If you’ve ever logged on to the iTunes store with liquor on your breath and ABBA on the brain, then you’ve probably unwittingly fueled the Red Sauce gravy train. The UK-based outfit specializes in doing covers — or "rerecords" — of hit songs by a wide range of artists in a variety of genres from Aretha Franklin to the Buzzcocks to Antonio Carlos Jobim. Red Sauce’s catalog boasts 600 compilation albums with roughly 25,000 songs, including tracks recorded under saucy monikers like Salsa Roja (Latin reduxes) and Sos Rouge (for the Francophile). "We play every conceivable genre," says cofounder John Thirkell, a studio musician who once played with ’80s pop band Level 42, "from children’s and Christmas music to rap and metal." But unlike most covers, many of the Sauce’s renditions are uncannily close to the originals — close enough to create serious confusion. Its version of Guns N’ Roses’ "Sweet Child O’ Mine," for instance, might fool Axl’s own mother — at least for the duration of the 30-second snippet you listen to just before you click Buy Song. Which leads us to wonder if these 99-cent knockoffs exist to dupe drunken downloaders and other hapless music fans. "I’m sure there’s some erroneous downloading," Thirkell says. "But with the number of downloads we get, they can’t all be by mistake." [continue reading at the Wired]

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