Tomorrow is Memorial Day. My wife is out of town, working at a meeting called by foreigners who don’t give a toss about American holidays. But every American should take a moment to acknowledge the brave sacrifices made by the members of our armed forces who have served their country. The best way we can honor them is by doing everything possible end all current wars and to keep war from happening again.

Eli Radish “I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier” (comp. Alfred Bryan and Al Piantadosi)
Eli Radish was a little ahead of their time. They were playing country-rock before the Byrds popularized it. They released their first album in 1969 and wanted to give voice to their leftist anti-war politics. So they recorded a collection of traditional patriotic songs about war and bravery, played in a loose-limbed, slightly loopy style. Unfortunately the record buying public didn’t quite understand the album and it sank without much notice.

This song was a rallying cry for the pacifist movement in the U.S. during the run-up to World War I. There’d be no war today if mothers all would say, “I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier.” Indeed.

Betty Dylan “Masters Of War” (Bob Dylan)
There have always been people who had other priorities than military service when they were eligible who then have no reservations sending other people’s sons and daughters to war. Bob Dylan matched the cynicism of such people with bitterness and cynicism of his own. Betty Dylan deliver a nice arrangement that’s slowed down and extremely venomous.

Cake “War Pigs” (Black Sabbath)
Where “Masters Of War” is bitter and cynical, this song is just pissed off. Ozzy has been so pathetic for so long that it’s easy to forget how powerful Black Sabbath were during their prime. I love the “Eve Of Destruction” style bass line on this version.

Sally Timms “When The Roses Bloom Again” (Burnett and Rutherford)
A soldier goes off to war but before he leaves he promises his sweetheart that he’ll be back before the roses bloom again. When he’s gravely injured he asks that he be returned to his sweetheart. It’s a lovely, sentimental song.

This is a slippery song to attribute. The Sally Timms record credits Jeff Tweedy as the songwriter, but Laura Cantrell recorded a version that credits A.P. Carter as the songwriter with an arrangement by Wilco. Johnny Cash recorded a song with the same name and very similar lyrics sometime in the late 50s or early 60s. So I’m just going to stop spending time chasing this down and give it to Johnny Cash. After all this is my hobby, not my job. If I’m wrong I’m sure somebody will tell me.

Update: Thanks to an alert yet anonymous reader we have this information on the song, posted oddly enough on a Marx Brothers fan page:

In 2002, artist Laura Cantrell released a CD called When The Roses Bloom Again. The title track is a cover of an out-take from the Wilco/Billy Bragg collaboration Mermaid Avenue, which was dropped from the album of Woody Guthrie-penned lyrics when it was discovered that the song was actually copyrighted by A.P. Carter of the Carter Family. Another source claimed that the words were “Traditional” and that the music was composed by Jeff Tweedy. Further research has found that the song was previously published in New York c 1901 by E. A. Mills and credited to writers Gus Edwards and Will D. Cobb under the aliases Will Whitemore and Harry Hilliard. Then there is a 1926 version by country/bluegrass singers Burnett and Rutherford, who sang the exact lyrics of this song to an entirely different melody. So, could Edwards and Cobb have put their own music to lyrics of a folk or traditional nature that THEY had found? On the album Mermaid Avenue Vol II there’s song called Blood Of The Lamb, which has the same melody as I’ll Be With You When The Roses Bloom Again. The key and chord arrangement are different but it is clearly the same song root, probably reworked when they discovered the lyric problem with …Roses….

Interestingly, Blood of the Lamb is credited to Bennett/Tweedy while …Roses.. was credited to Tweedy alone. Evan Edwards has even seen one website which has the credits “Words by Cobb and Edwards, Music by Jeff Tweedy”.

The Pogues “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” (Eric Bogle)
This song is very difficult for me to listen to because it’s so terribly sad. It tells the story of the Australians who got slaughtered by the Turks at Gallipoli during World War I and what happened to the survivors when they went home. It points out the absurdity of war, as when a truce was negotiated so each side could bury their dead only to “start all over again.” It breaks my heart at the end when the old maimed soldier is watching a parade on Anzac Day. A young person asks him why they’re marching and he asks himself the same question. A question we should all be asking as we honor those who have sacrificed for their country.

I’m not a huge Pink Floyd fan. The Syd Barrett material has its trippy charms, but the later stuff has always struck me as a bit whiny. But when the dynamic Uncle Flakey let me know that the Flaming Lips teamed up with Henry Rollins to cover Dark Side Of The Moon, I just had to come up with an excuse to post something from that one.

