Cover Freak

They’re Sprouting Like Mushrooms: Seems that there’s a new cover blog on the block. Check out Cover Mode. Go ahead. I’ll wait for you to come back.

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I used to date a woman who had family in Toronto. And every year she would insist on going there to visit her relatives over the Thanksgiving holiday. The only problem was that Canada celebrates Thanksgiving on the second Monday in October so I always missed the big feast at home and also missed it in Canada. For years she deprived me of my turkey and cranberry sauce and that’s just one of the reasons we broke up.

So it is in that same spirit of just missing Thanksgiving that I post these songs about giving thanks three days late.

ZZ Top “I Thank You” (Sam And Dave)
Billy Gibbons could sing the phone book and make it sound sleazy. And what’s Thanksgiving about if not sleaze?

Lee Karnaghan “Thank God I’m A Country Boy” (John Denver)
This song doesn’t stray too far from the original musically but the lyrics are all about being an Australian cowboy. Think of it as a short class in cultural anthropology.

Magazine “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again)” (Sly & the Family Stone)
The song’s essential funky DNA is there but Magazine piles on burbling synthesizer squeals and freaky guitars.

Anita O’Day “Thanks For The Memory” (Bob Hope)
Finding a decent cover of this song was way more difficult than I anticipated. It’s quite the jazz standard but it seems that nobody’s bothered to come up with a fresh arrangement since the song came out in 1938. Just as I was beginning to lose hope Anita O’Day came through with a slinky Latin-tinged version.

Russ Tolman “Thanks A Lot” (Ernest Tubb)
When you’re covering a Johnny Cash song it’s very easy to just do it as a country song (pedal steel is optional but encouraged). But the man’s songs of heartbreak and hope are so universal that there’s no reason not to put them in a new musical context. Russ Tolman does a great job of exactly that.

There’s a story about the movie Pulp Fiction. In case you’re not familiar with the movie, one of the lead characters is Vincent Vega, a heroin-addicted mob hit man. When Quentin Tarantino offered the role to John Travolta, Travolta said he’d take the part as long as the movie didn’t make heroin seem cool. Vincent Vega dies a decidedly un-glamorous death and as a bonus we get to see Uma Thurman overdose on smack, which is not particularly cool either.

Heroin addiction is not pleasant and smack is far from glamorous. But for whatever reason many great songs have been written about the drug. Here are a few of my favorites.

GG Allin “Carmelita” (Warren Zevon)
I was driving along when Warren Zevon’s “Carmelita” shuffled to the top of my iPod’s playlist. I’m the kind of guy who sings along with songs about being strung out on heroin, and as I sang I thought about all the music that has been written about heroin. So you can blame this week’s theme on Warren Zevon. By the way, I also enjoy singing along with songs about cannibalism but there aren’t nearly as many of those.

Cowboy Junkies “Dead Flowers” (Rolling Stones)
I’ve always wondered how this song became a staple of classic rock radio playlists. The song basically says that you broke my heart and left me for some rich guy, so I’ll just shoot smack. Was there payola involved? Was it just because it was a Stones song and nobody was paying attention to the lyrics? And now that it’s on those playlists it will never come off, no matter how strong the antidrug sentiment in this country becomes. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

David Bowie “Waiting For The Man” (Velvet Underground)
Picking just one Lou Reed song about heroin is a challenge. He’s written songs about what it’s like to shoot heroin, what it does to your life, and this one about scoring smack in uptown New York. Lou’s pretty boring these days since he’s sobered up and married Laurie Anderson, but after the life he’s led he’s probably earned the right to be boring. But man, he wrote some great music when he was all messed up on drugs.

Cheap Trick “Cold Turkey” (John Lennon)
This is one of those songs that has quite a few covers, with most of them sounding just like the original. This is a nice arrangement with an introspective acoustic introduction that that devolves into a jagged electric version that emphasizes the deep despair of heroin withdrawal. Not at all the happy pop music one has come to expect from Cheap Trick. Special thanks to George Blowfish for bringing this song to my attention.

The Pretenders “The Needle And The Damage Done” (Neil Young)
And for every Lou Reed who does heroin, writes great songs, and lives to tell about it are many more musicians who don’t. This is a nice muscular version of a song that is too often delivered as an acoustic dirge.

Gas prices are coming back down and the holidays are fast approaching. Time to hop in the car or on the motorcycle and visit the relatives. So I preset to you a soundtrack for your travels. Special thanks to the dynamic Mister Squid for his contributions to this week’s post.

I had just finished up this post when my car died on me last Friday. I couldn’t get it to the garage before they closed so I won’t know how expensive a problem it is until Monday. I like public transportation more every day. Too bad more of my clients aren’t near the train lines.

