misguided fans, the bands themselves actually love what he’s doing.
“I’ve had a lot of emails from fans asking me why I would want to do this to their favourite band,” he laughed.Heroes”I don’t think they really see the humour behind it they’re just upset at somebody having a laugh at their heroes.
“Sigur Ros’s drummer actually emailed me to say he found it funny and a roadie for Kings of Leon said the band were laughing at their shred for Sex on Fire.
“Mars Volta were asked what their weirdest publicity was and they said it was the shred I had done on them, so that was pretty good.”
Tom, a former member of Perth metal band Allergo, who played T in the Park twice and were set for bigger things until the untimely death of their drummer Graham Motion a few years back, said his new “hobby” began after he spotted a shred on the internet a couple of years ago.
“I’d seen a couple of videos a couple of years ago when people had done something similar.
“I thought I would try my hand at it and try to pull off a good version of one of the tracks.
“I already had the audio software for drums and guitar where you can emulate what they are playing on stage, then meddle with it and play it back over the top of the video.
“For the Kings of Leon video I was lucky enough to find an a capello version so I took the original and made it ridiculous, stretched the vocals and made it off key, I just did random stuff till I laughed and then I kept it.
“At the moment I’m working on a track by U2 and Springsteen, I think it was when they played live at U2’s induction into the Hall of Fame.Funny”My mate is doing the vocals for that he’s going to do a really funny thing with that so it’ll hopefully turn out all right.”
But in such litigious times, is Tom not worried about incurring the wrath not only of the fans, but of the record industry bigwigs themselves?
“I keep thinking I’m going to get a lawsuit,” he said.
“But I’m not making any money out of it, it’s really just a bit of fun.
“The term ‘shreds’ comes from what people say about Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix when they’re ‘shredding’ the guitar.”
Since Allergo called it a day, Tom has played with a couple of local bands but says it’s nothing too serious at the moment.
Instead, he works at Clearwater Studios in Perth, recording and producing other bands, and spends most of his spare time doing his shreds in the studio.
“I’ve found a hobby that ticks every single box and I’d like to work out how to make money, but I’m not really bothered too much about that.
“I’m probably breaching every possible copyright law there is so there’s not much chance of that.”
Catch them while you can on Tom’s YouTube channel.