Richard Cheese

Richard Cheese is hardly the first act to kitschily cover current rock hits as if they were oldies from decades long past (Big Daddy, who used to do doo-wop versions of songs like "Eye of the Tiger" and "Hotel California," comes to mind). But Cheese might be the only one to make a name for himself setting the tastelessness of recent popular culture ("Nookie," "Rape Me," "Me So Horny," "Baby Got Back," "Smack My Bitch Up," you get the idea) to the more genteel, shaken-not-stirred, lounge-and-swing soundtracks of the '40s and '50s. And he's certainly the only one given a regular forum to do it on drive-time radio shows by shock jocks like Howard Stern and Opie & Anthony. He's been putting his dirty-minded shtick on record since 2000, when his first album, Lounge Against the Machine, backdated modern-day standards by Limp Bizkit, Dead Kennedys and the like. Before long he was co-hosting Say What? Karaoke on MTV. And since then, he and his similarly cheese-monikered sidemen (Bobby Ricotta, Frank Feta, etc.) have played in tuxes around the country and made nearly an album a year, with instructive titles such as Tuxicity, I'd Like a Virgin and Aperitif for Destruction -- ba dum, bum.