The Del McCoury Band “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” (Richard Thompson)
I saw Del and his boys play last week and I must say that even if you’re not into bluegrass you should see them just to marvel at the glory that is Del’s pompadour. When they played this song Del said that Richard Thompson must have liked their version since he posed for a picture with the band.

Bobby McFerrin “Drive My Car” (The Beatles)
I can forgive Bobby McFerrin “Don’t Worry Be Happy” because of all the other amazing music he’s recorded. The guy’s a freak of nature and this is a fine example.

The Brian Setzer Orchestra “Brand New Cadillac” (The Clash)
It’s great to hear such full, brassy orchestration on a song that includes the lyric “balls to you daddy.” Particularly nice is the way the band vamps on the “Peter Gunn Theme” in the middle for no apparent reason.

Yo La Tengo “Little Honda” (The Beach Boys)
“The song pays tribute to the small Honda motorcycle and its ease of operation, specifically the Honda Super Cub.” Wikipedia can be so charmingly square sometimes.

David Lindley and Hani Naser “Mercury Blues” (K.C. Douglas)
For the last several years David Lindley has been touring around the country with just a drummer backing him up. These days his drummer is Wally Ingram, but he used to tour with Hani Naser. That was very neat because Hani did all hand drumming, which provided a very cool counterpoint to Mister Dave’s acoustic slide guitar work.

The election is over and our new President is calling for a spirit of common cause and shared sacrifice from the American people. Hopefully the poisonous partisan politics of the last 16 years will end and be replaced by a true spirit of cooperation for the good of the country. So here are some songs about togetherness.

Canned Heat “Let’s Work Together” (Wilbert Harrison)
This was such a big hit for Canned Heat that most people don’t know it’s a cover. It’s a great song that really sums up the attitude that we need to cultivate going forward.

Nickelback “Love Will Keep Us Together” (Captain and Tenille)
How did the Captain and Tenille get their own TV show? Was there some FCC requirement that forced the big networks to devote a certain percentage of their programming to variety shows starring pop musical acts? As far as I know love has kept them together even after their career slid into well-deserved obscurity after a couple of hits. This is a nice energetic acoustic version of their biggest hit.

The Isreaelites “Come Together” (The Beatles)
This song fits so well into a reggae groove that it’s hard to believe that it wasn’t written that way in the first place.

Tina Turner “Let’s Stay Together” (Al Green)
I can’t listen to this song without imagining Bruce Willis at the strip club in Pulp Fiction. And having Tina Turner sing it adds a whole new set of mental pictures.

Simple Plan “Happy Together” (The Turtles)
The original was happy in a sort of a dazed hippy-dippy way. This version is much more joyous, the sound of somebody who is genuinely thrilled to be in love.

I never really understood that MTV/Diddy get-out-the-vote ad campaign. Was Diddy going to track me down and bust a cap in my ass if I didn’t vote? Had he poisoned the water supply and would only give me the antidote if I voted? How would he know if I voted anyway? And isn’t threatening citizens to make sure they vote a hallmark of totalitarian regimes? But then again Diddy is pretty much a totalitarian regime unto himself.

Election Day is Tuesday and at this critical time in our nation’s history I urge everybody to vote. Vote for whomever you think will do the best job for America in these perilous times. But vote. Please. Here are some songs to hum while you’re in the voting booth.

Tommy Berndtsson and Sharon Dyall “Politician” (Cream)
In Chicago we learn at an early age to hold all politicians in contempt and treat anything they say with suspicion. That’s why I love this song so much, it speaks to the inherent nature of all politicians.

Sweetafton23 “Political Science” (Randy Newman)
I was searching around for covers of this song and found this on Youtube. I don’t know much about this woman, even her web page is short on details. But she’s got a pleasant voice and she plays a ukulele and that’s good enough for me. This song nicely sums up John McCain’s foreign policy.

Cake “War Pigs” (Black Sabbath)
There are two wars going on and the next President will have to deal with them. Go to your polling place and let your voice be heard on this issue. I like how Cake adds a bass line that makes this song sound like “Eve Of Destruction.”

The Persuasions “Hotplate Heaven At The Green Hotel” (Frank Zappa)
This song was written in the 1980s about Reaganomics but it is unfortunately as true today as when it was written. What happened to those good old days and all the crap we used to sell? And more important, what are we going to do about it? Cast your ballot and let the folks in Washington know what you want done. After all, FZ’s famous quote was “Don’t forget to register and vote.” Do it for Frank.

David Lindley “How Can A Poor Man Face Such Times And Live?” (Blind Alfred Reed)
Another song (this time from the 1920s) that is still depressingly current. How can a poor man face such times and live? He can vote for the candidate that he thinks can get the country out of this mess.