Last Thursday Mrs. Freak was visiting a concrete plant. So of course she came home with a kitten. Happens every day, and that’s why more people don’t visit concrete plants. The little critter is of course the cutest kitten in the history of cute kittens. I just hope the dog doesn’t eat her before she’s big enough to defend herself.

And so this week Cover Freak salutes the stupefying power of cute kittens.

Hot Rocket Trio “Love Cats” (The Cure)
I’ve never really understood the appeal of the Cure but over the years I’ve accumulated a large number of covers of their songs. I like the syncopated backbeat on this one.

Los Fabulosos Cadillacs & Fishbone “What’s New Pussycat?” (Tom Jones)
This is a weird combination of rock, ska, and Tex-Mex. It sounds like everybody involved drank a whole lot of tequila before they started recording.

Cat Power “Fortunate Son” (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
This is another one of those songs that is often covered but almost always in a way that sounds just like the original. Thankfully Chan Marshall slows it way down and makes the song completely her own.

Here Kitty Kitty “Be My Baby” (The Ronettes)
There’s been a lot of “here, kitty kitty” around the Casa de Freak lately as the new kitten wedges herself behind various pieces of furniture. Both trends are likely to continue for awhile.

The first thirty seconds or so of this song aren’t so impressive, but then they find another gear and deliver a bouncy, chipper version of the old standard.

Switchblade Kittens “All The Young Dudes” (David Bowie)
Always a popular ploy to get the audience to put their arms up in the air and sway back and forth, this song desperately needs a swift kick in the ass. And the Switchblade Kittens have their ass-kicking boots at the ready.

On Friday evening I went to a father-daughter dance put on by the local Girl Scouts. She had never had any interest in going to these events in the past (much to my relief) but this year she was very excited about it. Since I figure it will only be a few years before she doesn’t want to be seen in public with me I made a date night out of it. It was a terribly sweet experience and probably one that I’ll cherish when I’m old and feeble (well, older and more feeble than I am now). None of these songs were played at the dance (the playlist skewed more toward the Macarena and Justin Bieber), but they are all appropriate in their own way.

La Grande Sophie “My Heart Belongs To Daddy” (comp. Cole Porter)
Yeah, I know that it’s bad and wrong to post this song in the context of going on a date with my daughter. Just be glad I’m not posting “Thank Heaven For Little Girls.” But I’m pretty confident that her heart does indeed belong to her daddy. She seemed very excited to step out with me on her arm.

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy “I Wanna Be Like You” (Louis Prima)
Remember the 90s swing revival? Then you remember Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. I always thought of them as crass prefabricated opportunists jumping on a hot trend. But as it turns out they’re still around, recording and playing live shows. So I guess they honestly love this kind of music after all. I’m so glad I was wrong about them.

Ska Daddyz “Hotel California” (The Eagles)
The original version of this song always struck me as a tad pretentious. I remember hearing a recording of the rest of the band deconstructing the song when Don Henley wasn’t around. But I like it much better as a smokin’ ska tune.

Big Daddy “Once In A Lifetime” (Talking Heads)
Big Daddy just slays me. They did such unexpected arrangements of contemporary music that were note-perfect with their stuck-in-the-Fifties conceit. Brilliant stuff.

Action Camp “Gone Daddy Gone” (Violent Femmes)
It’s a competent cover, not revelatory by any means. But it just doesn’t work for me without Gordon Gano’s adenoidal whine. I don’t know if anybody could successfully cover this song.

I had my Fantasy Baseball draft last Friday, which meant that I was spending all my spare time pouring over arcane batting statistics instead of lovingly crafting a theme for this week’s post. So in keeping with Cover Freak tradition, here’s a collection of random songs on the occasion of my baseball draft.

Axton Kincaid “I Wanna Be Adored” (Stone Roses)
Remember when the Stone Roses were going to be the Next Big Thing? Didn’t quite work out for them, but this is not a bad song. Especially when played on a mandolin.

Nouvelle Vague “Human Fly” (The Cramps)
The original was a weird mix of punk and surf music. This is a conventional bossa nova, but it’s equally weird in its own way.

World Famous Blue Jays “Spiders And Snakes” (Crazy Jim Stafford)
Talk about your one-hit wonders. The World Famous Blue Jays (are they really world famous or are they just delusional?) give it the country-fried rock treatment.

Dash Rip Rock “Delta Dawn” (Tanya Tucker)
And here’s a country song that just gets fried in general.

String Swing “Things Have Changed” (Bob Dylan)
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I’m not a big fan of Bob Dylan’s songwriting, except for the occasional nugget of brilliance he comes up with. This is one of those songs, reinvented in a completely appropriate swing style.

Singer, actor, Golden Age Vegas hipster. Frank Sinatra is a role model on so many different levels. Let us glory in magnificence.

Baumann “Strangers In The Night” (Frank Sinatra)
Peter Baumann of Tangerine Dream put this song out on a solo album he released in the early 80s. This is the extended mix from the 12″ single they sent to the college radio station I worked at. It’s quite the relic of the early MTV disco-tronic synthesizer school of music. Which is why I love it so.

Sid Vicious “My Way” (Frank Sinatra)
This is perhaps my favorite cover of all time. Sinatra hated this song, he found it pretentious to be singing his own praises. Which makes it all the more amusing to hear this doomstruck punk who was thrust into the limelight by Malcom McLaren snarling about how he did it his way. Sid didn’t know the words and really couldn’t relate to the narrative of a person who became famous, fell from grace, and climbed to the mountaintop of fame a second time. But he brings the snotty attitude and makes this a great song.

DJ Boosta “Fly Me To The Moon” (Frank Sinatra)
Of all the Sinatra covers out there, this song seems to have the most interesting arrangements out there. This version features a nice bouncy beat and some good distorted guitar.

The Transitones “New York New York” (Frank Sinatra)
Another 80s relic, this time from the southern Florida lounge scene. It combines Les Paul style guitar with cheesy Casio keyboards.

Frank Sinatra “Yesterday” (The Beatles)
It just sounds to me like Sinatra is gritting his teeth while he sings this song. I can’t imagine that he was happy to be doing a song by those dirty hippies who pushed him from the top of the entertainment heap.