Foo Fighters “Have A Cigar” (Pink Floyd)
By and large I don’t find Foo Fighters to be a real good cover band. They tend to pick songs that are very similar to their style and then don’t do much new with them. This time around they take Pink Floyd’s indictment of corporate America and give it a crunchy, muscular workout. I think this version’s arrangement suits the lyrics better than the original.

Wireless “See Emily Play” (Pink Floyd)
Most of the covers of this song hew pretty closely to the original. This one moves further afield and features a tasty Motown-style horn section.

Rasputina “Wish You Were Here” (Pink Floyd)
This isn’t some novelty “let’s get an orchestra to record Pink Floyd” kinda tune. Rasputina is a band that features two cellos and a percussionist. The write some very interesting original music and play some very creative covers.

The Flaming Lips, Stardeath and White Dwarfs w/Henry Rollins and Peaches “The Great Gig In The Sky” (Pink Floyd)
This is a really strong album. There’s not a real consistent sound from song to song, probably because so many people were involved. For me this is the song that sounds most like the Flaming Lips, probably because they’re playing it by themselves with the help of Henry and Peaches on vocals. I particularly like the middle section where Peaches starts wailing.

The Polka Floyd Show “Welcome To The Machine” (Pink Floyd)
Those “Pickin’ On” bluegrass tributes to every band under the sun are generally amusing as a concept but get tiresome after a couple of songs. Same with the endless classical tributes to heavy metal artists. On its surface you would think that a band that does polka versions of Pink Floyd songs would fall into the same category. But you’d be wrong. The Polka Floyd Show clearly love the source music and are still able to have fun with it in creative ways. This is from a live album they put out last year.

MLB Commissioner Bud Selig

The Philadelphia Phillies were scheduled to play a three-game series in Toronto during the G20 summit June 25-27. Last Wednesday Major League Baseball’s Supreme Ruler For Life, Bud Selig, declared that the series would be moved due to security concerns. Because those evil Canadian anarchists would just love a chance to disrupt a baseball game, something they could never do any other day during six-month-long MLB season. I’m guessing that they didn’t schedule the G20 summit a month before the event, so why the Dear Leader had to make this decision a month before the series was supposed to happen is beyond me. And because Uncle Bud can’t just make a simple stupid decision without compounding it he also decided that the games would be played in Philadelphia, thus giving them three extra home games for the season. That’s a big deal because the Phillies are a terrifying force of nature in their home ballpark.

At any rate Bud’s stupid, unfair response to an imaginary threat is definitely something I had to commemorate in a Cover Freak post.

Jason and the Scorchers “Take Me Home Country Roads” (John Denver)
The game will be played in Philadelphia but the Blue Jays will get to bat last and they’ll use the designated hitter like they would if they were playing in Toronto. They might even make the Phillies wear their road uniforms. So I guess Bud thinks that makes it a home game for the Blue Jays, in spite of the fact that the Phillies get to play in their home park. I’m sure that if the game really needed to be moved they could have found a neutral ballpark to use. Like maybe one of the ballparks in New York. But that would be the sensible thing to do, and Bud doesn’t do sensible.

Junior Walker and the All Stars “These Eyes” (The Guess Who)
I know that the Guess Who were from Winnipeg, but they’re still Canadian. And they are every bit as much of a threat to the Blue Jays-Phillies series as the G20 protesters.

Homesick Elephant “Danger Zone” (Kenny Loggins)
I don’t know why Bud thinks that Toronto qualifies as a Danger Zone. I don’t know of any threats that have been made against the Blue Jays and I don’t think it’s very likely that any of the international gasbags assembling for the meeting would want to take in a ballgame.

Pastel Vespa “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick” (Ian Dury and the Blockheads)
The Phillies as a team hit extremely well. And they hit particularly well in their home ballpark. They mercilessly beat their opponents until they cry like little girls. And yes, they do that beating with their rhythm sticks.

Giant Drag “Wicked Game” (Chris Isaak)
Baseball is a mellow, family-friendly kind of game. It’s only when the people running the game make decisions like the one Bud made that it seems a wicked game. At least it does to the fans in Toronto.

The shuffle option on my iPod doesn’t really play a random selection of songs. It seems to pick a couple of dozen albums and play random songs from them for awhile and then move on to another selection of albums. As a result I’ve been listening to quite a bit of the Louvin Brothers’ Satan Is Real album lately. I also went to visit a client a couple of weeks ago and the song being piped into the lobby of their building was “Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition.” So it seems that God has been stalking me lately and the only reasonable options for me are ranting about Jesus on a streetcorner downtown or doing a Cover Freak post featuring religious music. My recent respiratory problems have made raving at the top of my lungs a little difficult, so I decided to go with the CF post.

