35 Years of Enter the Dragon
Today's the 35th anniversary of the Bruce Lee classic Enter the Dragon, his last completed role before his untimely death less than a week before the movie was released. Lalo Schifrin, probably best known for composing the Mission: Impossible theme, also composed the score for Enter the Dragon. The main theme is campy, funky, and all around awesome, incorporating samples of Bruce Lee's trademark sound effects. Great theme with its fair share of solid covers.
Jack Parnell & His Orchestra - Enter the Dragon
Ha! And you thought Muppet week was over.... This is a faithful orchestrated version of the theme sans Bruce Lee sound effects performed by Jack Parnell & His Orchestra. Jack Parnell was the conductor of The Muppet Show orchestra for its entire 5-year run.
Buckethead & Bootsy Collins - The Japanese Connection: Enter the Dragon
A guitar shredding solo cover of the theme.
New Cool Collective - Enter the Dragon
A live big band cover. Not particularly groundbreaking, but sounds great. It comes to life roughly halfway through when they go into jam-mode.
Turbo A.C.'s - Enter the Dragon
A hard rockin' cover.
B3 Project - Theme From Enter the Dragon
An oddly satisfying remix with thumping dance beat for one of them Dance Dance Revolution games. An unlikely combo, but it works.
Euroboys - Enter the Dragon
Decent, but unremarkable cover.
Button Down Brass - Enter the Dragon
A very faithful cover but performed at a sped-up pace. This would be good for some 70's car chases.
Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra - Enter the Dragon
My favourite Enter the Dragon cover from the always reliable Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra. They completely own this cover.
Dennis Coffey - Theme From Enter the Dragon
The 2nd favourite cover of the lot, Dennis Coffey's supremely funky take on the already funky theme. Coffey was a Motown session guitarist who scored his own top 10 hit in the 70's, Scorpio. His songs have been heavily sampled by the likes of the Beastie Boys, LL Cool J, Moby, and Rage Against the Machine. He also scored the blaxploitation film Black Belt Jones, which starred Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon co-star Jim Kelly as the title character.
6 comments:
Thanks for posting these great versions. I've always dug the work of Dennis Coffey, had no idea he'd covered this!
thanks, would be even greater if we'd get a clue where to get these tracks from :)
The post is over a year old, so the mp3 links have long been disabled, but if you're interested I can send you a link later tonight.
yes, i'm interested, can you send it to my mail perhaps? thanks in advance!
(that post earlier was mine btw)
No problem. I'm at work right now, but I can send it to you later. Your e-mail address? You can drop me a note (fongobongo AT gmail DOT com) if you don't want to leave it in the comments.
ok, sending you a mail right now, thanks a lot mate :)
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