Pop-core bear wrestles Bob Geldof for the legacy of Band Aid

You don’t have to be Bruce Springsteen or Van Morrison to draw attention for playing an entire classic album from start to finish in concert: Fucked Up will do it tonight at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, on the heels of their annual Halloween weekend shows across Toronto. The Chemistry of Common Life, the debut album that won the Polaris Music Prize, will be followed up on January 26 with the compilation Some Tracks: Singles 2002-2009. There will be a new single beforehand, though, recorded with the $20,000 Polaris cheque: a 25th anniversary remake of Ethopia famine fundraiser “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” has already signed up David Cross, Bob Mould, the GZA and others, with confirmation awaited from Feist, Jarvis Cocker, and M.I.A. “If we could get a Jonas Brother on this, I would get a Jonas Brother,” frequently shirtless blood-spouting frontman Damian Abraham tells New York magazine’s Vulture. The proceeds will be sent to organizations around the world seeking missing and murdered aboriginal women, like Justice for the Missing. While the idea is to have marginalized indie rockers supporting a marginalized cause, Fucked Up aren’t averse to letting Bono belt out a line: “As terrible as I find his music and as reprehensible as I find him as a person, I would definitely have him on.” Regardless, the remake should leave a more lasting legacy than 1989’s Band Aid II — a teenpop-oriented interpretation whose only returning voices were Bananarama — or Band Aid 20, a self-laudatory 2004 reunion version for famine in Darfur. But these punks, derided for their pop-core, might turn out to have the biggest tent of all.

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