I love my dog. He’s a very sweet animal and a great watch dog. He also started his life in a puppy mill and thus was a little inbred. The upshot is that he has a host of skin and food allergies that require me to cook up batches of dog food for him. Part of my routine every Sunday is to cook up a mess of “dog stew” as we call it around the Casa de Freak. And as I was shredding the sweet potatoes this time I started thinking about the place of dogs in music. And I came up with these songs.

Johnny Favourite Swing Orchestra “Black Dog” (Led Zeppelin)
Let’s enjoy one more overplayed classic rock nugget, shall we? There are plenty of Led Zep covers out there but this is the only one I know of by a swing band. And swing it does.

Alejandro Escovedo “I Wanna Be Your Dog” (The Stooges)
I’ve heard Alejandro play many times with many different bands. Hearing him play Iggy Pop with a band featuring a cello and a violin rocking it this hard completely blew me away.

Butthole Surfers “Underdog” (from the cartoon Underdog)
It really sounds like Underdog is coming to kick your ass, doesn’t it? The cartoon and its theme song were parodies of other superhero cartoons and that’s probably why I liked it so much as a kid. Even at a tender age I was really into parody, satire and irony.

Beck “Diamond Dogs” (David Bowie)
Beck is an artist I have a weird relationship with. There’s plenty of stuff he does that I just don’t care for. And then there’s the stuff like the whole One Foot In The Grave album that makes me think that he’s a genius. This song falls somewhere in between but it’s still very nice.

Groovegrass Boyz “Salty Dog Blues” (Traditional)
I remember first hearing this song on the old Andy Griffith Show. I had no idea what a salty dog was or why somebody would want to be one, but I liked it all the same. I’m still not sure about the whole salty dog thing.

Dramarama had a song on their sublime album Vinyl called “Classic Rot” that neatly sums up my feelings about classic rock radio.

Doesn’t it seem absurd?
Little children learning every single word
And they mimic words and phrases of a
hundred years ago
And observe a moment’s silence for the guy who
wrote Hey Joe

That song hit the shuffle play on my iPod recently and it got me to thinking about classic rock radio. When I was in grade school and started getting into music I listened to the local classic rock stations because, well, everybody else did.

The classic rock stations were programmed by people from a previous generation (I was four years old during the Summer Of Love) with playlists consisting mostly of the songs of their youth. They played a half-dozen or more songs from each artist they played but they played such a small number of artists that you’d hear the same stuff over and over, day after day. I don’t see any reason to listen to the soundtrack of somebody else’s life, and that for me is the whole problem with classic rock as a radio format. The only good thing to come out of my youthful flirtation with those stations is that I became determined to find other music that I hadn’t heard a thousand times before.

I cringe when I hear the classic rock staples, but there are people who can make even the hoariest of warhorses sound fresh.

Sebadoh “Cold As Ice” (Foreigner)
I still like the cover of the first Foreigner album, it has that cool Euro-immigrants-at-a-train-station thing going on. Their music is such bland and calculated commercial “product” that I sometimes have a problem considering it music. But Sebadoh has caused me to reconsider things.

Bohemian Vendetta “Satisfaction” (Rolling Stones)
There’s a smoldering danger to this song that I’ve never heard from the Stones. And I like it.

Sleater-Kinney “More Than A Feeling” (Boston)
I was a Boston fan for awhile in grade school. Even by then I was getting sick of hearing Led Zeppelin every hour on the hour. Boston was new. They weren’t especially different or good, but I hadn’t heard them with numbing frequency. Yet.

Karen Abrams with the Austin Lounge Lizards “White Rabbit” (Jefferson Airplane)
I’ve often snarkily remarked that any song can be a reggae song. The same can sadly also be true for bluegrass music, as those stacks and stacks of “pickin’ on” records have proven. Bluegrass covers of Black Sabbath songs are amusing for a song or two but it’s hard to listen to for an hour straight.

But in this case we aren’t dealing with bored studio musicians strung out on cocaine. We have on our hands a bunch of very sharp performers who genuinely love the music they’re playing. And it shows.

Frank Zappa “Stairway To Heaven” (Led Zeppelin)
This was recorded on FZ’s last tour in 1988. I was apparently fortunate to see him on this tour because the liner notes for his CD The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life say that this band toured Europe and the East Coast and then “self-destructed.” I guess Chicago was as far west as they got.

It was huge amounts of fun to watch them play “Stairway.” Ike Willis was wearing a rubber Ronald Reagan mask, running around the stage waving his arms and wagging his head as FZ made weird noises with his keyboard.

It’s raining again. Still. Some more. While it’s making my garden happy (except for the cantaloupes, which seem to have lost the will to live), it’s making my bones creak and my basement smell musty. Howling at the sky is therapeutic but makes no difference. The same can be said for making rain a theme for Cover freak, but it’s more fun than howling at the sky. And less likely to make the neighbors think I’ve finally gone over the edge.

Purple Schulz “Rain” (The Beatles)
It’s nice to hear somebody covering a Beatles tune that you don’t hear too often. It’s not as trippy as the original but it’s got a nice dreamy quality.

The White Birch “Purple Rain” (Prince)
This song is from the massive Norwegian Prince tribute album Shockadelica that the Little Guy had pulled from the market. It’s a shame he did, because it’s full of wonderful covers like this one. It’s a very sad song. It sounds like the singer is resigned to the loss of his lover but he’s not quite over her yet.

Shonen Knife “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” (B.J. Thomas)
There’s just something about cute little Japanese girls singing phonetic English that slays me. I wonder what the appeal of it is for the Japanese.

