Cheese Makes Toast of Musical Icons

Now that Rage Against the Machine is minus a lead singer, maybe it should consider Richard Cheese as a replacement. He’s charismatic, he’s got a strong set of pipes and he definitely knows the material.

Of course it would mean a slight change of direction for the hard-rocking Rage. Cheese is a lounge lizard who sings modern-rock ditties in his own swanky style on the new album “Lounge Against the Machine.” His version of Rage’s “Guerrilla Radio” transforms the aggressive, politically charged tune into a sultry mambo.

At his jazzy late show at the Cinegrill on Wednesday, Cheese and his three backing musicians dug into the popular tunes of today, a time he facetiously referred to as “the golden age of songwriting.”

There’s no denying the comic value of Cheese’s slow and deliberate enunciation of the four-letter words in such aggressive anthems as Limp Bizkit’s “Nookie,” Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” and Blink-182’s “What’s My Age Again.”

The cherubic crooner (the alter ego of comedian Mark Jonathan Davis) stuck closely to the format of his album on Wednesday--so much so that it gave the performance a “Saturday Night Live” skit feel (there is, in fact, a similar bit on that show in which two cast members do popular songs accompanied by organ).

Still, Cheese’s ironic choice of tempos--Radiohead’s “Creep” is a jolly, danceable tune while Fatboy Slim’s “Rockafeller Skank” is a downbeat lament--make for a musical experience that’s as refreshing as it is comical.