The Twelve Girls Band playing Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” on traditional Chinese instruments.
Metallica - One played on medieval instruments
Enter Sandman played by a bluegrass band
While My Guitar Gently Weeps on ukelele
And, most of the Korn: Unplugged CD. Theremin, singing saw, contra-bass trombones, and all manner of odd things.
Slight derail, but actual songs (not covers) played with my favorite older instrument, the mandolin:
R.E.M.: Losing My Religion
Rod Stewart: Maggie May
Paul McCartney: Dance Tonight …cool video too.
Styx: Boat on the River
The Kinks: Supersonic Rocket Ship
Joan Osborne: St. Teresa
Yep, I’m a guitar guy. I’m all about the strings. 
Ghost Riders in the Sky by Vân Anh on Vietnamese đàn bầu, an odd one-stringed in instrument where the pitch is determined by a combination of where you pluck the string (or technically where your knuckle damps the string) and the pressure you put on the connected lever.
Great thread, by the way. I’m going back and watching all of these!
Very well then, The Nutley Brass play the Ramones to swinging, jaunty effect: there’s something about the Ramones that just fits perfectly with a brass arrangement.
Theres this banjo playing guy, Ned Luberecki who has a DJ bit on Bluegrass Junction on Sirius. Gives banjo lessons on the radio on Sundays. He has banjo versions of Take Five and Girl From Ipanema that are perfectly wonderful.
Although not technically a cover song as it isn’t named after the original this is favorite cover song and it cracked the Billboard Top 100.
The unusual instrument is in the title.
There’s always the guy wearing a Darth Vader mask riding a unicycle paying the Star Wars theme on flaming bagpipes:
Thank you for that.
There will never be another Jaco Pastorius, but there can be someone as good or better. All they gotta do is play as much as he did. He’d tell you the same.
Electric Light Orchestra’s cover of Great Balls of Fire was…interesting.
Their later version rocked a bit more
Of course, all covers of GBoF are anemic compared to Jerry Lee’s version.
I hate to break your heart, but he’s lying to you.
This is also a story about how being mean to people comes back to bite you in the ass.
First, it’s NOT two tubas. And it’s not Martin Mull playing tuba. In the studio it was a tuba and a French horn. He hired one of the best tuba players/bassists of the day to play tuba for him, Red Callender.
Red is better known today for his bass playing (he was a member of “The Wrecking Crew,” among other things) but he was a great tuba player. Check him out here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj87g8YVINA (The fact that people like Jack Sheldon and Buddy Collette and Shelly Manne, some of the greatest players in LA at that time, would let Red even PLAY tuba on the gig tells you something right there; there were not a lot of jazz tuba players on the West Coast scene in 1957 unless they were wearing striped vests in Dixieland parlors.)
So, “Martin Mull and his fabulous furniture …” Red laid down his tracks. Mull was quite unhappy; Red was playing his parts TOO well. “No, I want you to fuck it up! Play it like a tuba player!” Mull yelled at Red. He was quite abusive to Red over the course of the session, berating him in front of a studio full of people, so much so that Red packed up his horn and left. (Ultimately he had to file a grievance with the union to get paid.)
Of course Red told his friends about what happened. The jazz world is a small village. Word got around.
A couple years later, Martin Mull gets a gig in NYC; he’s a writer on a new show soon to be on TV. And he’s looking for ways he can contribute. His boss notes that he also plays guitar and sings, so he says to Mull, “You know, we got a band, you ought to go sit in with them. Maybe you’ll all do something cool.” It was a really new show and they were kind of making it up as they went along.
So Mull picks up his guitar and goes into the rehearsal. And there’s all these NYC pro musicians … a lot of them friends of Red Callender. And they knew exactly who he was. So they said, “let’s play one,” and they kicked off something like, oh, “Donna Lee.”
The rest of the rehearsal was the kind of music that, to quote from Wynton Marsalis, "has 'hard' written over it in the etude book."Martin Mull walked out of the rehearsal, went to his office, and resigned.
And that’s how Martin Mull blew his staff gig on Saturday Night Live.
(Told to me by a member of the original SNL band, who was a very good friend of Red Callender. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ4nQxXhyko)
That was awesome.
Thanks!
That’s a heck of a story. Sorry to hear that Mull was such a jerk.
Wonderful!
Bill Bailey does a lot of these in his shows: Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” on bicycle horns. The way he spits on his hands is priceless.
I’m on my phone, so I can’t link properly, but Jimmy Fallon has a whole slew of songs covered by his house band (The Roots), with himself and the regular singers, using classroom instruments. YouTube has “All About That Bass,” “Call Me Maybe,” Adele doing “Hello,” Idina Menzel singing “Let It Go,” among others.
Then you’re gonna love Sympathy for the Devil in bluegrass.
And these people prove everything’s better with a ukulele.
Iron Man on harmonica.
Two of my favorites:
Camper van Beethoven’s version of “Pictures of Matchstick Men” done with violin – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he-RmYdjD4c
Rasputina’s version of Led Zep’s “Rock 'n roll” – done with cellos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YSdy8vEo-I