New rule: if you’re going to have the cojones to remake a good song, you have to have both 1) an iota of talent and 2) an iota of intelligence.

Counting Crows’ remake of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” is a case in point.  Their bland, lifeless reading of the song perfectly fits with the rest of their music catalog, which is designed for yuppies with stacks of Pottery Barn catalogs and Starbucks charge cards but who are embarrassed of their Phil Collins and Fleetwood Mac CDs, and so they latch on to an equally faceless corporate product that the music industry has deemed “alternative for adults,” and they happily play the entire Crows oeuvre during their Sunday brunch parties where everyone sits around getting smashed on screwdrivers while discussing gentrification ("Isn’t that a kind of tooth cavity?"), racial politics ("Love that Halle Berry") and the war in Iraq ("Oil is no excuse for war.  By the way, did you buy your SUV yet?") while using their palm pilots to beam life-affirming stories from the electronic version of Reader’s Digest back and forth, which--

(Counting Crows interrupts web author’s rant in progress, which is poised to proceed for several more minutes.)

Counting Crows: “Hey.  Dude.  Chill out.  It’s cool you don’t like our music.  I mean, it’s your web site.  But that’s no reason to call us unintelligent.  It’s just a difference in musical taste.  A difference of opinion.”

Oh really?  Let’s examine that hypothesis.  The original Joni Mitchell song has a line that reads:

“Late last night I heard the screen door slam/And a big yellow taxi took away my old man.”

In your version, you changed this line to:

“Listen, late last night, I heard the screen door slam/And a big yellow taxi took my girl away.”

Why the change?

Crows: “Uh...well...the original song was sung by a chick, y’know, and we’re guys, so...well, we didn’t want to be seen as gay or anything, so we changed ‘old man’ to ‘my girl.’ I mean, that’s no big deal.  That happens in remakes.  Like, y’know, Tiffany changed the Beatles line to ‘I Saw Him Standing There,’ since she didn’t want to be a lesbian, or anything.  At least, not in public.”

Yes.  Well.  Are you aware that ‘my old man’ is an expression that often means ‘father’?  So there was no reason to change the lyrics? And that your version doesn’t even rhyme?

Crows:  “Uhhh...”

You completely ruined the song not only with your breathtaking lack of talent, but with a hair-raising combination of idiocy and homophobia.

Crows: “Uhhh...”

I now return to my thesis, which is that if you’re going to remake a good song, you have to be both talented and not be as dumb as a box of hammers.  Furthermore--

Crows: “Hey, we don’t mean to interrupt, but since we’re already talking here, we’d like to remind your readers that we’re about to release a double live CD, which--”

(Crows are interrupted as web author stuffs entire band into nearby In-Sink-erator 2000, a powerful garbage disposal which, ironically, makes a sound very much like afore-mentioned double live CD.)