5.5/10

Yesterday, while driving in a part of town with which I am not too familiar, an enormous billboard caught my eye.  It depicted a generous helping of run-of-the-mill pizza and wings surrounded by a green, white, and red border.  I didn’t catch what the billboard was for, but the combination of the pizza, wings, and colors — which I hadn’t yet registered as those of the Italian flag and countless pizza joints that aren’t Sardella’s — brought a familiar jingle to mind and precipitated a series of useless thoughts:

“Wow, haven’t heard that jingle in awhile.  They really haven’t been advertising as heavily as they used to.  Are they advertising at all?  Must be the economy or something. Have I ever even eaten Sardella’s?  What a catchy jingle.  It would probably make a ridiculous cover.  The song can’t possibly be longer than seven seconds.  It should be a powerviolence cover. I should call James about this.”

Initially, this idea was a ten in my mind — what could possibly be cooler than a short, brutal cover of the catchiest pizza jingle in Phoenix history?  Having distanced myself from the excitement over the past 24 hours, however, I feel that I can work backwards from an overly optimistic ten and give this a more realistic score.  First, let’s get one thing out of the way: this is an exceedingly stupid idea.  I know this, so I will immediately deduct a point.  Only one point, though, as some of the best ideas in history probably seemed pretty dumb at first.  I’m going to deduct two more points because the song’s chord progression does not exactly lend itself to the cover’s genre; we would either have to compromise the intensity of the cover by adhering to the original composition or compromise the integrity of the cover by changing the progression.  If you’re doing the math, a point and a half are still unaccounted for.  As I pointed out earlier, Sardella’s has not had a strong media presence in some time.  If they have forgotten the jingle, people may mistakenly think that the cover is an original or, worse, that we were bought out in a bizarre and desperate marketing attempt by Sardella’s.  If people suspect the latter, we will be labeled as sellouts and ridiculed in the punk rock community, which is certainly no good.  So there you have it.  Turns out this probably wasn’t the best idea.

Next: The EZ Chord Guitar Attachment

-DS