Nineties alt-rock outfit Wheatus have shared a gigantic musical collage of fans performing the band’s timeless ode to adolescent angst, “Teenage Dirtbag.”
The video is the result of the Quaranteenage Dirtbag Challenge, which Wheatus frontman Brendan Brown announced in March after the band was forced to cancel some 20th-anniversary touring plans due to the coronavirus pandemic. Per a note in the video’s description, Wheatus received submissions from 106 contributors from 16 different countries, leading to a delightful mash-up of people performing “Teenage Dirtbag” on everything from drums, guitar, bass and piano to cellos, violins, flutes and even some kitchen appliances.
“Quaranteenage Dirtbag” arrives on the heels Wheatus’ own remaking of “Teenage Dirtbag,” which was released earlier this month. Brown has spent the past year or so painstakingly recreating Wheatus’ self-titled 2000 debut album because he no longer has the record’s master recordings. As Rolling Stone recently reported, Wheatus was recorded on a now-defunct format called ADAT, and years ago Brown gave his last personal copy of the masters to his former label, Sony, and hasn’t seen them since.
“It’s like being made whole again,” Brown said of the project. “If you make something, and you’re precious about the process, and then you deliver it to the world, and then suddenly it’s inaccessible to you, forever — that’s kinda shitty. It’s troubling. Feeling whole, one song at a time, is really nice.”
