Last week’s Tom Waits post seems to have brought a lot of new readers to my little blog. So now I’m going to piss off and alienate all of them.

I grew up on Black Sabbath and Motorhead and I still like a good shot of noise every now and again. It gets the blood flowing and blasts the cholesterol out of the arteries.

Motorhead “Blue Suede Shoes” (Carl Perkins)
If Elvis were still alive this would kill him. I first saw Motorhead at the Aragon Ballroom opening up for Ozzy Osbourne on Ozzy’s first solo tour. The audience was confused because they couldn’t hear a bass even though Lemmy was obviously playing one.

Wendy O. Williams and Lemmy Kilmister “Stand By Your Man” (Tammy Wynette)
It sure sounds like the rest of Motorhead playing on this song but they’re not credited on the 45. Wendy O. Williams is largely forgotten now, but in her day she was famous for destroying cars on stage and performing in a bikini made of shaving cream. Really.

Sid Vicious “My Way” (Frank Sinatra)
He can’t remember the words (what’s all this about killing a cat?) but it doesn’t matter. From the classic album Sid Sings. They really should shoot that one into space for alien races to marvel over.

Dead Kennedys “Rawhide” (Frankie Laine)
Frankie Laine died about a month ago. I was going to do a post of different versions of “Rawhide” but never got around to it. This has always been one of my favorite songs to play really loud while driving really fast.

Slayer “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” (Iron Butterfly)
A couple of weeks ago I posted Iron Butterfly’s version of an Allen Toussaint tune. Bringing things full circle is Slayer with a bludgeoning mile-a-minute rave up of the psychedelic favorite.