I love a good murder ballad. So much so that it worries my wife sometimes. There’s just something about a song that crams sin, repentance, and retribution into three minutes.

So here’s a violent slice of American musical tradition.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds “Stagger Lee”
You’ve gotta go some to find a song with more profanity and violence than this one. Definitely not work-friendly.

The Handsome Family “Knoxville Girl”
I absolutely love the Handsome Family. A husband a wife who write some fantastic goth-country-folk music, they also have a deft touch with traditional tunes.

The Pine Valley Cosmonauts with Otis Clay “Banks of the Ohio”
This is from volume two of The Executioner’s Last Songs, a series of three CDs sold to benefit the fight against the death penalty. All of the songs are about crime, death, and punishment and feature the Cosmonauts with various guest performers.

Muleskinner Jones “How Come That Blood On Your Coat Sleeve?”
I wish that this guy would quit with the jokey singing voice, but he’s done some pretty demented stuff over his career. His original song “Death Row Hoedown” is really out there.

Stevie Wonder “Frankie and Johnny”
I have my doubts whether this is Stevie Wonder, but that’s how the song is labeled. If it really is it must be from the “Little Stevie” child-prodigy portion of his career. And if it is, then it’s pretty bizarre to have a kid singing about lovers killing each other.

Here are a few songs that recently came up on my iPod’s shuffle play.

The Beat Farmers “Beat Generation” (Rod McKuen)
The Beat Farmers are criminally underappreciated. This song has some serious swagger.

Frank Black “Hang On To Your Ego” (Beach Boys)
This song originally appeared on the Beach Boys Pet Sounds album with the title “I Know There’s An Answer.” Wikipedia has the whole story of why its name was changed.

Razorlight “Hey Ya” (Outkast)
Quite the little burst of sunshine. That’s the London Community Gospel Choir singing backup.

Tegan and Sara “When You Were Mine” (Prince)
When you get rid of the cheesy 80s synthesizers you realize what a great songwriter Prince is.

Nirvana “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” (Lead Belly)
This is pretty much the only worthwhile thing that ever came out of the MTV Unplugged series. I still get chills when I hear it.

My wife has been riding her stationary bicycle in the basement lately. While she’s riding she’s been watching musicals with our daughter, so I’ve been hearing The Sound of Music and Damn Yankees wafting up the basement stairs.

So what the heck, let’s celebrate the glory of the American musical.

The Lovehaters “Look At Me I’m Sandra Dee (Reprise)” (from Grease)
This comes to us from an indie CD that’s a tribute to Grease. It’s called Down to GREASE on Holiday.

I remember that after the Grease movie left the theaters my mom got a great deal on a jean jacket with the movie’s logo embroidered on the back. I cut out the embroidery and wore the thing for years even though it still had a very faint outline of that logo.

Gotan Project/Sarah Vaughan “Whatever Lola Wants” (from Damn Yankees)
Also known as The Only Musical Straight Men Will Sing Along To. I don’t consider remixes to be covers, but since Sarah Vaughan wasn’t in the original Broadway cast of Damn Yankees this one qualifies in my book.

Little Richard “I Feel Pretty” (From West Side Story)
Boy, does he feel pretty. I don’t think that any other man could pull this one off.

Captian Tractor “If I Were A Rich Man” (From Fiddler On The Roof)
I almost posted a version of this song by the Magnetic Fields that’s all ukulele and clinically depressed singing. I went with this one because it keeps the joy of the original version while still bringing something new to the song.

Me First And The Gimme Gimmes “My Favorite Things” (from The Sound of Music)
The lyrics to this song have always bothered me. It’s like Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote the whole thing by picking random words out of a rhyming dictionary. Are brown paper packages tied up with string really anybody’s favorite thing? That one’s not even in my top 1000.

I’ve spent this week preparing for my fantasy baseball draft, which has taken much of the time I usually devote to this blog. So I’m going to recycle a theme from December. Thanks once again to George Blowfish and Uncle Flakey for their contributions.

Paul Anka “Wonderwall” (Oasis)
Mr. Anka’s album Rock Swings was an attempt to revive his career by performing his interpretations of contemporary songs. It didn’t quite work out for him the way American Recordings did for Johnny Cash.

Richard Cheese “Loser” (Beck)
Sometimes Richard Cheese tries too hard but he really nails it on this one. I’ve always thought that the original sounded like a postmodern lounge tune.

Kate the Kat “I Was Made For Lovin’ You” (KISS)
There was a bike trail near my childhood home that I liked to ride. There was an industrial building that sat with its blank back wall facing the trail. It was a magnet for graffitti, including a very large KISS logo.

There was also a metal door that had been painted with the word “Ace” and a picture of Ace Frehley’s face. That door looked like that for years. Nobody ever painted over it. For some reason that image has stayed with me.

Mel Torme “Happy Together” (The Turtles)
I first heard the Velvet Frog (I know that’s not his real nickname, but I just love the imagry) when he sang “Zaz Turned Blue” on the first Was/Not Was record. He was a gifted singer with a great sense of humor.

Enoch Light “I Feel The Earth Move” (Carole King)
You know how there was that one kid in grade school who was flamingly, outrageously gay? You weren’t old enough to know what homosexuality was, but you knew that there was something “different” about this kid.

Well, that kid in my class decided one day (for no apparent reason) to play “I Feel The Earth Move” for the class while he danced a fabulous little dance. This was in fifth grade. Man, I thought I had successfully repressed that memory.