Dave Grohl and his good friend, musician and producer Greg Kurstin, are celebrating Chanukah by reviving the covers series they launched in 2020. They’ll be covering songs by a different Jewish artist every night until Chanukah ends on Monday, 6th December.
First cab off the rank for Chanukah 5782 is Lisa Loeb’s ‘Stay (I Missed You)’. Grohl and Kurstin’s version begins, in mock imitation of the original music video, with Grohl wearing cat-eye frames and a dress, while his cat (Kurstin) sleeps on the couch. The tranquility is short-lived, however, as Grohl and Kurstin soon flip ‘Stay’ into a death metal song.
In the video description, Grohl and Kurstin describe Loeb as “one of Dallas, Texas’s favorite Jewish daughters,” and encourage viewers to “put on your coffee shop spectacles and your Betsey Johnson dress.”
Grohl and Kurstin took a more expected route on night two, covering the Ramones’ ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’. The description notes that Ramones co-founders, vocalist Joey and drummer Tommy Ramone, were in fact “two nice Jewish boys from Queens named Jeffery Hyman and Thomas Erdelyi”.
Compared to ‘Stay (I Missed You)’, it’s a fairly straight run-through of the famously gleeful World War II song. Though, the “Hey ho, let’s go!” chant is altered to be “Hey! Oy! Let’s Goy!”
Chanukah 5782 ends next Monday, so we’re expecting at least six more videos from Grohl and Kurstin. Last year’s Hanukkah Sessions included covers of the Beastie Boys, The Knack, Drake, Peaches, Bob Dylan and more. Dave Grohl is not Jewish, but Greg Kurstin is.