The Young Norwegians “Plastic Jesus” (Goldcoast Singers)
This is my favorite gospel song. I never understood why somebody would want a plastic Jesus on the dashboard of their car until I realized that you could use him as a flask. Suddenly it seems like a good idea.

Johnny Cash “Personal Jesus” (Depeche Mode)
The American Recordings albums were wonderful things, filled with great music and giving Johnny Cash well-deserved recognition late in his life. The only problem is that the success of those records encouraged guys like Paul Anka and Glen Campbell to put out albums of terrible covers of contemporary hits in a pathetic attempt at relevance.

Tricky “Dear God” (XTC)
I just found out that there’s a guy who hired a bunch of atheists to care for the pets of people who are taken up to heaven in the Rapture. Apparently the trick is to convince prospective clients that his staff is godless enough to get left behind but kind enough to take good care of their pets. I think the owner of the company just needs to make sure that everybody on staff has this song on his or her iPod.

Bad Livers “Crying Holy Unto The Lord” (Traditional)
After becoming known for demented punk bluegrass, the Bad Livers confused everybody by releasing an album of traditional spirituals. When you consider that they grew up listening to and playing those songs it wasn’t really that much of a stretch for them.

Uncle Tupelo “Atomic Power” (The Louvin Brothers)
I may be the only person in Chicago who doesn’t like Wilco, but I loves me some Uncle Tupelo. The sentiment of this song always seemed a bit odd to me. I suppose it’s not a bad idea to get right with God if you live in fear of nuclear annihilation, but it would seem more productive to me to work for nuclear disarmament.

For some reason arena rock bands are required at some point in the show to speak the name of the city in which they’re playing. It doesn’t mean anything except that they know what city they happen to be in that night. Of course it can backfire when the band is in Pittsburgh and the singer says “We love you, Cleveland!”

When I was in college I went to see Yes play in Kansas City. I only went because I got a free ticket, free barbecue and free beer. The show was a dreary by-the-numbers affair that was obviously the same every night. At one point for no reason at all the singer spoke the words “Kansas City” and the crowd obligingly cheered. The show distilled for me the artistic bankruptcy of corporate arena-rock.

I would be more impressed if the band members would talk about the local sports team, or local politics, or some local institution. But that would require effort beyond somebody whispering in your ear what city you’re in. At any rate here are some songs that are about particular cities, more or less.

The Buys Boys “Detroit Rock City” (Kiss)
This song was written about a real-life Kiss fan who got drunk and killed himself in a car crash on his way to a Kiss show. Exactly the kind of thing you’d expect a jackass like Paul Stanley to write a stirring rock anthem about. The Buys Boys deliver a hilarious Euro-trash take on it, all cheesy synthesizers and bouncy bass lines.

Everclear “Night Train To Memphis” (Roy Acuff)
It’s hard-rocking and joyous, bringing Roy Acuff into the modern era.

Maxine Weldon “Lodi” (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
I don’t like listening to people who are more fortunate than I am complain about how hard their lives are. The song “Taxman,” where a millionaire bitches about paying his taxes comes to mind. I also don’t like most songs about how hard life on the road is for touring musicians. I truly despise Bob Seger’s “Turn The Page.” But I’ve always had some affection for “Lodi” because it’s a sad song about a dream gone wrong. And I really like Maxine Weldon’s swinging horn-fueled arrangement.

No Empathy “The Night Chicago Died” (Paperlace)
Everybody from Chicago knows that this song was written by somebody who never lived here. The song states that the events it describes took place on the “East Side of the city.” There is no East Side of Chicago. There’s a North Side, a South Side, and a West Side. But the eastern border of the city is Lake Michigan, and the eastern side of the city is known as the Lakefront.

Beyond that small annoyance is the bigger problem of a song about gangsters. For a long time if you traveled overseas and told people you were from Chicago they would point their fingers like a gun and talk about Al Capone. Then Michael Jordan came along and foreigners always wanted to talk about him. Now that Jordan’s retired it seems that Al Capone is once again what the world thinks about when they think of Chicago. We’ll have to work on that.

The Michigan Amazin’ Blue “Englishman In New York” (Sting)
It’s not often that you can look at a single song in a musician’s career and say with conviction that that’s where he jumped the shark. This is one of those songs. It marked Sting’s transition from reggae-lite pop musician to purveyor of horrible lite-jazz pablum. After listening to this could anybody have been surprised when he came out with an album of lute music?

This song does work well as an a capella piece though.