The Buddy Holly tribute album <i>Rave On</i>. Photo / Supplied
If Charles Hardin Holley was alive today he'd be approaching his 75th birthday and would probably still be wondering why his fans are crying out "play the old stuff" at his shows after years of increasingly adventurous songwriting (on the Peggy Sue Got Remarried, Again album of 1972 his tracks
would finally average above three minutes and be less than instantly catchy, for the first time).
This 19-track pan-generational tribute again shows the enduring power of the spectacled rock 'n' roll legend's songs - and their malleability too.
Here, those songs get everything from the concert chamber recitals of Patti Smith (Words of Love) and Lou Reed (Peggy Sue), to indie-pop mutations by Florence and the Machine (Not Fade Away) and Modest Mouse (That'll be the Day) to elegant echoes of the originals by Justin Townes Earle (Maybe Baby), Karen Elson (Crying, Waiting, Hoping), and She & Him (Oh Boy).
Not many who remember Holly when he was alive got an invite, though Graham Nash (who was in "The Hollies") closes with Raining in My Heart and Sir Paul McCartney exerts his rights as owner of Holly's publishing a little too much on an over-excited It's So Easy.
Still, hearing a Beatle having this much fun playing a Cricket is amusingly infectious as is most of the rest of this jubilee jukebox.