The Recliners “Only Happy When It Rains” (Garbage)
The singer on this one just doesn’t sound as much like an art-damaged girl with excessive eye makeup as the one on the original version. Whether or not you think that’s a good thing depends on you opinions of art-damaged girls and lounge music.

Kaiser Chiefs “Flowers In The Rain” (The Move)
When the Move released “Flowers In The Rain” they also put out a postcard with a naked picture of the British Prime Minister to promote the single. The prime minister sued and a judge ruled that all royalties from the song be donated to a charity of the PM’s choosing. I’m not sure which charity he chose, but the Kaiser Chiefs are helping make it a little richer.

Thursday was the National Day of Prayer, something first recognized by Harry Truman and later used by George W. Bush to suck up to the religious right. Barack Obama has managed to piss off both sides of the debate by issuing a proclamation recognizing the day (thus annoying the atheists) and by not holding an event where religious leaders can preen next to the President (thus annoying James Dobson). Good job of playing it down the middle, Mister President.

I know I’m a little late to the party, but let’s get into that ecumenical frame of mind with these songs about God.

Sarah McLachlan “Dear God” (XTC)
What better way to start our observance of the National Day of Prayer than with a bitter denunciation of God for his indifference to humanity? Not exactly the most subtle song ever written. It’s pretty amazing how Sarah McLachlan shifts so quickly from weary sadness to righteous indignation. I like this one better than the original.

Artists In Resonance “Missionary Man” (Eurythmics)
Wouldn’t this be a great song for recruiting missionaries for the Mormon church?

Jackass “Plastic Jesus” (The Goldcoast Singers)
A few years ago my good friend Cletus gave me a plastic Jesus for my car. It’s the Buddy Jesus from Kevin Smith’s movie Dogma. I never did put it on my dashboard because I didn’t want to explain it to my very curious daughter. She’s older now so it might be easier to explain it to her. Perhaps playing this song for her would help. I’ve got to check out my plastic Jesus and see if the head comes off so I can use it as a flask.

Jazzistic Feat. Karen Souza “Personal Jesus” (Depeche Mode)
The Johnny Cash cover is very nice, but most people have heard it. This one you probably haven’t. There’s something about the breathy chick singer on this one that makes the song both seductive and a little creepy. And I can just never get enough vibe solos.

Etta James “God’s Song (That’s Why I Love Mankind)” (Randy Newman)
How I miss the old cynical Randy Newman. I’m sure that if you talk with him today he’s still cynical. Probably even more so now since he makes his living these days writing sappy music for Disney movies. But he’s got a fat bank account and an Oscar so who am I to judge?

This song is a great examination of God, humanity, faith, and their relationship with each other. And Etta James does a great job of belting it out.

The Hammond electric organ was invented in 1934 and was originally intended to be sold to churches as a cheaper alternative to big expensive pipe organs. Their model B-3 became very popular with jazz, rock, and blues musicians in the 1960s and 70s. There’s nothing quite like the sound of a Hammond B-3 organ. Don’t believe me? Have a listen.

The Hassles “A Taste Of Honey” (Bobby Scott)
Most people think that Billy Joel’s commercial career began with the band Attila, which is famous for releasing one of the worst rock albums of all time. But before the Piano Man joined that band he was part of the Hassles.

Because I had only previously heard Herb Albert’s instrumental version I was surprised to discover that this song has lyrics.

Fred Van Zegveld “I Wanna Be Your Man” (The Rolling Stones)
Fred showcases just about every Hammond riff ever conceived by the human mind in this song. It’s almost like it was recorded by Hammond’s sales department.

Bangor Flying Circus “Norwegian Wood” (The Beatles)
Another Hammond workout, this time with scat singing! Special thanks to Uncle Flakey for saving me the trouble of digitizing my vinyl copy of this.

Deep Purple “Hush” (Joe South)
One of my friends on Facebook did one of those silly “top five” lists that you see so often over there. It was Five Albums That Shaped Me. Being a music freak I picked five albums of my own. My friends weren’t surprised that I declared that I was “shaped” by albums by Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, Camper Van Beethoven, or George Carlin. But people expressed surprise that I listed Deep Purple’s Machine Head.

I was a huge Deep Purple fan in high school and listened to their music quite a bit. At that time Classic Rock radio ruled the airwaves and the Holy Musical Trinity for all my peers was the Stones, the Who, and Led Zeppelin. I was sick of hearing those bands by the time I was out of high school. Deep Purple wasn’t played as much as the other Classic Rot staples and so sounded relatively fresh and different to me. And I challenge anybody to listen to “Lazy” from Machine Head and not say that it’s a damn fine song.

Korla Pandit “Miserlou” (Dick Dale)
There was this black guy from St. Louis named John Redd. In the 1940s he moved to Los Angeles, stuck a turban on his head and started passing himself off to whitebread America as an exotic musician from India named Korla Pandit.

This new thing called television was just being invented. Those being simpler times he got himself a TV show that consisted entirely of him gazing inscrutably into the camera while he played his organ, never uttering a word or cracking a smile. His work was also nationally syndicated via short films that were much like his TV show .

Unfortunately Mr. Pandit lost the syndication gig because of a contract dispute. The syndicator hired Liberace to replace him, which launched Liberace on the road to flamboyant stardom. If things had worked out differently there might be a Korla Pandit museum in Las Vegas today.

Special thanks to Doctor Cyclops for cluing me in to Mr. Pandit.